Checking In: The Meaning in the Mess
I’m so happy that it’s no longer verboten to call days “messy” - it’s as though we’ve all come out of the closet with the truth of how hard leadership can be; and how some days we have answers, but many days we have questions.
Lately, I’ve been pulling a lot of wisdom from Emily Esfahani Smith’s 2017 book, “The Power of Meaning” - she’s a follower of Martin Seligman at the University of Pennsylvania, who we know and love from the world of positive psychology.
Our quest to find meaning is as old as time, and I don’t think we’ll ever stop - but I do think that how we find meaning can help answer some of the questions we’re having right now.
She posits there are four pillars - and you can take a quiz to find your preference (though I bet you already know). Your answer to getting through the mess could be to lean more on that pillar that speaks to you most:
Belonging: We all need to find our tribe and forge relationships in which we feel understood, recognized, and valued - to know we matter to others.
Purpose: We all need a far-reaching goal that motivates us, serves as the organizing principle of our lives and drives us to make a contribution to the world.
Storytelling: We are all storytellers, taking our disparate experiences and assembling them into a coherent narrative that allows us to make sense of ourselves and the world.
Transcendence: During a transcendent or mystical experience, we feel we have risen above the everyday world and are connected to something vast and meaningful.
No big shock for me that Belonging is my primary source.
What is your pillar? Does identifying where you find meaning shift anything for you in how you work? How you lead?
