Creating More Meaning in Your Life in 8 Simple Steps

Instilling your life with a greater sense of meaning and purpose—it sounds like a monumental feat.  Most people think that they have to identify a "moonshot" goal like curing cancer to give their lives significance.  Usually, this process involves some personal or societal judgment as to what is meaningful to pursue.  However, meaning is subjective, as one person can find a stranger completely insignificant to them while another person cherishes that person as their mother.  Therefore, finding meaning is more about finding what matters to you and fostering growth in those areas, whether it's supporting your family or collecting memorabilia for your favorite sports team.

But how do you go about starting that?  Well, you have to find growth areas that are meaningful to you and find the best approach to foster those areas.  There's a simple eight-step formula you can follow to pursue that:

• Identify growth areas that you wish to pursue/improve upon and define success in those areas.
• Determine the experiences you need to have to achieve that growth.
• Build desire for those areas (or find other areas where you have a stronger desire if applicable).
• Build belief in your ability to have those experiences, grow in those areas, and attain those goals.
• Check your emotions to see if you’re on the right track—if you’re excited, you’re doing it right; if you’re bored/dreading it, you’re not.
• Identify a set of ethics to maximize your growth without hurting anyone on your journey.
• Secure the support you need to achieve as much as possible as quickly as possible.
• Make deliberate choices every day to move toward your goals.
  

If you do that, you’ll find more meaning in your life—guaranteed. Almost like a math formula, you can’t do those eight things and not find meaning; if you’re not finding meaning, then you are missing one of those eight things.

This approach works no matter your belief system, your improvement area, or your current situation.  You can find meaning in helping a child learn to read or winning a Guinness World Record.  It's really up to you what meaning you find in things and what meaning you create in your life.  Make the most of it!

As always, if you want more help with the eight steps, The Meaning of Life: A guide to finding your life’s purpose has detailed questions and exercises to assist you in exploring each component in detail.