The Importance of Purpose
Hi there!
Welcome back to the MoodiNews. Every Thursday, we discuss a variety of matters related to mental health and self-improvement.
I’m so glad you’re here.
Today, we are going to review the third and final obstacle that keeps people from experiencing self-improvement: a lack of direction! YAY!
When new clients come in for therapy, one of the things that I often have to teach them is how to rearrange their lives in a manner that generates more purpose and fulfillment.
What I end up telling people is this:
Knowing what we want in life is essential. Without a roadmap telling us where to go, it’s impossible to start or gauge any progress around our long-term goals.
Knowing we want is more important than knowing what we don’t want—and the two are not the same.
Living a life that lacks direction is not a minor infraction against self-improvement. It is the end of self-improvement altogether.
When people have nothing to strive for, stagnation is inevitable—and then people wonder why they don’t feel good about themselves.
How can someone feel good about where they’re are going, if they don’t even know where that is?
In essence, a lack of direction primes us for demoralization. With nothing to work for, people lose access to the very thing that will guide (and keep) them out of misery.
In therapy, a lack of purpose is often one of the leading contributors to people’s distress:
It’s not that people don’t have what they want—it’s that they don’t know where to focus their time and attention.
When people wander aimlessly through life, repeating the same behaviors and never redirecting their actions in order to achieve better outcomes, they leave themselves vulnerable to perpetual feelings of hopelessness, frustration, and regret.
Conversely, when people have a north star guiding them forward (i.e., a known sense of direction), they can overcome tremendous difficulty despite overwhelming odds.
As Friedrich Nietzsche famously said:
“He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.”
Not knowing what will truly fulfill us over the long-haul—that is the danger of a lack of direction.
Every human being hungers for the opportunity to be of use to others and to achieve mastery over that which is meaningful to them.
Ultimately, to accomplish both of these things is to truly succeed at ‘building a life worth living.’
Over the last three weeks, we have been reviewing some common obstacles to self-improvement.
Next week, we will begin discussing the three Therapeutic ‘Superpowers’ that can help people overcome these obstacles for good.