06 Jun Building a meaningful life
Happiness is much more than just pleasure and hedonism; it's certainly not selfishness and the individual pursuit of success and more.
REAL happiness does involve pleasure, there's no doubt about it, but REAL happiness also includes using your strengths to fully engage in and with life, building positive relationships and connecting with others, achieving and accomplishing goals, looking after your physcial wellbeing and…
…finding meaning and purpose in all we do.
It's this last component of happiness that many, I find, struggle with. And so it's with great pleasure that I share with you an article from The Huffington Post in which the topic of building a meaningful life is addressed. It's written by Manel Baucells and Rakest Sarin and it begins like this…
A traveler came upon a group of three hard-at-work stonemasons. He asked each in turn what he was doing. The first said, "I am sanding down this block of marble." The second said, "I am preparing a foundation." The third said, "I am building a cathedral." It is the third mason who sees a greater purpose and meaning in his work, even though he is doing exactly the same work as the other two.
To find meaning in life, one needs to reframe reality in a cumulative way. Thus, our actions and activities get stored in a metaphorical bucket. We should set goals and make progress toward these goals. A goal can be anything from cultivating a garden to losing weight, writing a poem, preparing for a marathon, or contributing to a charity or a cause. The key is to recognize that each day you are making progress towards a goal, like filling a bucket with water.
In the following, the first section represents a less goal-directed process. The second section represents accumulated action. To develop a cumulative view, one must appreciate how far you have come, rather than just what you have accomplished that day…
…keep reading the full and original article HERE