Weekly Inspiration: Meaning, Clarity & Authenticity

• What makes something meaningful As inspired by Cal Newport’s Deep Work that I’ve been reading, I’ve been reflecting on what makes something meaningful. For me, I find that things that add value, depth, purpose, or richness to life are meaningful, and a lot of how I determine that is based on feeling instead of intellect. One example I can think of is Christmas decor. While it’s an added expense financially and in terms of time spent to shop, decorate, and undecorate, I love the whole process. I love coming up with creative ideas for how to decorate, searching for decor, decorating with my husband, and enjoying the way our home feels after decorating. I also love having people over to our home and how emotionally expansive the space feels when we have gatherings for holidays. There are so many layers of joy, delight, connection, and satisfaction added to my life by engaging in meaningful activities. I think this also shines some light on why I have a really hard time engaging in activities I’m told to do when I find them meaningless. When I find something meaningless, I put it off, make excuses, try to get out of it, and get angry because it appears to be a waste of time to me.
• Clarity from The Enneagram Flowing right on to the next source of inspiration for this week, I gained some insight into why it has always been a challenge to do things I find meaningless. I was inspired to take the Enneagram test this week as a potential tool for better understanding myself. My type is 5w4, which I didn’t like at first, but now I can see how fitting it is, as Fives are really good at exploring things in depth and one of their biggest challenges is avarice. I have ALWAYS been very stingy of my time, energy, and resources and, unfortunately, sometimes quite rude when I have felt it being intruded upon. It makes so much sense to me that I have struggled to do things I’ve found meaningless because I find my time meaningful in and of itself! I will also share that I had a bit of an identity crisis this week, as I have long thought I was a type 2 instead of a 5. I’ll dive into that in a future post soon.
• Brene Brown: “Loneliness is driven by a lack of authenticity” Something I’ve been exploring lately is authenticity and what keeps me from showing up in all aspects of my life authentically. I haven’t spent much time thinking about the consequences of authenticity until I stumbled upon this quote by Brene Brown. When dedicating so much time, energy, and resources to showing up in the way you’re “supposed to” or that you think others want to, it’s going to be nearly impossible to be seen, understood, and accepted by others. Loneliness is the result of not feeling seen, understood, and valued just as you are. If we can’t let people in to truly know us, then we can’t feel truly valued for who we are. In a sense then, I think the options tend to be facing loneliness or fear in this sort of situation. We could choose to face the loneliness of not being known as our whole true selves or the fear of being rejected by showing up as a whole true selves. In sticky places like this, I often decide I want to show up out of love for myself, no matter what that looks like.

Here’s hoping your weekend brings you meaning, clarity about yourself, and opportunities to show up authentically as your whole wonderful self.

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