How can you LIVE better everyday
The days of staying home and spending times with family and friends is for now the norm. Craving different perspectives to fuel our thinking, our appetite and inherent need to belong to a group, a community, the society we live in a constant struggle.
Isolation or #stayhome is helping us assess what is important to us.
Helping many of us look inwards spending time genuinely getting in touch with our feelings about our life, our jobs, our relationships and planning for the future.
Thinking about the future is not surprising. I have found myself in deep thought about what it is that I genuinely want to accomplish. Thinking about the goals I had set for myself in 2020 and assessing if they were real, still valid or meaningful.
Is all this thinking and assessment of our lives a good or a bad thing?
When we look to find meaning in our lives with or without COVID19 we assess what is important to us, what we are good at and the impact we are making on the world and the people around us. This is an internal assessment process of who we are which during other times we may have used to validate our existence. In times of change and in particularly right now, you may be instead doing so for judgement. Your existence may not seem as meaningful as you once thought it to be.
Judging our ability to be good people. Judging the importance of our jobs and the impact they have on us, our family and the world. It is not unusual to be thinking “what is the point of all of this?”
And while the process itself using reflection and the available time we have is fuelling greater self-awareness, its value may be only in the process itself, not the outcome.
Behavioural Psychologist Mark Leary describes in his book “Understanding the Mysteries of Human Behavior” how important the balance between chaos and order is to finding meaning. He argues that it is only by achieving this balance that we discover meaning.
Amongst the chaos that COVID19 has brought to our lives, we are desperately trying to find order and in doing so looking for meaning.
As you review your 2020 goals or the future, remember it takes
1. TIME
The process to reflect involves looking back at why your are where you are. Why you made the choices you have made in your life and why you are questioning them now. This process takes time.
2. ACCEPTANCE
Accepting your answers to step 1. Accepting the job that you have, the friends and family that you love and importantly accepting your choices before today rather than judging them.
3. ENTHUSIASM
Do everything with the enthusiasm as if you’ve never done it before. Approach your balance of chaos and order with energy and optimism for the future.
4. KINDNESS &
Be kind to yourself not just to others. It’s okay to look after ourselves with the same drive and care as we do others. Find the moments that help you reflect and find the balance between chaos and order and take those moments. Even if it means others around you have to wait for your attention.
5. LOVE
And finally love. Love as if it’s the last time you will love. Listen, respond, acknowledge with love rather than criticism. When we approach our relationships with love, we find balance for ourselves and are able to think clearly.
“Balancing order with chaos is an art. For some finding meaning a life’s purpose”
Written by Evelyn G Jackson, CEO of Find My Meaning.