Life’s Purpose 

In my last post I celebrated my 10th anniversary from surviving an attempt to take my own life when I was 19 years old, as well as the events that led up to my most hopeless moment. Since my story has gotten a chance to reach others, as it circulates through the internet, I’ve had a handful of people reach out to me and ask one or more of the following questions:

• "What is my life's purpose?"
• “Why should I go on?”
• “What’s the point to life?”
• “Why is there so much pain, and what possibly makes it worth enduring?”

Pretty gigantic, deep questions to ask a stranger over the internet right off the bat - though I don’t blame a person in pain for reaching out in hopes of relief. This isn’t the first time I’ve been asked these questions. I can’t count the number of time it‘s happened to me in my line of work. I don’t know how many times I’ve wondered these questions myself over my darkest years. And the truth is that the essential question may be asked in a number of ways. Sometimes it shows up in more trivial or major life decisions. What major should I pick? What should I do this weekend (this month or this year)? Why get out of bed today?

In my private practice, I’ve seen many a person dealing with these challenges. While the majority of my clients have only one or a few specific blocks to overcome in order to achieve a goal, break a thought pattern, change a habit or emotional response, some have been facing symptoms of depression or traumatic stress for a long time. I’ve had more than a few clients over the past six years look at me with a grief stricken face, teary eyes and a weary voice ask me: “Why should I go on?”, “What should I do?”, “If you were me, what would you do?”

Have you ever asked yourself a question like this? Essentially, it is a question about what gives your life meaning or purpose and what you value. Knowing the answer to these kinds of questions can significantly help prevent or reduce common ailments including symptoms of depression, lack of motivation, indecision and lack of follow through on your commitments, whether they be goals or relationships.

I’ve always told my clients or friends that I don’t think I can actually be the one to answer such questions for them. I think that’s why, when someone answers that question to another person who’s asking, the answer can typically come across as shallow, like a cliche or something that doesn’t resonate. I can tell you what my answers are to those questions for myself, but I would never pretend to answer it for another person. I’ve found the best way to respond to anyone asking me something like that is to ask them some pretty important questions right back.

If you are a person with a strong faith or set of convictions you might be able to more easily answer these questions since you have probably asked and answered them for yourself to some extent already. When I say of “a strong faith or set of convictions,” I mean you already know the story you believe about the meaning of life, or your life, or you probably have a set of ethics or a mission you live to honor. Regardless of whether you’re a person who has some sort of a religious faith or philosophical approach on life, your life is driven by your values.

Values are like an internal compass pointing you in any given direction, or like a magnet pulling you away from one thing and to another. What do I mean exactly by values? A value is defined as a person's principles or standards of behavior; one's judgment of what is important in life.

I like the distinction between personal values and core values as described by Herb Stevenson, an executive and organizational coach. He is the CEO of Cleveland Consulting Group Inc. and founder of Natural Passages, an organization that offers nature-based leadership programs for men. Herb says,

“Generally, we have two forms of values, personal and core. Personal values are lessons learned from life’s trials and tribulation. Core values are embedded during our initial upbringing and create the way a person orients to the world, or, if you prefer, the filter from which you not only make meaning but from which you decide how you will act and react to life’s daily challenges. Core values emanate from the center of who we are and what is most important to us as a human being. When our core values are clear to us, we have a greater sense of self and how we orient to the world. When we have not clearly identified these core values, we often have powerful and surprising responses to situations that directly or even indirectly conflict with these values. Values change over time in response to changing life experiences. Recognizing these changes and understanding how they affect one's actions and behaviors is the goal of the values clarification process. Values clarification will not tell you what your values should be, it simply provides the means to discover what your values are.”

If you are a person with a strong faith or set of convictions you might be able to more easily answer these questions since you have probably asked and answered them for yourself to some extent already. When I say of “a strong faith or set of convictions,” I mean you already know the story you believe about the meaning of life, or your life, or you probably have a set of ethics or a mission you live to honor. Regardless of whether you’re a person who has some sort of a religious faith or philosophical approach on life, your life is driven by your values.

Values are like an internal compass pointing you in any given direction, or like a magnet pulling you away from one thing and to another. What do I mean exactly by values? A value is defined as a person's principles or standards of behavior; one's judgment of what is important in life.

I like the distinction between personal values and core values as described by Herb Stevenson, an executive and organizational coach. He is the CEO of Cleveland Consulting Group Inc. and founder of Natural Passages, an organization that offers nature-based leadership programs for men. Herb says,

“Generally, we have two forms of values, personal and core. Personal values are lessons learned from life’s trials and tribulation. Core values are embedded during our initial upbringing and create the way a person orients to the world, or, if you prefer, the filter from which you not only make meaning but from which you decide how you will act and react to life’s daily challenges. Core values emanate from the center of who we are and what is most important to us as a human being. When our core values are clear to us, we have a greater sense of self and how we orient to the world. When we have not clearly identified these core values, we often have powerful and surprising responses to situations that directly or even indirectly conflict with these values. Values change over time in response to changing life experiences. Recognizing these changes and understanding how they affect one's actions and behaviors is the goal of the values clarification process. Values clarification will not tell you what your values should be, it simply provides the means to discover what your values are.”

I will leave you with a series of sayings from Viktor Frankl, an Austrian neurologist, and psychiatrist as well as a Holocaust survivor famous for his book, “Man’s Search For Meaning”.

"Each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.

Live as if you were living a second time, and as though you had acted wrongly the first time.

Challenging the meaning of life is the truest expression of the state of being human.

Ever more people today have the means to live, but no meaning to live for. The meaning to life is to give life meaning. Man's search for meaning is the primary motivation in his life and not a 'secondary rationalization' of instinctual drives. This meaning is unique and specific in that it must and can be fulfilled by him alone; only then does it achieve a significance which will satisfy his own will to meaning.

For the meaning of life differs from man to man, from day to day and from hour to hour. What matters, therefore, is not the meaning of life in general but rather the specific meaning of a person's life at a given moment.

A human being is a deciding being. Life can be pulled by goals just as surely as it can be pushed by drives.

Man's main concern is not to gain pleasure or to avoid pain but rather to see a meaning in his life.

Man, however, is able to live and even to die for the sake of his ideals and values!

Those who have a 'why' to live, can bear with almost any 'how'.”