If You Want to Find Meaning in Life, Just Keep Moving
Living isn’t just existing and covering your basic needs. It involves enjoying yourself, crying, loving, and having a purpose in life. It’s been shown that humans need activity, but above all, we need to have a meaning in life, one that is important enough to make it worth being a part of this mysterious universe.
How many times have you felt lost because you didn’t know what you wanted to do with your life?
Not having clear goals can make you lose interest in almost everything, to the point where life feels like it has no meaning. This is where the real problem begins. In reality, the meaning of life is whatever meaning you want to give it, but in order for that to happen, you have to get moving and take actions that lead you towards your goals.
When you’re lost and you don’t know what your reason to live is, the only company you have is sadness. This robs you of the strength you need to start new tasks and set forth on new paths.
Finding your life’s meaning
Every one of our lives has meaning. For some people, it’s enjoying a job well done. For others, it’s their children or families. For still others, it’s helping people.
Whatever it is, what’s important is that it’s clear to you, and that you start to act on it once you know what it is. It doesn’t matter if something moves you and sparks your interest if you don’t take the actions necessary to achieve things that are relevant to this goal.
The bridge between interest and achievement is action. You can achieve almost anything you want to, but understand that nothing falls from the sky.
To find your purpose in life, ask yourself if what you’re doing is bringing you any closer to where you’d like to be in a few years. In other words, ask yourself if you still want to have what you have today five years from now. You can also look to the past, more specifically to your childhood, to remember what you were passionate about back then.
Children always try to do what they really like, beyond their expectations and obligations, until society takes it upon itself to take their dreams away.
It’s also important to have a pinch of realism. If a dream you had in the past isn’t feasible anymore, it’s good to experience the pain, adapt to the situation, and seek alternatives that would also give your life meaning.
The key is to enjoy what you’re doing and to allow yourself to grow, discover new experiences, and gain more confidence and self-esteem. Therefore, even if you don’t have the desire or motivation, sometimes you have to put one foot in front of the other and ignore how you feel for the moment.
Keep walking along
Like we said before, the key to feeling like you lived life the way it was meant to be lived is to have a reason why. People who suffer from depression often ask themselves why they’re even here.
They lack the meaning that we’ve been talking about in this article, mainly because they still haven’t found it, or because even though they know what it is, their own sadness prevents them from getting up and taking action. Negative thoughts and irrational beliefs play a big role here. It’s very difficult to get up and take the first step if everything is painted black.
Our thoughts determine our emotions, and in turn, our behaviors. Therefore, it’s important to question them and, depending on what they are, replace them with more rational thoughts and trust in those ones instead.
Even though our thoughts are responsible for our actions to a large degree, our actions can also modify the way we interpret the world.
That’s why it’s so important to ignore your disturbing emotions from time to time, accept them, or let them be, while you continue along your path. Through repeated practice, and with a lot of willpower, your thoughts will finally start to change, and what once seemed so dark will start to change color.