Here’s what I know for sure is NOT the point of life

Click the play button below, or subscribe and listen through our podcast on iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, or Google Play.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

I can’t tell you the number of times I sat hunched over a desk at some of my old jobs thinking…

“What’s the point of this? What’s the point of this dumb report I’m writing? What’s the point of showing up to all of these countless meetings? What’s the point of staying here until 5:30pm every day?”

And once I headed down that path of questioning … watch out! It quickly spiraled in a dramatic and existential way:

“What’s the deeper meaning of any of this? What’s the point of working at all? This can’t be all, right? What are we all doing here anyway? What’s the purpose of life?”

{Told you. That escalated fast. I think I missed my calling as a philosopher.}

I never could come up with a sufficient answer (I mean, come on, that’s only the greatest life mystery of all time), but that never stopped my continued questioning. I wanted to feel like my time, energy, and effort meant something … like I wasn’t wasting all of this time for no good reason. I needed to see the bigger picture.

“WHAT’S THE POINT OF THIS?”

I was coaching a client the other day (let’s call her Maggie, shall we?), and she started down this same familiar line of questioning.

“I used to feel like it was so important to climb the ladder at my company and move up in my career field, but more and more lately I’ve been feeling like, ‘What’s really the point?’”

After that, the conversation quickly turned existential, and we started talking about her bigger life purpose. I asked Maggie, “What does ‘having a purpose’ mean to you?”

She paused for a moment and said, “I want to feel like there’s a reason or meaning behind why I’m here. Having a successful career is great and all, but there’s got to be a bigger point to all of this.”

(Ohhh, how I could relate!)

After years of going down my own rabbit hole of life-purpose questioning, I’d realized that it’s not particularly helpful to ask yourself, “What’s the point of life?” That’s a seriously loaded, inaccessible question, and it’ll stump you every time. There never has been and never will be a single definitive answer. That’s part of the magic and mystery of being human!

So here’s what I asked Maggie instead:

“WHAT DO YOU KNOW FOR SURE IS NOT THE POINT?”

She immediately started listing off things that she knows, without a doubt, are NOT the point of her life. Her answers blew me away. Here are a few things on Maggie’s list:

For Maggie, life is definitely NOT about …

• Checking all of the things off the traditional “life checklist” (you know, the job, the spouse, the kids, the house, the suburbs, the car, the 401K, and on and on…);
• Working her way up the corporate ladder;
• Putting in 50-60 hours per week at the office;
• Having the biggest social network;
• The image of “success” that she’d always had (as in, the traditional landmarks of a successful career … corner office, C-level title, and all that);
• And (this was the toughest of all for her to admit) having a career at all. For so long, she’d unconsciously believed that her career was synonymous with her life purpose, but that no longer felt true. She was having this light-bulb moment that her career might just be one way (and not even necessarily the biggest way) for her to express her life purpose. But a job itself could never be her purpose.

After making her list, Maggie immediately felt a huge sense of relief. It was like she finally had permission to NOT care so much about the things she’d always thought were important … the things she assumed she was supposed to want. They were absolutely NOT the point of her life.

The next question I asked Maggie was the most uncomfortable of all. “So if those things definitely aren’t the point of your life … how much energy do you give them on a daily basis?”

“Ughh,” she groaned. “I’ve been acting for a while like those are the most important things, even though I know they’re not. I’m tired of focusing so much of my life around those things.”

IT’S TIME TO REPRIORITIZE

My session with Maggie inspired me to make my own list of what I know is NOT the point of my life. Here’s a snippet of my list:

The point of my life is NOT …

• Pleasing people
• Spending my time according to other people’s agenda
• Making money
• Playing it safe
• Being the most “put-together” person I know (that sounds exhausting!)
• Checking off my daily to-do list tasks
• Becoming “business famous”
• Getting to inbox zero
• Having a traditionally successful career (or really, having a “career” at all, as Maggie so brilliantly stated)

Inherently I know these things aren’t the point of life. And if you asked any random person off the street if “making money” or “pleasing other people” or “climbing the corporate ladder” were the point of life, they’d quickly say, “No way.”

But many of us are not necessarily living accordingly.

The things on this list? These are the kinds of things we tend to get most upset about. These are the things that make us feel bad. These are the things we stress and obsess over, day-in and day-out. These things take up an enormous amount of our brain-space and daily energy.

So now I’m challenging you to do two things:

1. Make your own list of what’s NOT the point of your life. Then see just how much time, energy, and worry you’re devoting to them on a daily basis.
2. Give yourself permission to let these things go. Maybe that means reprioritizing your time and energy. Perhaps that means lettings some things go permanently. Or maybe it just means no longer spending SO much time stressing and worrying about the things on this list.

It’s such a relief to deeply realize, “These things are NOT the point. I can release them.”

When you know for sure what’s NOT the point of your life, you can finally feel free.

Did this resonate with you today? What’s on your list of what’s NOT the point of your life? Leave a comment to let me know!

Much Love,

Kristen (& Rachel)