3 Ways to Make Your Days More Meaningful

When your routine feels like a meaningless rut, step away from what you’re doing and make some adjustments. It isn’t necessary to reconfigure your whole life to add a sense of purpose to your days. By making gradual changes, you can live more in the present while also anticipating positive things in the future.

1. Be Mindful During Your Interactions

When someone talks to you, what are you doing? If you’re looking away, perhaps writing or texting, it’s almost as if you aren’t there. Your tasks can wait, and with your full attention on one thing at a time, both will benefit from greater focus. Listen to people who speak to you. By being kind to others by giving people your attention, you can develop relationships that become meaningful to both of you. Connection matters. When you’re physically alone, you can look back on the day’s interactions, feeling engaged rather than disconnected.

2. Have Balance

If you feel stuck in a rut, is it because you fill your days with a lot of one activity and not enough of another? Maybe you sit at your work desk with limited breaks, and as a result, you cram a fitness routine you’re not enthusiastic about at the end of the day. Maybe you like your job, and you used to enjoy working out, too. Figure out ways to incorporate exercise in your workday. Small adjustments, such as putting items you need farther away, can make large differences. 

3. Make a Plan

Regardless of which activities you want to balance, make a plan. What do you need to add? What do you need to take away or change? When you continue to say that you’ll make a change “eventually,” you’re permitting yourself to continue to postpone the change. Use a planner or calendar and then tell people what you will do. It’s easier to commit to something when others are aware of your plan.

Structure your days so they hold meaning for you. What matters to you? Now, start finding ways to add those things to your life.