You need to know what you value

Why modern life feels empty and what to do about it

Photo by Alexander Nrjwolf on Unsplash

At one point last year, every day felt like Groundhog Day, relentless and unchanging.

I felt trapped by routine and obligation.

Always cooking, cleaning — does it ever end? — always sticking to my Pilates / meditation / walking routine to heal from adrenal fatigue, but even my health plateaued and I felt stuck.

Is this all there is?

I felt bored and wanted something more.

I wondered why all my life I’d chased and achieved, but nothing ever felt like enough.

Recent articles about people quitting their lives have gone viral, reigniting a long-held, lingering desire to travel, to experience the world, to live my dream of being a digital nomad.

But I’m now middle-aged (eek) and rooted.

I have a husband who hates to fly, a dog who likes his routine, and truthfully, I like my routine, too.

Anyway, I’ve lived that life.

I once lived in seven states in three years. I spent 6 months on Maui after college working on a farm, and then in a restaurant. I’ve traveled solo to Bali, Italy and Costa Rica, lost count how many road trips.

It was fun, but eventually you get tired of asking the question, “what’s next,” not realizing the real question was, “how can I fill this existential void?”

No matter where I went or what I did, nothing satisfied my relentless quest for something more.

It felt like something was wrong with me because I couldn’t achieve enough or navigate life with enough skill to realize the successful, interesting, unconventional version of me living inside my head.

I didn’t know exactly what that version of me was doing, but it sure wasn’t living in suburbia, cooking dinner and scrolling her phone on a Friday night, looking at everyone else living their best life while I somehow squandered my potential and ended up here.

My journey took an interesting turn last year.

Lounging out back in the fresh air, which is one of my favorite things to do, I read a book called Wander Woman: How High-Achieving Women Find Contentment and Direction.¹ Never have I felt so understood.

High-achieving women “drive themselves crazy being excellent. Then, after spending little time enjoying their victories, they are back on track trying to repeat or even best their most outstanding performance.”

The author Marcia Reynolds inspired a powerful question to reframe the endless search for excellence, for something more, that forever changed not so much the direction, but the quality, of my life.

(This is how I read, by the way — by allowing materials to inspire questions that I ask myself. It’s very transformative and why I create my materials in the way I do, with readings followed by prompts. Reading is typically not enough to create lasting change. You must sift through your own thoughts and feelings so insights make sense to you, and so you happen upon your own epiphanies that change your life.)

The question she inspired helped me more fully commit to my true path rather than ping-pong to and from projects and activities without ever understanding why nothing felt like enough.

Because truth was, while I dreamed of returning to work and creating the success I dreamed of in a more sustainable way post-burnout, I knew deep down achieving some arbitrary goal wasn’t the answer.

I’ve won awards for my journalism. It didn’t create lasting fulfillment.

I’ve earned promotions and raises and skyrocketed through the ranks of multiple companies in multiple industries, and I still found reasons to be dissatisfied.

I found love and created a happy, loving home, which was all I wanted as as young girl who lost half her family by high school, yet even that didn’t feel like enough.

I once believed I’d find fulfillment in freedom, which I defined as making a lot of money, traveling and limiting my responsibilities.

I thought my responsibilities weighed me down, held me back. They felt like annoying distractions from my real work of figuring out how to be a nomad, traveling the world with endless peak experiences offering unlimited excitement.

Tied to no place and no one (except for my husband who I assumed I’d just shove in my suitcase and ply with alcohol to keep him distracted while flying).

But as I’ve become more grounded and shifted the focus of my curiosity from creating success to finding fulfillment, a slow realization washed over me.

Meaning, fulfillment and finding something more don’t come from avoiding responsibility but embracing it.

People think they want total freedom, but like Janis Joplin sang, “freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.”

People thrive on feeling necessary. Think about how many older people retire and then grow depressed because they no longer feel needed.

They no longer feel useful.

They’re no longer responsible to anyone or anything.

Their purpose has eroded, and with it, the meaning of their lives.

Isn’t that what meaning is about?

Not giving from a place of martyrdom or neglect, but from a place of feeling necessary.

The trouble is, modern life encourages behavior that leads directly to disillusionment and meaninglessness.

The more convenient life becomes, the more dissatisfied we feel.

We fill our lives with fast, cheap, easily broken and replaceable things, creating an unbearable lightness of being, to quote Milan Kundera.

We obsess over career success while our bodies, families and social bonds weaken.

Society is undergoing tremendous, swift changes, with the traditional values and mores that once grounded us, provided a sense of duty and responsibility, now up for debate.

These changes come with positives, but also negatives.

People used to walk straight lines. Graduate, get married, have kids, spend 30 years at the same job.

Now the pathways curve, cross and start again. People switch schools or don’t graduate at all. They get married, divorced, or maybe never marry in the first place. Many people move far from their hometowns, explore multiple careers, or carve out one that didn’t even exist 5 years ago.

This incredible freedom to express ourselves and create our lives in whatever way we desire comes with an increased responsibility that I don’t think most have recognized:

We must also clearly establish what we value, organize a cohesive world view, and decide for ourselves what gives our lives meaning and purpose.

If you don’t, life will feel empty. You’ll be spiritually malnourished and blown about in the ever-changing winds of life. Always confused, never certain, looking for more, often in the wrong places, and finding nothing.

In a recent, remarkable article, Freya India writes:

“There’s also a deeper, ambient anxiety I see so many of us wracked with—a sort of neurotic paralysis. Not knowing which path to take in life. Not knowing what decisions to make. Not knowing who we are. It’s this constant second-guessing, examining every decision to death, agonising over the right thing to do. When young people talk about how unbearable their anxiety is, the relentlessness of it, I think this is more what they mean.”

You could go anywhere or do anything in the modern world, but that’s precisely why so many people struggle with deciding their direction.

Studies have found that more choices makes people less satisfied with their decisions, more prone to regret, and they experience more anxiety with deciding in the first place.

With so many choices, how do you choose?

Creating a fulfilling life requires knowing your values.

Your values represent what’s most deeply meaningful to you. If you don’t know what you find most meaningful, or don’t organize your life around those things, you won’t find true happiness, meaning or fulfillment. You’ll feel sad, frustrated or anxious and not know why.

Conversely, when the daily responsibilities, habits, goals and activities of your life emerge from a solid foundation of established values, life becomes meaningful.

The answer to finding something more isn’t necessarily excitement and peak experiences, but rather grounding down into what’s meaningful and valuable.

How knowing your values changes your life.

• Infuses your life with a sense of meaning and purpose, even during routine, often annoying tasks like cooking and cleaning.

• Ensures you pursue the right goals, for the right reasons. Goals that provide meaning and fulfillment along the way rather than the fleeting high of a temporary win.

• Offers a guiding force forward during life transitions. Making decisions based on values and what you personally find meaningful clarifies difficult choices, helping you stay true to yourself while becoming the highest version of yourself.

• Provides consistent motivation. When you encounter fear or resistance, reconnecting to your values supports courage and strength.

• Develops a strong, virtuous character through having a cohesive world view rooted in strong values.

• Allows you to know exactly who you are, what you stand for, and how to organize your life. Inoculates you against propaganda, manipulation and bad social ideas.

• Fosters self-trust. It helps you respect and appreciate yourself and enhance your sense of personal power.
  

Identifying my values has given me greater fulfillment, life balance and satisfaction.

For example last fall, I was feeling frustrated and automatically linked that feeling to how slowly I had to move forward with career goals due to still-low energy levels.

However, once I took a minute to truly listen, I realized the problem was not that I wasn’t working enough (ha!), but that I was working too much. My focus on a singular goal violated my other core value of a spacious, slow life.

Rather than feeling dissatisfied over seemingly stalled career goals, my angst resulted from violating my core values.

Realizing that happiness would come not after arriving at some always-moving goal post, but here, in the present moment, after aligning my life to my core values was life-changing.

I trust that any success I’m meant for will flow from being rooted in what I value.

And so far, it’s true. For years my writing career felt like pushing a boulder uphill. However, since using my values to guide me to Substack, I’ve been blessed with incredible connections, experiences, and yes — growth.

Aligning your life to your values is about aligning life to your true self, and when you do that, things flow.

Without understanding your deepest values, life remains an infinite search for something more, floating while tied to a rudderless, confused, often insane world, and more connected to our phones than ourselves.

That’s why…

This week in the Journaling Club, you’ll explore life-altering prompts to clarify your values and find meaning in life, including the powerful question I now ask for immediate clarity on every decision, consequential or not.

Come for the prompts, stay for the community! We have an amazing group forming with immaculate vibes.

This is the space that will nurture you to stay grounded in what really matters so you can blossom into the fullest version of yourself.

It’s time to create happiness, health and success in the unique way you’re meant to.

Thank you for reading!

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Love you all so much,

Suzanne

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