How to Create a Meaningful Life
We often become so accustomed to our daily stresses that we don’t always stop to think about our deeper needs. We might reach for ways to calm our anxiety or give ourselves a temporary boost, maybe a bubble bath or a massage, before sinking back in to the same patterns that have us yearning for more in the first place.
Building a more meaningful life for ourselves—a life that’s congruent with what matters most to us—is an internal process that sometimes involves making difficult decisions, like setting boundaries or getting honest about how we spend our time.
The things that you need to help you feel your best are totally unique to you. Nobody (including me or any diet/fitness program/product) can provide a be-all-end-all solution for you to feel your best. But I hope this post will offer some guidance to help you find out for yourself what you need more of to create a more meaningful, enriched life.
1. Getting Clear on Our Values.
When our actions are congruent with our values, it gives us the feeling that our lives have more purpose. We feel reenergized and help prevent things like burnout. Getting clear on what our core values, beliefs, and desires requires introspection and honesty. It’s really important to me in my own life!
A 2020 meta analysis of more than 30,000 people found that authenticity, or feeling true to yourself, is associated with greater wellbeing.
In recent years I was struggling with a lot of cognitive dissonance because certain beliefs I once had were changing, and it took me a long time to shed some of those old beliefs and better align my actions with what I was really feeling and valuing inside of myself. Once I did though, that cognitive dissonance started to fall away. And it is so freeing.
2. Making a Values List
Finding meaning through our values looks different for everyone (because everyones values are different!). If you like to journal like me, a values list is a great exercise to do in your journal (or just pop open up a document on your computer). A values list is exactly what is sounds like—a list of the things that matter most to you in how you live your life.
Examples of values include: kindness, playfulness, autonomy, authenticity, freedom, solitude, creativity, curiosity, understanding, generosity, balance, integrity, honesty, trustworthiness, courage, humour, community, and openness.
Make a list of what comes to your mind or use some of the above examples to get you started.
Values can be easier to think of when we consider them in the context of decisions or actions we’d take. I like laying out categories like family, marriage, parenting, friendships, career, education/personal growth, leisure, spirituality, community, and health. With these in mind, we can write out things that are most important to us, how we want to be/act, choices we want to make, personal qualities that are most ideal to us. Don’t overthink it, just write down what comes to mind first.
In the book real self care by Pooja Lakshmin, something else you can try is answering these questions:
I’m happiest when…
I feel most like myself when I am…
I am bound to fail when…
I know that I cannot do … and be …
Once we are clear on what our values are, we can better see where we need to pivot in our actions and choices to be more aligned with them.
3. Taking Meaningful Actions Toward Values
There is a psychotherapy approach called ACT (which stands for acceptance and commitment therapy) that’s based on the notion that we all suffer in life at different times, and that there is no way around it. We can’t eliminate painful or difficult feelings or experiences. And instead of focusing on getting rid of all bad thoughts or difficult feelings (which makes us feel worse because… that’s impossible!), ACT teaches us to move forward despite the hard stuff, by taking action toward what matters most to us in life, even if there are difficult feelings along the way like fear, anxiety, guilt, etc.
I highly recommend the book The Happiness Trap by Russ Harris. My therapist recommended this book to me last year which is where I learned all about this and have applied in my own life.
There’s a section at the beginning that talks about “toward moves” vs. “away moves” and coming up with a list of what yours are in different kinds of situations, especially during times of stress. Toward moves being the actions we take that are aligned with our values (this could be spending time outside, being helpful toward others, or eating veggies), and away moves being ones that aren’t, that we often do as a way to escape the hard feelings we may have (like spending hours in front of the TV, doomscrolling social media, or smoking).
Acknowledging the ways that we respond to different thoughts and feelings can help us take control of our lives by making conscious shifts in our actions.
4. Setting Boundaries & Managing Guilt
Life involves making a lot of decisions every day, and the types of decisions we make can either help us feel our best and lead the life we desire more, or it can hinder that. This is where boundaries come in: it can be pretty life-changing when we practice being assertive in prioritizing our own needs and desires more often.
As Pooja talks about in her book, when it comes to setting boundaries, you basically have three choices: you can say no, yes, or you can negotiate. Often, the boundary is in the pause—taking a moment to think things over and reflect before responding to a text or email or phone call, for example. Things are often not as urgent as we think! Pausing first gives us time to decide if the thing is best for us or our family or not.
A lot of times our biggest barrier when trying to set boundaries is the guilt we feel, though. It’s not so much trying to determine what our boundaries are (often we know what they are!) it’s the guilt we feel or are scared of feeling when we want to establish a boundary or be more assertive in them. We fear how we’ll be perceived or if we’ll let someone down.
But, guilt in the context of setting boundaries is inevitable. Just like what ACT teaches us, difficult feelings are part of life and instead of escaping the tough feelings so that we stay in a comfort zone (i.e. not setting a boundary out of fear), we learn how to manage feelings of guilt by turning down its volume and not letting it dictate our every move.
My favourite technique, called cognitive defusion from ACT, when I’m having a negative, guilt- or anxiety-inducing thought is:
“I’m noticing the thought that…”
This creates distance from the thought so you can see it as a separate “thing” rather than coming from within you. It stops it from controlling you and your decisions quite as much.
5. Gratitude
When we pay attention to what we have in our life already, whether the small things like a morning cup or tea or bigger things like having a house we love or getting a job promotion or having a healthy family, we engage so much more in what really true for us.
Gratitude is a skill that helps us appreciate the good stuff that comes our way and not dwell on the bad stuff as much. We often buy into the illusion that ‘the next thing’ around the corner will fix all our problems or finally make us happy, but this mindset ends up being a vicious cycle that leaves us perpetually hungry for more. When you fully acknowledge what you have in your life, you care a little less about getting that next thing.
Think of a good time in your life and why it felt good by naming the values you were living at that time. What was most important to you in those moments? When we name values from past experiences we can use them to inform future decisions to create experiences that are truly nourishing.6. Tune In to Your Body
Rest, relaxation, and time spent on activities that don’t earn you money or status, is so important to our mental and physical wellbeing. Feeling disconnected from our body and needs though can take many forms. Maybe doing lots of scrolling social media even though our brains feel fried, or forgetting to drink water or eat lunch. Basically a lack of awareness of how you feel and what your body is telling you!
The next time you feel overwhelmed, ask yourself this:
What is my body trying to tell me?
What’s one small thing i can do to take care of myself right now?
You can make microdecisions in favour of your body and energy, they don’t have to be huge ones.
Creating a more intentional, meaningful life for ourselves is not about trying to do it all perfectly (I certainly don’t!) or trying to reach some ultimate happiness destination. It’s a lifelong process of regularly tuning in, making adjustments and conscious decisions as we travel through life and navigate all different sorts of situations.