Meaning and Purpose

mappalicious_wordle

“Positive psychology is just not happyology, the pleasant life. We have repeatedly found that those who pursue all three lives, pleasure, engagement and meaning, have by far the most life satisfaction – with engagement and meaning far and away the biggest contributors to fulfilment.” Martin Seligman.

I am blessed to be studying positive psychology and I am loving every single minute of it. I have long had an interest and a passion and for many years have wanted to study it formally, so it’s an opportunity I am relishing in.

This week’s topics were Engagement, Strengths, Meaning and Altruism. I could write so much about all of them and I will, but today I would like to discuss the concept of meaning and how we were able to experience it today.

We had the opportunity to learn in an incredibly hands on and profound way the difference that having meaning and purpose can make to an activity. We were given the task of assembling an item in teams of three, and the only directions we were given was that we were to follow the instructions, and we also had to cover our dominant hand, meaning we all were working with only one non dominant hand each. We did as instructed and did the best we could, without really knowing what or why, but we figured out pretty quickly that it was some kind of prosthetic hand mechanism that we were assembling. We didn’t discuss it, but I thought it was some kind of team building type of exercise that would demonstrate what it might be like to not be able to use our dominant hand, but I didn’t give it too much thought.

We then broke for morning tea and came back to watch a short video before we were to begin our task again. The video was of people who had lost their hands in land mines and other accidents and it showed how prosthetic hands were changing their lives. Suddenly it dawned on us, the hands we were assembling were going to be sent to people who needed them! Our instructors were crying, some of us were crying and the emotions in the room are almost impossible to describe here in a way that does it justice.

Once we were able to gather our thoughts and start making sense of the instructions again we went back to assembling our prosthetic hands. Our intentions, motivation and determination to do a great job were suddenly quite different to when we thought we were doing a meaningless but interesting task. Our focus and attention to detail increased, our minds were firmly focussed on ensuring that what we put together would do as it needed to. Our activity had a meaning and a purpose and one that could provide a significant change in somebody’s life. Wow, just wow!

hand being made

We were then fortunate enough to be able to write a letter to the recipient, decorate the case their hand would go into and have a photograph taken of us that would be printed and put into the case for them to see who had assembled it.

hand case

What an opportunity! What a blessing! We were all on a completely different wavelength to when we began the task.

us with the hand

Meaning is so important in anything that we do. If we consider the work context, we need to know why we are doing the work we do, how what we do makes a difference and how it fits into the bigger picture.

Meaning and purpose are critical for us in understanding how and why we are here and what we can do to fulfil our purpose.

thank you hand on screen

Tonight I feel so grateful that the work that I do has meaning for me and for others, and that I feel I am living my purpose. I encourage everybody to take some time to ask yourselves if what you are doing is fulfilling your purpose and if not, what you might need to do to change it.

Much love and happiness from me to you.

Rae-Anne x :)

About Me

Recovery Coach Rea-Anne

Hi, my name is Rae-Anne. I am a facilitator, manager, counsellor, NDIS support coordinator, psychosocial recovery coach and published author with over 25 years experience in leadership development, change management and developing and delivering training within government, social and community services.

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