Question: What does it mean to have a meaningful life?

1. What does it mean to have a meaningful life? (At least 500 words)

That's a fairly subjective statement. It may be the top of Maslow's hierarchyLinks to an external site. or an interpretation of what your life stands for when you look back at the end. Maybe it's about how many people you positively impacted or how you are remembered.

In Bill Burnett and Dave Evans' book, Designing Your Life, they propose a way to create a compass that you can use to navigate tough decisions in life to ensure your life makes the meaning you want it to. They propose that if who you are supports what you believe and what you actually do, then you have meaning in your life. If you can evaluate decisions based on this life/work perspective, you'll know you are on track.

To do this, you will do the following in this reflection:

1) What do you think is your purpose in life? When you address this, try to answer why you think we're here on Earth and what your role in that is. What's this all for? Does it mean anything? How would you evaluate whether you fulfilled your purpose in life at the end of your days?

2) What do you think is the purpose of work? A lot of people think their career is part of their identity. Some think work must fulfill your passion. Is it just for a paycheck to fund your desired life style or is it something more? Why do you think one of the first questions American adults ask each other when they first meet is: what do you do for a living? What can we or should we be able to infer from someone's title and/or job? What's the difference if anything between a job and career to you? When you think of work in your future, what role does it play?

3.) How does your life view (i.e. what's the purpose of your life) align with your work view? Are you able to connect the two? If not, why? How do your values identified last week play a role in your life and work perspectives?




2. Understanding others' initial impression of you is key to increasing your self awareness, quickly securing new positive relationships, even to getting hired. Furthermore, being able to put yourself in someone's shoes and see how they might see you increases your empathy and adaptability. While we don't want to be consumed by what others think about us, it's important to understand that people subconsciously and consciously receive cues from your appearance, your speaking style, behavior and body language that lead to judgements about you. And those judgements, of course, can always be changed the more someone gets to know you.

In this reflection, think of someone you've met, whom you judged and formed an opinion about only to have that opinion later change. Describe your initial opinion of that person. What about that person caused you to form that opinion? What happened to change that opinion? (At least 500 words)