In life, we have lots of beginnings.
But once an adult, we never truly are “Absolute Beginners” (David Bowie’s song).
We have new beginnings of day, we rebirth, we “remake” ourselves, we grow, we add skills, we improve.
We look for meaning.
Meaningful relationships.
Meaningful jobs.
We all want meaningful lives.
But meaningful is a very personal concept. What‘s meaningful for “A”, might not be meaningful for “B”.
Meaningful has a very straight relation, not always obvious, with our own personal hidden values.
We have a personal hierarchy of values, not always known, not always recognized.
That hierarchy is going to define the everyday small decisions.Whether you know it or not.
Why is it important? Because in every decision we make, there’s a value behind it. When we choose situation “Red” instead of situation” Green”, is because we are reinforcing some value of ours.
Small decisions have hidden values behind them.
If we don’t identify our most important inner values, is very easy to neglect them. That’s when unfulfillment comes. That feeling of meaningless lives.
Along with meaningful, success is too, a very personal concept.
One must know what success means to us, personally.
One must make sure that our goals are aligned with our inner values.
An exercise? What I’ve been doing? I’ve been setting my long-term goals and try to understand what values stand for that goal.
The next question is: does that goal satisfy one’s personal values? Are those values truly ours or are imported values? Imported from: significant others, society… Whoever has influence in your life…
This self-work is worth doing and will help monitor the goal: if it’s leading into a meaningful life.
References:
(1) “Poder Ilimitado” – by Anthony Robbins edited by Pergaminho
(2) “NLP” – by Joseph O’Conner & Andrea Lages edited by Element
