How to live a meaningful life
In the heart of every human is a search for meaning.
My heart longs for it. Your heart longs for it. No matter how rich and successful, how famous and admired you are, everybody is quietly searching for it.
It’s like there is a hole inside our chest yearning for something greater, something profound other than basic needs and desires.
And when you don’t fill up that hole with something that’s of meaning to you, you experience a lack of color, richness, and aliveness in your life. Life feels like a greyscale movie that simply passes by.
And from my past experience, I know how dissatisfying that feels. For it leads to things like:
scrolling on social media and looking at what other people do… Thinking that if you just get what they have, then you will be happy and fulfilled.
chasing for immediate gratification through social validation, or even worse mental addictions like overconsuming food, overshopping clothes etc.
feeling disconnected from your true self and purpose, leading to a sense of aimlessness, boredom, and/or emptiness in life.
I have felt all that quite a few times in my life. One was during the year I was working as a pharmacy technician, when I felt lost and unfulfilled with my career. And then the other was during the last year of graduate school, when I felt like I was going nowhere with my PhD dissertation.
And since I’ve come a long way from there, here I want to share what I’ve learned for crafting a meaningful life. In other words, it is a life that you are excited about. It’s a life driven by a mission you’re lit up about. It’s a life that you savor and treasure what happens, even the simple daily moments.
Find something you care about.
Deep down, you do care about something. Maybe it’s a person, maybe it’s a subject of interest, maybe it’s an idea in your head. Whatever that may be, it is a little hint pointing you to a purpose you came here to fulfill.
I remember at one point when I felt like I “failed” the thing I was working hard my whole life for (which was to be a medical doctor), I didn’t know what the meaning of my life was anymore.
But what stood out was something I cared about– which was fitness, at that time. I would begrudgingly go to work and be at misery but when I was working out, I would feel like a superstar.
Long story short, following that thing I cared about brought forth so many more opportunities and things to be excited about later on in my life. Such as, getting a full scholarship for a PhD in exercise and nutrition, which led me to a hypnosis psychology lab, to now doing something I find so much meaning in (which is coaching using scientific and spiritual modalities).
The point is to tell you that all you need is ONE thing that you care somewhat about. When you follow that one thing, life will lead you to more of what you are excited about. And long behold, you will be surrounded by bountiful charms of daily delights that give you meaning and purpose.
2. Know your gift.
The other component for living a life of meaning is to know your natural design.
That is, knowing what comes naturally to you without much effort. It is a strength that you are innately gifted in. And the cool thing about your gift is that when you are using it, you feel energized instead of being drained.
To most people this is usually hard to see– because we are used to forcing (and deforming ourselves) to fit the demands of the world.
For example, let’s say you are a gentle empath entrepreneur who is naturally good at holding space for others and providing emotional comfort.
However, when you are told that you need to toughen up and speak in a commanding and authoritative way in your marketing in order to attract clients, it can diminish the heart of your natural talents. And subsequently, you may end up feeling lost and disconnected in your business.
Which is why the key to finding meaning in life is to 1). Know who you are and 2). Do what makes you accept more of You.
That includes sometimes, even the parts of you that you think are bad, unwanted, and unvalued by others. In fact, they are your hidden gifts in disguise, if you just embrace and express them to honor all that makes you YOU.
3. Use your gift toward what you care about.
Once you have an idea of what you care about and what your gift(s) are, you can then channel them into actions that are in service to others.
This is important because being of service to others is ultimately what gives meaning to one’s life. It gives us a reason to get up from bed each morning. It gives us a reason to go an extra mile for whatever we choose to do.
And just to be clear, being in service to others doesn’t mean that you let yourself be stepped over by others and take advantage of you. Because if you treat others like yourself, you would treat yourself like others too.
And that means to be in service to others means to care for yourself (like how you would treat others too).
So you may be wondering, “well how can I be of service to others while also caring for myself?”
My love, the answer comes down to finding a way of giving that makes you feel like you are receiving at the same time. It comes down to choosing a way of service that makes you experience an overflow, even from the simple act of “doing” on its own.
For example, right now writing blogs gives me a deep sense of meaning. And that is because I am choosing a form of service where I can give to humanity while at the same time also nourish me/my business in return.
The key is to find a marriage of how you love to give while also at the same time, lets you receive. A sense of meaning develops from there.
4. Choose depth over shallowness.
In this day and age rife with instant communication and rapid-speed technology, it’s easy for life to be swept away by shallow, mindless activities.
Those are activities that you can just do while being distracted, such as responding to DMs, scrolling on social media, browsing on shopping websites etc.
They are shallow because you can do them without much focus and concentration. And the satisfaction you get from them is quite shallow too. For example, once you are done scrolling on the internet and you drop your phone, the initial “high” you got from scrolling drops down fast and you may even become less satisfied in your life after that.
In the book Deep Work by Cal Newport,the author mentioned that the opposite is needed for a deep and meaningful life. Newport calls it deep work, and it is the concept of focusing on a single task and blocking out time to be free from distractions.
This is important because doing deep work not only gives us satisfaction, it allows us to really master a craft and create quality work for whatever that we intend to pursue– may it be for creating art or solving a cognitively demanding math problem. (Lol I hate Math but at least when you get absorbed into deep work you may even begin to enjoy it).
The point is to say, deep work gives you meaning because you get into a state of flow. This is especially true when the thing we are doing challenges us, but it is not too challenging that we want to give up. Research has shown that flow state make us more motivated about life, with greater happiness and satisfaction.
To me, when I get to do deep work, for 2-3 hours in the morning where I can write with minimal distractions, I feel fulfilled throughout the rest of the day. And there are very few things in life that I would choose over that morning routine.
That is not to say that you need to be constantly grinding out work in order to find meaning though. I do not believe in the sustainability of hustle culture (You can read more on how hustle culture creates guilt and shame here).
Instead, my point is to say that you will begin to experience more depth in your life as you let go of shallow distractions. When you do that, you will experience depth in the work you do, depth in your creative endeavors, and depth in your relationships (including relationship to yourself). And it is the experience of depth that creates meaning.
5. Create your own meaning
As a spiritual (and meaning) seeker, I have listened to a lot of near death experiences throughout the course of my life.
And one of the common themes that I have heard is that at the end of our lives, our whole life “flashes” before our eyes. In a microsecond that feels like eternity, we are shown all the things we have done, all the thoughts you have had, and the intentions we have set.
From my understanding, it is all of those above (our thoughts, intentions, actions) that we have had that shapes our meaning. We see an overall theme of what has happened and we choose our life’s meaning from there.
And since we are living right now, we have endless options and free-will for the kind of meaning we want to create. Every single day, at every single moment, we get to choose what that meaning is.
So my love, ask yourself–
What kind of meaning do you want to create with your life?
What meaning do you see when you look back at the life you have lived thus far?
And what kind of meaning would you be happy and proud of, that you get to create in the remaining years?
Every moment we get to live is so precious. And as long as you are living, you can consciously choose to decide what meaning you are making out of it.
So that means if you experience something “upsetting,” for example, like being rejected by a prospect, do you make it mean that you are worthless/ not valuable etc. OR do you choose to make it mean that the rejection is leading you to something better.
What meaning are you choosing out of the experience you are having right now?
Know that they are all a decision. Every moment offers you a choice, and then a new choice, and then a new choice. As long as we are living, we are given this sacred gift– to not just choose how we go about things but also getting to choose our own meaning.
All in all, what I want to let you know is that even if you can’t think of a “tangible” one-liner sentence to describe your meaning, know that you are living a meaningful life if you are choosing love, peace, and service.
Your mind doesn’t need to be able to fathom what your meaning/purpose is in order for you to live each moment fully.
This is especially true when you are going through a spiritual awakening– because during those times, it may feel like you don’t even know who you are and what you want anymore. This happens because you are now expanding your awareness and your mind hasn’t adjusted to a new level of awareness (I talked about it in this blog post). It’s like a camera adjusting from a narrower to a wider lens– it takes some time for your mind to adjust to a new level of awareness.
And of course, living a meaningful life is more than just a step-by-step formula but rather, consists of multiple components like creatively expressing yourself, being spiritually connected to the Divine, having deep relationships etc. This is the reason why I’ve dedicated this entire site to write articles for every area of life so you can live a meaningful, fulfilling life.
And if you want to take a step further and receive even more personalized guidance tailored to your unique soul, I do that through my 1:1 work. Or if you just want to try out what it’s like to receive an intuitive reading from me, you can request a free mini voice note reading here.
Love,
CM
