3 Easy Ways to Find Meaning in Life Every Day...Even if Nothing Seems to Be Going Your Way
You've had days where you just felt “meh,” uninspired. Days where you feel a vague feeling of discontent like your life lacks real meaning.
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You’ve probably thought you could fill that void that if you just found that magic something that’s missing from your life. The right job, the right romantic partner, the right moment…
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But the reality is that you can find real meaning in life in everyday existence. There is meaning in life all around us. In this post, I show you how to find it. I share some practices that you can engage in right now to find meaning in life and feel instantly fulfilled, even if nothing seems to be going your way at the moment!
It’s all about learning to pay attention to and engage with the things already around you in the right way, in a way that makes them speak to you. And occupying your energy with what speaks to you By doing so, we can learn how to read life’s infinite web of meaning. We can cultivate the ability to find constant fulfillment.
1. Consciously Appreciate the Many Sensations in Savoring Foods/Drinks You Like
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Most of us love at least some food, whether it’s an Italian sandwich, cheeseburger or a veggie curry, a big part of what’s enjoyable in life comes from what we eat.
We all recognize this, but sometimes when we actually consume the food, we are distracted by worries or worse, work. But it’s good and helpful to take the time to regularly eat something you like and really savor it, get into the subtleties of the flavors and textures in different bites. Pay attention to how the tart sweetness of ketchup on a cheeseburger harmonizes nicely complements the savory warmth of the meat and cheese. Focus on how the onions and lettuce can add a fresh crunch to balance the oil in the meat and cheese.
In every bite, as you chew the bread meat and cheese in a cheeseburger come together and provide different combinations of delicious flavors and pleasant textures in different parts of your mouth.
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You can do the same with drinks, like a refreshing sweet tea on a hot afternoon or a hot cup of coffee on a cold morning. Pay attention to how the cool sweetness of the tea coats your mouth and throat as it goes down, cooling it. If you’re especially thirsty, notice how the dry rough, almost papery feel of your throat is coated in cool sweet liquid. Feel as your thirst is quenched, your throat is smoothened, hydrated and comes alive. This is particularly vivid in the first sip but continues to happen as you quench more and more of your thirst.
There is something delightful and existentially deep about quenching your thirst. Our body is mostly water, after all. When we hydrate, we fill ourselves with life. And if you pay attention to how your body feels as you quench your thirst, you can really experience this corporeal coming back to life.
A hot cup of coffee or tea when it’s cold out is also a wonderful experience. Despite the cold air that might be brushing up against your skin, you can sip that hot liquid. You can feel it warm you up as it goes into your mouth, down your throat, and into your belly. And, as it rests there, continues to warm you up from the inside out. It can keep the core of your being warm even as its edges face deep winter.
You can take this conscious appreciation of the foods and drinks you like the next level by paying attention to the way there can be a play between the flavors and textures of the foods and drinks that make up a meal.
My favorite example of this is when the warm salty savory goodness of a cheeseburger bite leaves your mouth and you take a sip of cold soda. It is as if the cool sweet bubbles of the soda cleanse the savory film on your tongue and mouth left by the cheeseburger, refreshing them and leaving your mouth ready to take another warm salty/savory bite.
You can pay attention to how every bite of food unfolds like a verse. You can feel how sips of drink serve to punctuate the transition from one delicious verse like another.
In this way, you can find deep meaning in every meal you enjoy. For it can be a kind of symphony of flavors and textures that you get to take the time to enjoy as you nourish your body.
2. Use Your Breath to Anchor Your Consciousness and Develop Awareness of Your Body
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Very often we go through life literally stuck in our head, especially if you have a job that requires you to use your mind a lot. That is, most of our attention is totally preoccupied with thoughts and worries. But this is no way to go through life.
A lot of meditation practices focus on cultivating a conscious awareness that is richer than the one we fall in when we get stuck in our heads. And an easy way to do it is by focusing on your breath.
There are many breathing/meditation techniques that you can do, but an easy, simple first step is to take a slow deep breath in through your nose. You can close your eyes if you want, but it's not necessary. Focus on how the air goes into your nose, down your neck, and into your lungs. Really try to fill them up with air from the bottom up. Make the bottom of your torso expand. Feel this expansion in your core.
Now hold your breath for a couple of seconds. Pay attention to how your expanded torso feels. And breathe out through your mouth. Feel how your torso contracts as air leaves your body, and try to distribute your attention across your whole body. Try to spread your attention outwards from your core to your chest and arms, legs and feet, neck and head as air flows from inside to outside your body.
When you finish breathing out, don’t breathe back in immediately. Continue to feel your whole body for a couple of seconds.
Then breathe back in, focusing once again on how air flows into your core expanding it, how your expanded torso feels as you hold your breath for a couple of seconds, and how your whole body feels as you breathe out.
Continue this cycle of breathing and focus five to ten times. As you do so, really try to experience this ebb and flow of consciousness and breath in your body.
Thoughts will inevitably come into your head at some point as you do so. Like in mediation, this is totally fine! Don’t even worry about it. The bar is even lower than in meditation in a way because the goal here is not so much to let go of thoughts. The goal here is simply to bring more of your conscious attention to your body. You can do this while still having thoughts. Just don’t let them take over. Accept that they’re there but also that now you’re not focusing on them.
Once you’re done with these cycles of ebbing and flowing breath and consciousness, you will have kind of sensitized your whole body by becoming conscious of it in different degrees. Continue breathing slowly but now try to keep the focus on your whole body simultaneously.
Continue to focus on your whole body as you keep breathing and feel how this embodied feeling anchors your consciousness. Feel how it grounds you even as you continue to think about anything. It brings your consciousness a certain stillness, a certain peace. If you continue to focus on your whole body and focus deeply enough, you can feel a subtle but distinct pleasure in your whole body. This is what some people the emanation of the joy of being. This feeling can continue to ground and empower you even as you continue to think, feel, and do all kinds of things if you continue to be aware of it.
It may seem counterintuitive, but by focusing some of our attention on our body (and not all on our thoughts), you can actually think better because there is less nervous energy running your thoughts.
Whenever you find yourself stressed or overwhelmed, slow down. Focus your breath and your attention in this way. Get in touch with this subtle joy of embodied being. It is a deep source of peace and meaning that you can always turn to. And the more you turn to it, the deeper the meaning it will become.
3. Creatively and Critically Consume Media Content
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Another incredibly powerful way you can find more meaning in life is by putting more into the way you consume media content. You can engage your creativity and imagination by really digging in, analyzing, and thinking about the stories you expose yourself in.
Look for the incredible depth and complexity that lies beyond a lot of the media that you can consume. For example, Breaking Bad is a great plot about an overqualified, underpaid chemistry teacher who gets diagnosed with cancer and decides to manufacture drugs to leave something for his family. But on a deeper level, it is an intricate tale about the moral trajectory of a man in very imperfect circumstances, a tale that gets majestically told through all kinds of compelling visual storytelling.
As you watch shows, read texts, or even play video games, ask yourself, why choose these particular choices of colors, of camera angles, of words? Why is this piece of music used to score this dialogue scene? Why tell the story in these particular ways?
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You can also consume narratives with an eye to how the character dynamics structure the plot. That is, you can analyze how different characters develop and how the development of one affects the development of another. A great example of this is the first part of Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure (which if you have not seen yet, you simply have to check out!) The protagonist, Jonathan and the antagonist, Did push each other in a variety of ways that lead Jonathan to become more heroic than he ever would have if he had not met Dio and Dio becomes much more of a force for evil than he ever would have had he not met Jonathan.
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Another way of tapping even more meaning into the media content you consume is by comparing and contrasting similar contents, seeing how it is that they do things similarly and how they do it differently. For example, you can compare Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul as two stories of the moral trajectory of people in very different circumstances. In Breaking Bad, Walt’s trajectory is generally that of a fall, of how a decent man becomes evil when faced with tremendous difficulties. By contrast, Better Call Saul is, in many ways, the story of how a shady man tries to stay decent when faced with his own difficulties.
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​You can also consume content with an eye to learning life lessons in them. Look for what kinds of actions, patterns, and even characters can serve as inspiring examples of what to strive for in life, like a particular hero whose struggle resonates with yours. Look for what kinds of actions, patterns, and characters serve as poignant warnings of what not to do in life, like a tragic hero that has one unfortunate choice, which leads to his fall.
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Yet another thing you can do to get more meaning out of the media you consume is to engage your own creativity in it If you don’t like a certain way in which a story is told, how would you change it? What storytelling would you make differently? It can be something major or something minor. I know, for example, that I was very disappointed at the end of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith when Anakin and Obi-Wan fight with a blue lightsaber each. I think the visual storytelling would have been more compelling if Anakin's lightsaber had been red, indicating his having transitioned to the dark side. The scene where Anakin slaughters the younglings when he has the crazy orange eyes would have been a perfect moment to reveal his new Sith lightsaber. Opportunities that were missed, in my opinion.
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There’s so much meaning waiting to be found in all kinds of texts, movies, shows, games. You will certainly find it. You only have to dig for it in ways such as these!
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Conclusion
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In this post, I have shared with you three easy ways in which you can find real meaning in life every day. You can focus your attention to get much more out of your experiences with food and drink, your own relationship to your body, and the media you consume.
What I shared with you here about how to use your breath to get more in touch with your embodied awareness is just the beginning! You can take this to the next level, by getting more in touch with your embodied awareness with specific parts of your body. I want to help you take this next step by helping you get in touch and connect your head and your heart, in particular. To this end, I have put together a Guide for Getting in Touch with the Light of Reason in Your Heart.
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Click and sign up to get this tool and begin developing that next level awareness and connection in your heart and mind.
Sign up, and you’ll also get more philosophical resources, including a List of Everyday Wonders that you can look at to find appreciation and meaning at the world around us!