Wellness Wednesday – “The Importance Of Meaning In Life: Knowing Your Why”
Welcome to the Wellness Wednesday blog on the new SED website. Please make sure to check back in, as we will be backloading my previous Wellness Wednesday articles here for your reference. This blog can be considered a one-stop place for thoughts and ideas for improving your personal wellness as a church worker as well as your congregation’s overall wellness. Many of these blogs can also be valuable for your congregational members and serve as resources for empowering wellness within your ministries, so please share this resource with your church and ministry.
Now, on to this week’s Wellness Wednesday! Today, we continue our exploration of Dr. Martin Seligman’s PERMA-V (PERMA+) model of well-being by exploring the “M,” which stands for “Meaning.” Seligman defines meaning as belonging and/or serving something greater than ourselves. Have you or someone you know ever tried to live just for yourself in life? While it can initially be ” fun, ” it gets old and meaningless after a while. We all need a meaning, a purpose greater than just living for ourselves, to truly thrive in life.
There are health and wellness benefits to living a life of meaning. Those who report experiencing a sense of meaning and purpose in their life live longer, have greater satisfaction and have fewer health issues. Several years ago, my grandfather, who was then retired, was given six months to live by his doctors. After a few months, my grandfather said, “To heck with this,” and purchased a gravel yard. While he was not as active as he once was, the new business gave him a renewed sense of meaning and purpose to his life. From his “command chair” (a lazy boy in the office), he would run the company, and every once in a while, he would go out and drive one of his toys (the dump trucks and front-end loaders) for fun. With this renewed meaning, my grandfather lived another two years longer than the doctors had predicted. While finding meaning and purpose in your life is no guarantee you will live longer, life is often not worth living without it.
So, what are some ways to build meaning in your life? Here are a few ideas to consider:
- Get involved in a cause or organization that matters to you.
- Try new, creative activities to find things you connect with.
- Think about how you can use your gifts and strengths to love and serve others.
- Engage in new activities that tap into your passions.
- Spend quality time with people you care about (and who care about you).
While all of these suggestions are good and helpful, the best way to find meaning and purpose in your life is to discover your ultimate “why” in life. Simon Sinek, in his book “Start With Why,” insists that knowing your “why” is “The compelling higher purpose that inspires us and acts as the source of all we do.” While we can find a sense of meaning in life from the things we do, the jobs and positions we hold, the activities we engage in, the service we do, and the relationships we have in life, our ultimate sense of “why” comes from growing in our relationship with God by grace through faith in Jesus.
The Apostle Paul writes in Colossians 3:1-3, “Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.” When we struggle to make sense of who we are, why we are here, and what life is all about, Paul invites us to look up and set our hearts and minds on a higher reality that is our Christ. This higher reality then infuses everything in this life with holy meaning and purpose, even the most mundane of tasks, in a way that produces in us a thriving life the way He intends for all of us as His followers to experience as we follow Him daily. May God grant us all this higher perspective each day as we live out our “why”, our calling in Christ in our daily callings in love and service to others, that fills our life with a true and lasting sense of meaning we are all seeking.
