The 6 Things In Life That Matter

1. Meaning

Some people live their lives with no mention of a higher purpose, meaning, or sense of why we’re here — or at least, they think they do — but not me. If I don’t feel my life has meaning, I suffer from a sense of despair. You’re likely the same way, even if you don’t realize it.

What gives your life meaning is not necessarily religious. Christians see the purpose of their lives as expressing their love for God through loving others, but you need not be Christian to have a purpose. An atheist may find a purpose in caring for her aging father. A Buddhist may find the mere act of witnessing the universe exist to be its own justification. There are a million ways to find meaning in your existence.

If you don’t find meaning from any of them, you will suffer from a sense of emptiness no matter how good your life is. A perfect career, lots of money, and a life full of friends will never be enough for the person who thinks life itself is meaningless.

2. Mental Health

We understand everything about our world, from our physical bodies to our vocations to our loved ones, using the mind. The mind uses raw sensory data to create our worldview. If the mind is not healthy, then your worldview will not be healthy.

An unhealthy mind will produce emotional instability, physical ailments, and other unnecessary difficulties. Chronic sadness, stress, a string of failed relationships — these are all products of a mind that is not working as well as it could.

If you struggle with recurring life problems, check your mental health. Chances are problems like these keep recurring in your life because your disordered thoughts are producing them.

3. Physical Health

The most significant benefit of good physical health is not a hot bod and smoking good looks. The most significant benefits of good physical health are invisible to the naked eye:

1. A sharper mind, giving you a higher intelligence
2. Less time spent laid up by illness and disease
3. An increased ability to do the things you love, like playing with your kids
4. An extended lifespan to enjoy in any way you like
5. Happy feelings that are easy to access

You don’t have to be able to run a certain number of miles or lift a certain number of pounds to experience these benefits. All you have to do is get yourself up and moving several times a week.

For some people, this looks like running five miles every morning. For others, walking a mere half-mile is more than enough. For those who can’t walk, there are still other options. Fit or fat, able-bodied or disabled, the benefits of physical exercise are available to anyone.

Other elements of physical health include maintaining good sleep hygiene and a healthy diet. Exercise alone will get you far, but eating all-natural foods and getting a full night of sleep every night will also do wonders. If you do all these things, you’ll be in better health than you can believe.

You can tell if you need to take better care of your body by noting how you feel in the present moment. Do you feel rested, strong, and energetic? You are doing an okay job. Do you feel weak, lethargic, or lazy? If so, you are letting your fitness fall by the wayside.

4. Relationships

Others have said it before and I’ll say it again: humans are social animals. We need connections with others to feel healthy and whole. Even monks find communities of other monks to share their lives with. We don’t necessarily need a romantic partner or our birth family to feel healthy and whole, but we do need people.

You can tell if this area of your life is healthy by checking your gut feelings. Ask yourself questions like:

• Do you feel lonely?
• Do you feel surrounded by love and companionship?
• Do you feel you have people you could turn to if you need help?
• Do you feel there are people behind you supporting you when you try new things or set new goals?
• If you were to die today, would you die feeling misunderstood?

If your answers to these questions are negative, or you don’t know the answers, you will be able to make your life more enjoyable by learning how to have deep and meaningful friendships.

5. Meaningful Work

Work is one of the most misunderstood topics about which I write. People often consider work to be an evil necessary to make money. Or they consider it an overarching purpose of their life. Or they consider it something which they should do as little as possible.

Most of these opinions rely on a definition of work as “the thing we do for money in a currency-based society.” But here, I’m not concerned about money. The definition of work that matters to me is not “what you do for money,” but “what you spend most of your effort on.” If you flip burgers part-time at McDonald’s and spend most of your time playing League of Legends, then your true work is not flipping burgers, it’s playing League.

Not all work is created equal. Some work is meaningful; it helps you feel like you are contributing to the collective human enterprise. It makes you feel like you make the world a better place. Other work diminishes your self-confidence and leaves you feeling like a waste of space.

Meaningful work has these three characteristics:

1. You feel it matters in the world, i.e., it makes a difference.
2. You feel you can improve continuously at, e.g., get better at over time
3. You feel you can make a unique contribution with, i.e., is something only you can do.

When people who can make the world a better place do not do so, they tend to suffer from a sense of inner emptiness. We need to contribute to the world in a meaningful way to feel whole.(1)

Because what we think of as “work” in the West often does not contribute to the world in a broader sense, the richest opportunities for meaningful work don’t always come with any material reward, so we don’t call it “work.” We call it “volunteering,” “charity,” “a hobby,” or “a side project.”

Reflect on your own life. What work do you do to bring meaning to your life? Do your money and your meaning come from the same source? If they don’t, what do you do for meaningful work?

If you draw a blank, that’s okay. All that means is you are at the beginning of your search. Stop by the art store and buy a paint set, or set up a time with the local soup kitchen to volunteer. Try new things until you find something that makes your heart sing.

6. Finances

Ah! Dreaded materialism. Yes, indeed, if you want to feel happy and fulfilled in life, you need to have money.

I’m not saying you need to be rich, but you do need some money. Anyone who’s ever been poor can tell you how important a feeling of financial security is to your general well-being. If you feel constantly unmoored by money problems, it doesn’t matter what else you have — the quality of your life will always be low. Desperately wanting financial insecurity isn’t greed, it’s a healthy sense of self-preservation.

Some elements of financial security include:

• Knowing you make more money then you spend each month
• Reliably putting a certain amount of money away in savings
• Not feeling stress about prices when you reach the checkout line
• Knowing how much money you have on hand, and knowing what your upcoming cash flow looks like, at any given moment of the day

If you live in a financially insecure situation, don’t accept these conditions for your life. Make a plan to get financially secure. Pick up a part-time job, or start a side hustle. Review your budget to see if there are any areas where you could save money. Cut your impulse spending. Get set up with Mint.com. Sell old possessions you’re not using, especially big-ticket items like TVs, computers, gaming consoles, and furniture. If none of these work for you, do research to find something that will. There’s an entire world of financial experts out there on the internet who would love to help you.

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Footnotes:

(1): Notice I said "people who are able" - due to one reason or another, some people are not able. Some people are unable to work, either temporarily or permanently, due to things like injury, disability, and simply being burnt out. And just as how sick people need to rest to get healthy, people who are unable to work need to rest before they can contribute again. 

If you are one of these people, do not beat yourself up about your inability to contribute. You still deserve to take up space, eat food, and be happy. Your beautiful existence itself is your contribution.