Finding Meaning in Our Lives

“Ever more people today have the means to live, but no meaning to live for.”Viktor Frankl

We are meaning seeking creatures. We cannot truly be at peace unless we have something we consider as significant in our lives – something that gives us purpose and fulfilment. There is a sense in which finding a meaning to life is the ultimate question for any of us. One of the regular things that happens in therapy is a search for meaning. It's one of the most inspiring issues - and I really enjoy helping clients find (or re-find) it – simply because I view it as so important. The philosopher Nietzsche and the psychologist Jung both seemed to agree, the former saying that “he who has a why to live can bear almost any how,” and the latter that “meaning makes a great many things endurable – perhaps everything.”

Unfortunately, we live in a world which increasingly makes it hard for us to find meaning. The fast pace of modern life, materialism, the difficulty of maintaining relationships in a stressful environment, the decline of religion, the difficulty in finding a “job for life” and the encouragement for us all to grasp at instant gratification and anything shallow to assuage our difficult emotions have all played into this lack of meaning. I am not going to say that there hasn’t always been lack of meaning in people’s lives – of course there has, but it has certainly got worse in the last few decades – probably post 1960s if not before. Perhaps oddly, roughly at the time when life became so fast and material expectations rose so quickly, inertia, boredom and apathy seemed to have increased as a perverse counter-weight to this pace. However, those who have sought their meaning through money, endless pleasure-seeking or achieving shallow tasks have invariably not found it there.

Perhaps Fromm summed this up best in the Art of Loving, when he said: “Modern man has transformed himself into a commodity; he experiences his life energy as an investment with which he should make the highest profit, considering his position and the situation on the personality market. He is alienated from himself, from his fellow men and from nature. His main aim is profitable exchange of his skills, knowledge, and of himself, his "personality package" with others who are equally intent on a fair and profitable exchange. Life has no goal except the one to move, no principle except the one of fair exchange, no satisfaction except the one to consume.”

It is hardly surprising that about half of the clients who come to me with one problem or another end up at some point by focusing on meaning. This is because meaning is often a hidden problem for many people. It's something they don't want to consider. They may consider every other problem first, but they will avoid this "big one" until a crisis arrives or it is very late in their life and they wake up and realise that there is a hole where there shouldn't be one. The comment, “I have no real meaning in my life” is common, poignant and the cause of deep-seated distress in the speaker. Sometimes clients have reached a state of nihilistic despair or, finding nothing worthwhile at all in their life, have turned to one addiction or another in order to try to blot out their meaninglessness. But need it be like that? I don’t think that it has to be so, even if we do live in a society whose machinations often work against rather than with meaningfulness. But actually, the discovery of "lack of meaning" can be the very thing that turns your life around.

Here are some ways that people commonly seem to find meaning in their lives – there are others. Some of them may be impossible for you or just not apt, but there is likely to be something on this list that you may be able to engage with to find meaning. And the concept of engagement is key here – if you fully engage with any of these things then you begin to find meaning.

1. Love. The Beatles were not far off the truth when they sang “All You Need is Love,” and a famous Larkin poem ends “What will survive of us is love.” And it doesn’t matter what form the love is - it needn’t be romantic, however much you desire that. Love for any other human being can give us great meaning and love of something can too.

2. Connection. This can be to nature, other people (deep friendships being the best one), or God, if you believe in Him and however you perceive Him. A sense of “feeling connected to the universe,” may seem airy-fairy in one sense, but if real it can be a source of meaning.

3. Doing good things for others. There is no doubt that bankers earn more than a teacher or nurse, but are there many that can find their meaning from their profession? I doubt it. Anything that makes our fellow travellers in this world have an easier journey helps to give us a purpose, money ultimately does not. I’ve no doubt Mother Theresa found endless meaning in her life but, thankfully, we are not all called upon to reach her level of sainthood in order to reach meaning by giving to others.

4. A creative life project. There is no doubt that making or creating something can give people a purpose. It is not hard to see how a composer, artist, poet or architect can feel that his or her life has purpose. The same is true of inventive and boundary pushing science. But you don't have to be brilliant to find this meaning. We may be mentally drawn to the picture of someone operating at a high spiritual level - mystics, philosophers and monks, for instance - but on a less demanding level, most of us can find meaning in a hobby or sport that we love.

5. Improving ourselves and feeling that we have reached some sort of spiritual or other full potential. It is possible to achieve this via career, but unless your career is something that you love it is unlikely to be enough on its own – because it has to be an improvement centred on within. This inner improvement is bound to bring some feelings of enlightenment.

You can even find meaning through your suffering, if by it you feel that in some way you have grown or inspired others. If you think that idea unlikely, then I would strongly suggest that you read Victor Frankl’s book, Man’s Search for Meaning. Frankl found that even in the unfathomable horror of Auschwitz it was possible to find meaning.

David is a fully qualified and BACP registered Counsellor. If you wish to talk about issues in your life or about meaning, you can book a face to face or skype session with him by ringing 07578 100256 or emailing him at David@eastcheshirecounselling.com. You can also follow him on Twitter as Contented Counsellor at: https://twitter.com/#!/SeddonDavid

The Secret Is that There is No Secret

If ever I decide to write a Self-help book – and many folks keep telling me that one day I will, then it may well be called The Secret Is that There is No Secret. That is not to say that there are no solutions – there are to most things, but these solutions are not mystical, hidden or magic.

My clients often get me thinking with renewed energy and passion about things that interest me. One recent client did just that when we got onto his tendency to try to make things happen. The result was that they hardly ever did – we joked about waiting for kettles to boil. We thought also of a goal-poacher in football, trying so hard on the pitch that he is anxious and keeps missing the target. Obviously footballers need to practise and prepare and stay fit. Without that, they’d get nowhere and be out of the team very quickly. Equally though, when they’re on the pitch, they need to relax and just play on instinct. Golfers are the same. The minute they start to think too hard about that they are doing, they will tense up and lose their way. In fact, all of life is normally just like that.

Not long ago, I wrote a Blog entry called Ten Books To make Life Easier. At some point, I’ll follow that up with a Blog entitled, Another Ten Books to Make Your Life Easier. But, I must stress that these books make things “easier” rather than “easy” and none of them offer magic cures. In fact one of them, M Scott Peck’s The Road Less Travelled, famously begins “Life is difficult,” even though he then outlines how we can work to make it less so.

And so, I am going to base this Blog entry on my feelings about the book the Secret by Rhonda Byrne. I know that this will be controversial in some people’s eyes, but opinion is partly what a Blog is for. Many people enjoy the book, but my thoughts are very different. I loathe it, and if I had the choice of binning one book in the world it would be that one- for reasons I shall give below. I will describe why I view it as a bogus, fake self-help book that has only really helped the author become rich.

I’ll make a couple of quick points before I get onto my bigger ones. The book is very repetitive and makes the same point over and over. It is very unoriginal and has taken ideas from everywhere else. That could be fine up to a point, as all self-help writers build on the ideas of others, but to pass the whole off as “a secret” seems to hint at some new discovery. I also consider the idea that disasters happen to those “on the same frequency as the event” as in poor taste and not a million miles away from what Glen Hoddle once got sacked for saying. Further, in nature, the law of attraction is often seen as the opposite – one thinks of magnets. With people and relationships, it varies. I could go on with a variety of issues, but I’d rather get to my main points...

I think Byrne’s book is wrong in a number of profound ways and key areas. First, I disagree with the idea that if you want something badly enough it will just come to you – almost by some type of magic osmosis. For me that notion is the absolute antithesis of all that counselling stands for. I tell all of my clients that “there are no magic solutions to life,” but that things do improve as we become aware, accepting and work hard for change. My clients do the bulk of the work - I just guide and facilitate them in that. Since I think it’s dangerous to seek any sort of magic solution in life, I frequently use Irvin Yalom’s comment to new clients – “I am not the Wizard of Oz.” Though, the Wizard is a perfect analogy to Byrne’s book, as we all know that the Wizard could not do magic and was hiding behind smoke and mirrors – but people believed that he could and that was enough for some of them. Second, I disagree with the implication that what we need is outside of us and that we need to wish for something we haven’t got in order to make ourselves whole or happy. Actually, I think joy springs from within when we become our true selves and feel one with the world in this way. But again, perhaps cynically, Byrne taps into a modern scourge. Third, I disagree with the implication that what we need is an end or a target. Instead, I think that Carl Rogers was right – “the good life is a process not a destination.” One is not going to gain anything from the visualisation that Byrne suggests – and that’s not her intention, it’s the goal she declares important. I think the opposite - that the greatness of life is to be had in the journey, not the arrival, if indeed there ever is an “arrival.” Fourth, by concentrating on visualising a future, we are not living in the present. Being in the present is the way of not only mindfulness, but of peace.

Where I do agree with Byrne 100% is in the power of positive thinking – but that is an old idea offered up many times and in many different ways – by philosophers in Ancient Greece for instance. I would recommend NLP especially as a tool for this, and something I use a little of in my sessions. It is much more subtle and gentle than CBT – and I believe more long lasting. If you think positively about things you can influence how you feel about outcomes – and sometimes the outcomes themselves. But I cannot take positive thinking further and to the extreme as Byrne does with “visualise a million pounds and you shall have it.” My own view is that that is a damaging and limiting concept which far from moving people on holds them back and prevents them from moving properly forward. Miracles might well happen, but they are rare and God chiefly helps those who help themselves.

Perhaps Byrne’s book is symptomatic of today’s society, where school children often profess that their life’s desire is “to be famous,” and where many people seem so obsessed with instant gratification and material success; and place celebrity over talent and hard work. In a sense Byrne plays into that expectation and desire by offering a short-cut to it. People are said to want anything but to change themselves, but counselling does not take that line at all. It is centred on a movement towards change. It challenges us to become awake, not to live in dreams – to sometimes dream, yes, but as Kipling said, “not to make dreams our master.”

I have written, many other Blog articles about the sorts of things we can do to help ourselves live better, happier and more fulfilled lives, so I won’t repeat them here. What I will say, is that I think the deeper path is better – perhaps the zen-like way of thinking of things or the way of philosophy, psychology or of many faiths, or just simply, your own way. These are all much better ways than the magic one – and much more productive ones too.

We certainly should concentrate on being positive, in seeing good, in working towards the good – but, crucially, we should also concentrate on being rather than doing. My experience is that good things come when you do that. They don’t when you take a battering ram to them whether in the forms of words, actions or wishes. To put it another way, ultimately the good life is much more about allowing than it is about demanding. If you look at relationships with others you can see that in action – show them kindness, compassion and tolerance and they are more likely to listen to you than if you bully or demand.

This alternative way to Byrne’s is not the way of laziness or lack of purpose. I am not going to suggest that we do the very opposite of what she says – to expect bad things or never to work for good things. But when we relax into life and being, that’s when things start to happen. You don’t get anywhere without hard work. I suggest that we shouldn’t put the hard work into believing in magic solutions, but instead on working on ourselves and our way of being in the world.

One of my favourite poets, Robert Frost would surely have agreed with my stance and said this: “A person will sometimes devote all his life to the development of one part of his body - the wishbone.” I urge my clients and readers not to be such a person.

David is a fully qualified and BACP registered Person Centred and Existential Counsellor. You can book a face to face or skype session with him by ringing 07578 100256 or emailing him at David@eastcheshirecounselling.com, and you can follow him on Twitter as Contented Counsellor https://twitter.com/#!/SeddonDavid