How to stop feeling meaningless

Stop feeling meaningless by spotting the manufactured meaningful messages and taking these 7 simple steps to boost your self-worth.

The ‘meaning of life’ is no longer as clear as it was once supposed to have been. Never have so many humans been uncertain about their larger purpose beyond their daily grind and nightly pleasures. Old assumptions threaten to collapse, leaving one naked. Many people’s assumptions have already collapsed and they are naked. Theodore Zeldin

If you have yet to delve into the delights of ‘The Hidden Pleasures of Life’ by Zeldin — put it on your to-do list.

His perspective on human meaningfulness is enriched by stories from past and present and imagined future.

For now, I want you to consider your meaningfulness.

Have you ever privately or publically expressed these frustrations?

  • I’m just a nobody.
  • I haven’t got any original ideas.
  • Without a decent online presence, I might as well be invisible.
  • I haven’t got a bestseller, Ted talk, and I am not a Doctor of anything.
  •  I don’t really count.

Easy to read those bullet points rationally, and think – ‘daft’.

I have thought every one of them — more than once.It has taken conscious effort to listen to my inner-squasher that brain dumps rubbish like — ‘what’s the point’ and ‘I am just a nobody’.

Later in this article I reveal the steps I have taken to clean out the ‘I am meaningless’ rubbish.

I know I am not alone.

But, these inciduous inner-scripts operate in most of us — at a low hum of emotion unchecked by rationality and we’re not brilliant at pausing to question default thinking.

In fact, we easily fall into the ‘should’ traps fueled with fears, assumptions, comparisonitis and all that impostor syndrome stuff!

As Confucius says — ‘Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated’.

Yes Confucius – very true!

So we need to do the forensics, take some reflection time and keep questioning our thinking patterns.

What’s going on when you feel ‘meaningless’?

When you consider your ‘meaningfulness’ you start from a place of feeling pretty small in the universe — or as Robert Greene puts it in ‘The Laws of Human Nature’ — you feel your ‘puniness’ as an individual ‘in a world with billions of others in a vast universe.’ 

A perfectly understandable feeling, unless you are full of the self-delusions researched by Dunning and Kruger!

But when you now consider the sub-worlds of social media, news and Netflix, you spot how thee all add to this sense of puniness.

Are we being zombified into believing that being ‘meaningful’ requires having thousands of followers, being famous or inventing a new planet?

Stop!

Get back to the meaningful meaning of meaningful.

Start with you and create a wave of reframing through conversation, curiosity and collaboration.

Let’s start a movement.

Finding your meaning Trisha Lewis blog

The ‘Meaningful Meaning of Meaningful Movement’

I just started it!

Not the catchiest of titles but the observant amongst you will have spotted the 4’M’s.4 ‘M’s is a business management tool and also used in the sphere of mental health by Dr Sue Varma.

Both have interesting links to my proposed movement — but I will leave you to go down those rabbit holes.I want to move on with the mission.

The mission is:

Press pause, question and bin the soul-drowning forces of manufactured meaningfulness.

Rediscover your true, social-media-less, self-worth.

Manufactered meaningul is stuffed with prerequisites and quests :-

  • Being famous.
  • Going viral.
  • Having over 20K followers.
  • Being an international keynote speaker.
  • Having at least one best selling, much vaunted book — one that that changes the world.
  • Being crazily controversial and getting onto panels on TV.
  • Surving horrific, internationally known events.
  • Losing the weight of a small house and sailing around the world in a tin.
  • Being rehabilitated and going on to proffer saintly support to those who used to be like you.

There are plenty of positives associated with the internet and even social media – but there are negatives too of course. That’s life.

Social media leaves us feeling stuffed but not satisfied.