On the surface, everything should be going great. You’ve got a good job in the career of your choice, a stable income with nice things, and an active social life. Your personal and professional relationships are satisfactory or better.
Yet deep down you feel like something is not right. Physically this feeling might express itself as an
emptiness in the chest, or a chilling feeling down your spine that makes you hesitate at times.
Emotionally, you might experience ambivalence, doubt, and anxiety. You might also find yourself
searching excessively for distractions from your daily life.
Why do we feel this way when we have everything we should need?
Searching For Purpose
To fully thrive, human beings have a variety of needs. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is one of the best-known representations of these needs. At the most basic level, there are physiological needs: food, water, and clothing. Once these are met, people need the feeling of stability and safety, such as a steady job and knowing that they have a residence to go home to each night. Above those needs are love and belonging: having friends and family and maintaining positive relationships with them. After that comes esteem: the need for respect from your peers, status within your social and work groups, and the personal freedom to make choices. Finally, at the very top of the hierarchy is self-actualization: the desire to find a purpose in your life and be the most you can be as a person.
Our Highest Need
According to Maslow, within the hierarchy of needs, the higher needs don’t become apparent unless the more basic needs are first met. Thus a person who doesn’t have food or shelter will generally not be able to address belonging or self-esteem. Similarly, someone who has to worry about earning a living is unlikely to be able to address self-actualization/self-meaning. They might be aware that they have such needs, but it’s not something they can realistically “get to” until their other needs are first met.
So when we have that deep down feeling of something missing, it’s both good news and bad news. The good news is that we have all our other needs fulfilled. The bad news is that with all our other needs met, we now have the capacity- and need- to address our ultimate need of self-meaning. Without fulfilling this need, we will not feel truly complete and will continue to feel like something is missing.
How does one accomplish self-meaning then? How can we complete ourselves as human beings? We can do so by creating a more significant existence in which we can not only excel, but in doing so find happiness and become in harmony with the person we want to be.
How I Can Help
In my practice, I use a variety of tools and techniques to help my clients find their purpose and fill that empty feeling. I stimulate creative thinking via mindfulness exercises, selected music meant to inspire, and exercises in self-awareness. The more we develop your personal creativity and self-awareness, the better you can listen to yourself and find what it is that you desire in self-meaning.
Once you’ve found what exactly it is you’d like to accomplish in finding self-meaning, I can help you get on the path to get there and become in harmony with yourself. Contact me for a free 20 minute consultation.
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