I didn’t get around to starting a project that I should have started last week, so I woke up early today to at least get it started.

The purpose of the project is: Enhancing vitality by recognizing sources of meaning in everyday life.

But what does meaning even mean? HA! I wasn’t really sure how to even begin to explain that, but of course the exercise already had a few quotes in there such as this one:

“Lives may be experienced as meaningful when they are felt to have significance beyond the trivial or momentary, to have purpose, or to have a coherence that transcends chaos” (King, Hicks, Krull, & Del Gaiso, 2006).

“The presence of meaning in life refers to the extent to which people comprehend, make sense of, or see significance in their lives, accompanied by the degree to which they perceive themselves to have a purpose, mission, or over-arching aim in life” (Steger, in press).

Those look like they came out of Doctoral Thesis statements and don’t quite say much to me, however the benefit of Meaning in life does, because it’s personal. Personal meaning is important and beneficial to ones’ health, vitality and well-being.

So the 1st step to this project had to do with “the benefits of brief Expressive Writing” – which made me chuckle because that is one of the reasons why I started this whole blog anyway.

The activity was to in under 10 minutes write about something that happened in last 2 days that was meaningful.  I chose to write about how I’ve been making time in my work schedule to go out to lunch with her, and we’ve had long conversations, lots of laughs, we’ve been eating really good food, and overall the last few days have upped my mood, I feel more energetic and I just think I’m extra happy because the extra social interaction is important to me.

What I wrote didn’t necessarily teach me something that I don’t know about myself, but it did help remind myself that it’s important to take time off from work everyday to give your brain a break, and that not eating lunch at my desk while I continue to work does wonders to my productivity.

As part of a vitality activity during the next 4 weeks I will make a post a day of something meaningful that happened during the day. Lets see what I learn. I’m actually looking forward to it because the next 6 weeks are going to be extremely busy, social, fun and filled with hours with people that I truly and genuinely love! Can’t wait!!

My post for today – aside from the one I had to write about to kick-off my activity is a flashback meaningful moment: https://ccarretero.wordpress.com/2012/07/28/my-lil-c-4yo/