MEANING OF LIFE AND HOW TO FIND IT (WITH EXAMPLES) - ARTE - 2025

Finding the meaning of life is one of the tasks that many adults have to go through at a certain age. In this article I will explain how to find it, increase your motivation, be happy again and exploit your potential.

Finding a purpose in your life will help you to achieve better results and live fully. People with a purpose that really interests them are more motivated, more energetic, wake up more eager, and are generally happier.

If life has no meaning, an existential crisis can develop due to not seeing meaning in existence. However, when that meaning is seen, life is much simpler and more bearable.

How to choose an authentic purpose?

If you don't want to continue living a dictated life, your best option is to choose to live by your values ​​and choose a purpose yourself.

If you continue to live from what society and others expect of you, you will not be truly happy, you will feel demotivated, you will live to please, and you will waste your potential.

The truth is that I cannot tell you which path to follow, you have to choose that. However, if I can suggest a way to find out:

Get rid of all your beliefs, presuppositions and socializing

It is impossible for you to get off the path drawn by society if you do not have an open mind, if you do not question everything that is dictated.

Let's say you've always had a passion to help others. This would be another way. The first would be to go to university, work, family…

In this case, it would be necessary for you to have an open mind and begin to believe that you have the possibility of dedicating your life to helping others.

What would your best possible life be like? What is the purpose of my life?

Now, ask yourself this question, what would my best possible life be like? and the following what is the purpose of my life?

I recommend that you write; it is emotionally liberating and helps organize thoughts.

Ask yourself those questions as much as necessary. If necessary, repeat them 100 times and answer 100 times. When the answer makes you feel excited, you will be very close or have found an important meaning for you.

Make a comparison

This technique can be complementary or independent to the previous one. It was used with me by a coach in a coaching process and it gave very good results.

Make a picture of yourself with two situations:

-The situation you will be in 5 years from now if you follow your current path.

-The situation you will be in 5 years from now if you follow another path.

Which one are you most excited or passionate about?

Observe your passions and those of your childhood

You surely have a passion for something, whether you are aware of it or not.

If you have followed your passion and have found a meaning in life that excites you and makes you happy, no problem.

However, there may also be two other options:

-That you know what your passion is or what you think is the vital meaning and you are not following it.

In this case, your only option is to get out of the routine, set goals, and take action.

-That you have no idea what your passion is.

In my opinion, since childhood the passions are shown; children show what they are good at, what things they do well naturally. However, with socialization and conformity, passions dissipate and people enter the dictated path.

In this case, you can see what makes you passionate, what things you do well naturally and effortlessly. Also, think about your childhood; in the things you did and that excited you. Finally, return to point 2 of this section (What would your best possible life be like? What is the purpose of my life?).

Act and live congruently

Have you already found your passion, what is your meaning in life?

Well now comes the most difficult part: making it a reality by setting goals, carrying out projects and taking action.

It would therefore be to lead a congruent life.

-Is your purpose to solve a problem? What problem is it? What is your goal? What is your project to solve it? How and when are you going to start acting?

-Is your purpose to contribute socially? What is your goal? What is your project? How and when are you going to start acting?

Examples of people with purposes in life

Common

This would be the one that most people follow, common: adapt to society and others, be reactive (not be proactive), do not follow their passions, work, family, home.

Live for others

A good example of this case is Mother Teresa of Calcutta: for more than 45 years she cared for the poor, the sick, the orphans and the dying, while at the same time guiding the expansion of her congregation, first in India and later in other countries of the world.

Achievements and adventures

There are people who have great ambitions and whose purpose in life is to achieve great achievements, their meaning is to achieve.

Examples: the Wright brothers, Henry Ford, Edison, Colón, Neil Asmstrong, Gandhi…

Art and literature

The purpose and meaning of other people's lives was to create art: Picasso, Van Gogh, Velázquez, Frida Kahlo, García Márquez, Cervantes…

Solve problems

The greatest exponents of people who have dedicated their lives to solving problems and contributing to the advancement of humanity are the scientists: Alexander Fleming, Albert Einstein, Watson and Crick, Pasteur, Marie Curie…

Spirituality

There are people who simply want to lead a spiritual life, they would have an ability to perceive something beyond the physical senses.

There are people who followed a spiritual life (Gandhi, Dalai Lama, Buddha, Rumi…) although they can also be placed in the points of "living for others" or "achievements".

The simile of the worm Is there another meaning?

I would like to ask you something: what if you cannot yet know the real meaning of life? Believe that we know everything in the world and reality sounds very arrogant.

However, it is a mistake that the human species has often fallen into.

• Before Galileo, the world was believed to be the center of the universe.
• Before Christopher Columbus, the earth was believed to be flat.
• Before Albert Einstein it was believed that time is a constant variable (it is relative).
• Before the first flight of the Wright brothers, it was believed that it was impossible to fly.

What if you really had a wrong idea of ​​what you know or what reality is?

Imagine an earthworm: it only has the sense of touch, it has no vision (much less consciousness). Therefore, it cannot perceive the reality that we perceive.

What if you did not have the necessary sense to perceive another reality or the meaning of life? In the event that there was another way of perceiving true reality, the meaning would be different.

Perhaps the human species is not yet sufficiently evolved, nor does it have enough knowledge to give an answer to the question of what is the meaning of life.

It may also depend on something that is out of our control and we are living in a kind of experiment.

This last hypothesis is not paranoid and I have not invented it. The possibility that you live in a kind of "matrix", in which you are being investigated by something or someone has been proposed by some world-class geniuses such as NASA scientist Rich Terrile or entrepreneur Elon Musk. I think the opinion of someone who has been able to create Tesla Motors or Space X should be considered.

There remain those questions. What is your opinion?

The meaning of life they teach you

I leave aside the option that we do not yet have that "sense" that makes us see more and I return to real life and everyday life.

What do you live for? To be happy? Have pleasure? Be rich? Have material possessions? Get knowledge? For God? To achieve achievements?

The answer will depend on your values, that is, the aspects of life that you give importance to, your principles of action.

Some values ​​are: altruism, achievement, ambition, acceptance, belonging, materialism, spirituality, compassion, cooperation, contribution, kindness…

Those values ​​are described by the culture you live in, your context within that culture-family, environment-and your genetics.

In general, in Western culture a life that has the following ingredients is valued: having a job, having a house and car, a family, living in a quiet and safe way, and finally, retiring.

It is what they have educated us. At least my teachers didn't educate me to have more ambitions, solve big problems, invent things, have an impact, know and be curious…

If you realize, those aspects are based on the socialization of most people. And you can enter the same road that everyone follows, reaching the end without practically realizing it.

Because other "seeds" such as ambition, the will to achieve, curiosity, or "not going with the flow" have not been planted, it is more difficult for people to get off the track.

Therefore, the meaning of life is often determined by socialization and it is this: work, family, things, security.

Every day I receive emails from people who have motivation problems. Perhaps that is the great problem to be solved: they are following an almost dictated path that does not correspond to what they believe is the meaning of life. I think what they should do is change the path towards the values ​​they have.

And what sense do you think life has? I am interested in your opinion. Thank you!