Make Your Life more Meaningful in 2021
As restrictions upended our lives in 2020, it was easy to get caught up in long days of work at home and the distractions of digital devices. Looking back, we may not have achieved all our goals. More importantly, meaning and purpose may have been left by the wayside.
As we enter 2021, it’s helpful to take some time to decide on our purpose for the year — and for our life. Setting meaningful goals and creating a vision of how to achieve them can help ensure that we can realise our purpose and end the year feeling we have accomplished more than the mundane. While uncertainties about everything from vaccines to work routines abound, we can take specific steps find purpose and make life more meaningful amidst our busyness.
Decide on Your Purpose in Life
The most important step is to “begin with the end in mind,” as renowned author Stephen Covey wrote in Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. Rather than starting the year without a purpose or making new year’s resolutions that may soon be broken, begin by figuring out meaningful goals to accomplish during the year.
One of the best ways to do that, Covey suggests, is to develop a personal mission statement that focuses on what you want to be and do. By looking at your talents and imagining how you’ll use them, you can move towards achieving your mission.
Another facet, suggests coaching firm New Step Partners, is to examine your values and vision as you set up a plan for the year. By reflecting on some of the best experiences in your life and the values that made them meaningful, you can identify what is most important for you. Next, consider how you can embrace your vision and values in the work you want to do, the life you want to lead, the people you want to be around, the impact you desire. Figure out the skills you need to get there. Finally, narrow your focus to a few key outcomes and develop a plan to move forward.
By taking time to decide what is important to you and what you want to achieve, you will be better able to develop a plan to move forward towards a meaningful outcome
Stay on Track
Once you decide on where you want to go, you need a plan to get there.
Executive coach Rafael Sarandeses suggests working backwards from your mission statement to create a goal and determine milestones on the path to reaching it. You can then put high-impact actions into your daily, weekly and monthly schedule and set up processes around them. Since getting things done is usually more of an “action problem” rather than an “information problem”, focus on doing your high-impact actions consistently. To stay on track, set aside time each week to review what you need to do to push forward.
Behavioural psychologist Sean Young similarly suggests that you first state the big goal that you would like to accomplish, then break this larger idea down into long-term goals that take up to three months to accomplish and break those down into short-term goals that take one to three weeks. Break these goals down further into easy baby steps and reward yourself each time you accomplish one. Think less about what you want to achieve, focus on how you want to feel, and identify a “why” for your goal that motivates you.
For tracking your journey, author Nir Eyal suggests using a weekly schedule template that is consistent with your values. Whether you want to get a promotion, spend more time with family, volunteer with a non-profit or learn a new skill, schedule activities that enable you to achieve your goal. Lifehack CEO Leon Ho similarly recommends setting a timeframe for each step, scheduling what you need to do each week, and reviewing your progress regularly to make sure you’re on track. Changes will undoubtedly happen during 2021 and you can adjust your plans any time, as long as you stay on track.
If a goal seems too big, you can set a string of small and incrementally more challenging goals that move you along towards your larger purpose, says Harvard psychologist Amy Cuddy. People often fail to reach their goals because they are too massive and unrealistic. While large goals have a place, you can start with smaller goals and work your way up.
The Result is a Meaningful Life
By identifying your values and your vision for your life, you can figure out your purpose and how to make sure that what you do is meaningful. While creating a more meaningful life may sound like a lofty goal, figuring out your purpose and how to achieve it will leave you far more satisfied at the end of 2021 than you
