Hello and welcome to Exercise 2 in the Foundations of Wisdom Journey to Finding Your Purpose In this exercise,
Another short exercise you will probably need a pen and paper to help write down your thoughts and help write down the questions I'll give you My name's Martin Crees-Morris and I'm your guide on this journey and to be quite honest,
It's as much my journey as it is yours Everything I ask from you,
I ask of myself And in this second exercise,
We're looking at meaning Do our lives have meaning?
Meaning is something that has value and significance It's not the same as purpose Purpose,
However,
Brings value to something to make something significant And this is why we're interested in purpose ultimately In other words,
Purpose can guide life decisions influence behaviour,
Shape goals and offer a sense of direction as well as creating meaning So again,
This little exercise is a sense check a stop-take,
A where-am-I-at-the-moment type exercise And of course,
We have to make sure that whatever our purpose is,
That our life does have meaning So let's focus on meaning and the five pillars of meaning And the five pillars are Belonging This is the sense of connection The sense that our presence has value to other people Our absence is felt by other people We have purpose This can be seen in terms of goals or targets or objectives But as you know,
We interpret this more as what is our gift to the planet So we're just touching on purpose with this second pillar The third pillar is Competence Do we have skills,
Abilities?
Are we able to do things that we are proud of?
And the fourth pillar of meaning is Control A sense that our life,
Our decisions,
Our actions are very much determined by ourselves This is critically important,
Particularly for mental well-being And the fifth one is Transcendence,
I.
E.
Something much bigger than ourselves A feeling of unity,
Connection with something more universal outside ourselves So that sets the scene Let us just go through a series of questions With each question,
I want you to score your answers to the questions 1 being strongly disagree to 7,
Strongly agree And the gradations are 1,
Strongly disagree 2,
Is just disagree 3,
Slightly disagree And 4 is neutral,
Neither agree nor disagree 5 is slightly agree And the score of 6 is agree And 7 is strongly agree So take time,
Don't overthink this And we will just start with the questions to look at belonging So the questions here are My interactions with other people give me a lot of pleasure Just give that a score,
How does it feel to you?
The second question is I have a very fulfilling social network And the third is I am very close to my family and friends Take your time,
Think about it See how it feels And score those questions for your sense of belonging The second pillar,
If you like,
Is purpose So,
To start,
The first question is a very simple question This may be a question we are going to answer later on But the statement is I am leading a very purposeful life So score according to how you feel about that The next question is I look forward to the new,
Exciting challenges that each day come my way And the last question is I have always been very effective in pursuing my life goals Again,
Reflect on that and score it accordingly The next area is competence The area of skills that we are proud of So the first question is My life is full of interesting learning experiences Reflect on how you feel about that The next one is I very much enjoy what I am doing The next question is I can completely lose myself in whatever I do There are things that we do that time just flies So score according to how you feel about that in your current situation The next area is control Are we in control?
So the first question is It's up to me to make something of my life How do you feel about that?
The next question is I feel free to make whatever life choices I can The next question is very direct I feel very much in control of my life How do you feel about that?
Does that seem to be very true or not true at all or partly true?
And then the last area,
Transcendence That part of our life which is,
If you like,
Outside ourselves,
The greater Good,
If you like,
The greater goal So the question is here When I die I believe that I will have led a very worthwhile life I suppose if you died now would that hold true or wouldn't it?
The next question is I get a lot of pleasure out of helping others And the last question is I am actively involved in issues that are larger than me Is this something you're able to do at this time of your life?
So all those questions with all those areas of meaning You can just add up your responses And you get a range of scores And obviously if you have high scores you may have many psychological resources and strengths Maybe it allows you to see which areas of your life may not be supporting you Providing as much meaning as you would like And maybe you see these built into your future activities And you may be at a time in your life when we have competing priorities based around Just pure survival Or a time of rapid evolution and establishment or rapid turmoil But whatever way this sense of meaning in your life This short questionnaire Would just allow you again in the way of exercise one Take stock of where you are And where you find meaning And where maybe you would like to improve So thank you for being with me on this journey And in exercise three we will focus very much more into purpose Going through quite a deep set of questions To look at where we have been and where we are And where we would like to go in our lives In terms of have we sung our song,
Have we told our story Do we have that sense of that eternal purpose which serves us No matter where we are That level of understanding of what you contribute And I can assure you that we all have a gift And we all have a purpose And in many ways we have to discover it So thank you for being with me And I look forward to being with you At the next set of exercises in this journey Foundations of Wisdom Discovering Your Purpose Thank you
