Let’s talk about MEANING & PURPOSE because let’s be honest, this is the real reason you lie awake at night.
Is there enough meaning to my work, my life?
Does my work add enough value to the world, to the people around me?
Am I getting value from it? Am I fulfilled by it?
Am I living out a purposeful life?
Does my business have integrity and impact?
How will I know if I am adding value or not?
What is the point in all of this anyway?
The existential crisis. The questioning. The funk. The trap.
The trouble starts when we try to intellectualise the feelings. And that’s when we get stuck in the trap.
And the trouble with this trap is - we actually start to not only look for it but stay trapped in the very tangible problems we use to explain why we feel stuck in the first place. Such as, you aren’t hitting your income targets, you aren’t moving closer towards your vision, you didn’t get that job, you aren’t committed enough, you aren’t good enough, you’re too much etc etc. Your evidence for why it doesn’t feel good on a plate.
But deep down you know this isn’t it. You say you’re worried about money but in the same breath you say that you aren’t motivated by money. Hmm. You see how it’s a trap?
It’s actually so much easier in the short term to be in this place of struggle. Because it’s easier to agonise over the tangible stuff. Because you can quantify it - it’s known, it’s in sight.
So you do more, you try harder. And here is where it gets really interesting.
Things can be going really well, you can be on track, on target, doing the things you said you always wanted to do, the stuff you always dreamed of and still it doesn’t feel good and still you question your meaning and purpose.
This is why HR Guru’s focus on how to keep employee incentives alive, because they know that human beings aren’t static and will continually adjust and adapt to the incentive. Although a bonus is always nice, it’s really just a quick fix - a hit to ride off for a bit and then, after quite a surprisingly short period of time, it wears off. And you’re back searching for meaning & purpose again. Because it’s not what you do or what you get - it’s how you do it and how you get it.
We are human beings not doings. We FEEL things. WE ARE HUNGRY FOR FEELINGS.
We have feelings because we are conscious. Our feelings are quite literally a survival mechanism that sets us apart from other living things. Our feelings are our gift. We are conscious beings and we use our feelings to respond, adapt, progress & survive. We’ve become so busy trying to intellectually evolve that we haven’t made enough space for our feelings - for our very being.
How do you measure feelings when they are so temporary, so changeable, so fleeting, always evolving? Start by acknowledging this very fact. There is no end point, no final destination, no top of the mountain. In fact, the mountain will keep getting bigger because you’re the one bloody building it. So make it mean something to you. Feel your way.
And here’s the fun part - you get choose.
You get to choose HOW you want to feel, HOW you want to approach things, HOW you want to be. Let the doing part flow from here. Let the feelings be the incentive.
We’ve become so terrified to just be. So terrified to feel. We’re taught to think and told not to feel.
I want you to wake up and ask yourself:
How do I want to feel today? Followed by - What do I need to do to feel like this?
I beg you ask yourself this every single day. There’s nothing to be scared of - I guarantee you that how you want to feel will always be something that adds meaning and value, it will always be something worthwhile - both to yourself and to the people and world around you.
So tell me, how do you want to feel today?
