Meaning & Purpose of Life #5 Probe for what Drives, Animates, Energizes You Experiment

In previous posts we have explored the following ways to Discover or to Design the Meaning and Purpose of our Life:

#1 Future Self Experiment

#2 - Be the Creator Experiment

#3 - Be the Writer, Director and Actor

#4 - Childhood Eyes Exercise

Today we'll do another exercise that will help us to increase our chances to have Meaning and Purpose in our lives. 

Probing for what 

Enlivens, Drives, Animates, Energizes You

Basically we take a piece of paper and a pen and we'll ask a series of questions until we'll find 1 or more words / phrases that feel right, resonate with you, make you vibrate, come alive, give you a sense of empowerment, animate and energizes you.

Step 1 - Start Probing. Ask one or a combination of the questions below to gets you started

What is the Meaning of my Life?

What is the Purpose of my Life?

What should be the Meaning / Purpose of my Life?

What could or may be the Meaning / Purpose of my Life?

For what Reason(s) am I alive?

Why do I live?
Why am I here?
What is my Mission?

Write any answer that comes to mind. It doesn't have to be anything fancy. Anything that comes to mind write it down.

Along this exercise you may encounter Blank spots, e.g you may say: I don't know!, I have no idea! Be compassionate towards yourself and ask yourself:
If I were to know what would I say?
If I would take a guess what would my answer be? 

Step 2 - Probe Deeper.  Take whatever answer you gave in Step 1 and do some further exploration. Ask your self:

Why did I say that?

Why do I really like that?

Why is that important, valuable and worthwhile to me?

How does that make me feel?

What is it that I enjoy about that?

What else is there about that that I love?

Step 3 - Iteratively Keep Probing Until.... At steps 2 , 2.1, 2.3, 2.4.....2.n you'll keep refining you answers using different words, going from concrete to abstract or vice versa. 

The important thing to remember here is that at each iteration you keep repeating asking WHY (and the other questions in step 2) until....you'll give yourself 1 or more answers that'll make feel like:

You have found something really important;
You have found a treasure;
You want to cry of joy, Happiness;
You feel an emotional outburst of positive emotions.
You feel energized, empowered, driven to take action, Alive. 

Well that's about it. It's not very complicated yet it usually take patience and determination to get over the blank spots, socially conditioned responses that you may come with in the first instances of the exercises.

Also depending on how relaxed or stressed you are when you do the exercise, how much time you have available, how open minded you are....you might come up with the answer at first or it may take several tries to get what you are looking for.