We have been programmed to pursue success(quantity & numbers) and status for power and control. This quest has caused us to go through many things, have done many things, and have endured pains. Most have lost themselves in such pursuit, attracting strange diseases, hurting people, and breaking hearts and spirits until the flashes of our lives emerge.
Our educational system, built on numbers and position, produces unhealthy competition, stereotypes and labels. There are more cognitive quests of development than an intentional social and profound human being nurturing.
If you do not pass science and mathematics, your whole career path is thrown into limbo; you become like a virus on your body, eating your confidence, esteem, self-care and self-love.
We become so broken and bitter, climb a high horse of self-righteous never to pause and ask, have we also hurt and broken others to trigger let go? But we trivialize or justify what we did to others, and that mindset fuels our rage, bitterness, unforgiveness, and lack of deep meaning to gratitude and appreciation. We all need to pause at a time and come to a moment to question our meaning in life.
After all the certificates, what next, after having all the money, when I am in control of others through power? What next, after the high status in my career? What next? I had kids or not, and so what? I did not marry or get married or divorced, and so what.
Meaning to life comes in diverse emergence essence to everyone who seeks it in a true light of life. It then shifts success to satisfaction and well-being and numbers to quality, effectiveness, efficiency and excellence. It breaks control to influence others to live the best of their lives.
Meaning to life search truncates serial stress, disappointment, depression, failure, diseases, self-sabotage etc. Note that our programming does not even allow us to comprehend what life’s meaning evokes. So it is not tied with balloons and a gift box but self-search. We all need to pay some price to repattern old patterns, deprogramme and reprogram our old programs.
Meaningful life is a relay of Purpose, Transcendence, Belonging, and Life story. Often, any of these four first gets activated, stumbled upon, or evoked to set the relay into a loop and restructured to produce a sense of meaning to life.
Purpose starts with the relay and is where you find value, vision, mission, passion, resilience, grit, creativity, courage, love etc. Purpose is not anchored in what we GET or TAKE, but rather how we best give or share ourselves away by seeking why, what, how and where to know when to make all fall in place. Purpose is about serving a cause through contribution to make a difference in your domains with your skills, potential, capability, competence, creativity etc., envelope in self-love, mental wellness, psychological safety, well-being and satisfaction.
Transcendence is the beauty of purpose in action when you have a powerful dance with time and your gifts to the point your self fades, and your exceptionality and excellence emerge. Where a glow and “magic” occur for people to come to the embodiment of awe. You watch Simone Biles, Messi or Ronaldo, listen to Dr Martin Luther King, grace the aura of Nelson Mandel, get enchanted by Maya Angelo poems, spot the flawlessness of Michael Jackson, sing and dance, etc.
An instrumentalist can play and say, at a point, I could not feel myself in motion. The moment you touch your higher essence, time stands still for you to give or share yourself with the universe. Transcendence constantly anchors in exploring your purpose in action, paying the price for such an experience that no material gain can be compared to it.
Belonging: this is a deep-seated form of authentic and vulnerable relatedness and connectedness with oneself (interception, neuroceptions and perceptions), others (exteroception) and the environment or universe (ecologically). The self-connection-relatedness is where you listen to your guts, thoughts, heart, body and mind and forge a conversation and communication for growth in transcendence and purpose.
Belonging in the sense of perception, exteroception and ecologically is the feeling of safety, value, acceptance, regard, and support in your vulnerability. This can be the knowing and feeling of serenity, peace, gratitude, appreciation, inspiration etc., with one person, two or a group. You walk with nature and experience how essential and valuable you are in this beautiful ecosystem. You have that one person(s) you call or share presence with them, and your weakness, failures, faults etc., are not judged but fearlessly challenged in dignity and clarity.
So belonging is choosing and using yourself, others and the environment as a mirror to observe your purpose, meaning to live, worth or value and a deep sense of vulnerability. You eschew blaming others for your self-inflicted inadequacies, actions/inactions, decisions/in decisions and hold yourself accountable without guilt and judgement. This opens your doors with others to be in gratitude, awe, appreciation, shared love and giving.
Life story is mastering shifting the narratives of old programmes, patterns, and limiting beliefs to forging a repatterned, reprogrammed and progressive belief to fit your life purpose.
Reauthoring or rewriting your life considering all the events, processes, and experiences. My dearest confidant, friend, trainer and global director of The Institute for Healing of Memories entered South Africa from New Zealand to become an Anglican priest, joined the ANC as their chaplain at the height of the apartheid because his purpose saw the apartheid system as an anti-human and ungodly. He paid a dear price for it, as he was put on the apartheid’s most wanted list and bombed through a letter sent to him in Zimbabwe after being excommunicated from South Africa.
He lost his two hands and an eye and suffered severe bodily injuries. He said the kind of love he got from the world because of his selfless love to see the people of South Africa weaned from apartheid was his sustainer. From this particular event, Father Lapsley, Desmond Tutu and others forged the Truth and Reconciliation program, and he later, with support from others, designed the Healing of Memories programme to create a safe space for people to tell their gory and horrific life stories.
He used all events to shift his narrative to keep living his life purpose by giving meaning to the phase of his life that got shifted by his love and quest to end apartheid.
To sum up, In the search for happiness and success, you find frustration, brokenness, stress and depression, but when you search for your meaning in life, happiness and success come along. Seek ye first your meaning to life anchored in these relays, and all other things will be added unto you. It is not a sudden shift as we see in movies or fairy tales, or animation, but this while the universe is procedural, with phases and experiences.
Trauma and our old programs or pattern are the most damaging bugs or viruses to this relay of meaning to life. Others are bitterness, unforgiveness, resentment, self-doubt etc. This particular one goes deeper into your neuroception and interoception to serve as blocks and walls for leading a meaningful life. The scriptures say, “A peaceful and tranquil heart leads to a healthy body, but jealousy and envy is like cancer and rottenness in the bones. (Proverbs 14:30).
And finally, research by The HeartMath Institute on heart coherence when gratitude and appreciation are present or evoked is so profound. It anchors the whole being to stimulate creativity, resilience, compassion, possibilities etc. Then the opposite is also true, that the absence of gratitude and appreciation for life creates a vacuum and stifles the relay of purpose, transcendence, belonging, and life story modelling.
If you are exceptional with one ability, be gracious, appreciative and grateful for it to demonstrate effectiveness, efficiency, and excellence. No gain in envying and being jealous of others with more than one. You do not need to be fixated upon trendy potentials and offer yours to humanity to the best of your abilities.
Be intentional in continually investing in your growth and development to hold the relay of purpose, transcendence, belonging and life story in a continuum.
Scofray Nana Yaw Yeboah, PCC
Transformational Coach | mBIT Master Coach | Healing of Memories Practitioner | Professional Corporate Trainer | Consultant