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Seeking Significance: Part Three – Significant to Whom?
Telling your Story
I came across a highly structured book-writing programme that guided you through the process of writing a book about your life for your children. It was a 12-month programme, where each month you wrote about a period in your life. At the end of that, you had a book that might never go beyond your family, but that you could publish in small quantities as a gift to your children and their children – a legacy of your life.
But what would be the closing chapters of that book for you?
Do you want that book to demonstrate your significance to your family, your profession, your community, your industry, and the world?
Does Significance Matter?
I worked with a confessed hedonist for several years who was building a business. His core value was that he wanted to enjoy life. He wanted to enjoy life by eating well, enjoying his sexual relationships, and living in an excellent place.
It was all about recognising his hedonistic nature and accepting that that’s what he wanted.
But underneath that, there was something else going on. He had come from a background where, as somebody involved with the software development industry from a young age, he had been very much of that culture of “well, let’s just stick it to the man.” He’d been very much somebody who wanted to resist the siren calls of capitalism. Somebody who wanted to believe that part of his purpose in life was to be a caring employer and make a difference to the people he worked with.
As he prepared to sell his business, he became torn between serving his people and building a valuable asset that, when sold, would release him into a future where he could fully express his desires and passions.
So, even though he was a confessed hedonist, something was nagging at him – a desire for significance, a desire to be something of importance to his employees. Something that shows care and value for those people.
As the time came for him to prepare for sale, he thought, “What do I do with the rest of my life?”
He found a wonderful place to live that he could transform into an extraordinary space to indulge his desires for good food and a beautiful landscape, and to enable his partner to thrive in the job she wanted to do. His relocation had lots of positive aspects.
But he also said, “I would like the next phase of my working life to be an opportunity to give back, to take the things that I’ve learned and offer them to the people coming up behind me.” Whether mentoring or serving as a non-executive in a growth company, there was still something he wanted to have significance.
Indeed, part of his desire was to write a significant film script and have it produced so that he knew there would be a legacy in terms of his creative output. That was another way of expressing something that would outlive his own life.
Success Without Meaning
I meet people repeatedly who reach a stage where success is no longer enough, and you start wondering, “What does significance truly mean?”
For those who fail to address that question, I find that their lives often lack any sense of meaning. This frustration turns into a kind of empty frustration, a kind of purposelessness, and as such, it can undermine their relationships with others. It can lead to destructive impulses in themselves. It can result in boredom, dissatisfaction, anger, depression—ultimately, a kind of spiritual and emotional death.
Perhaps earlier in our working lives, we find our significance in the position we achieve, the success we attain, and our ability to own and possess trophy assets, such as a house, a spouse, children, a car, a yacht, and holidays. That’s how we demonstrate our significance to our peers.
But as we start to contemplate the second half of our lives, attending more funerals, which inevitably begin to happen, and perhaps being challenged by the hopes of our children and the joy of our grandchildren, we begin to ask ourselves: What is the point? What was my why? And how can I move forward without believing that anything I do matters?
And if nothing matters, then the temptation when you face bereavement or physical pain or mental anguish is, rather than address it, because you have a higher purpose, to succumb to it and acknowledge the meaninglessness and worthlessness of your life. And ultimately, your life will end earlier than it needs to.
Does Significance Matter?
Do you want life, or are you ready to embrace death?
Do you want to have a legacy, or do you want to be forgotten?
Is your life so empty that hedonism is the only option? And as you get older, is hedonism the most powerful tool at your disposal for survival?
Or have you got to a place where the meaninglessness of your life is the only truth you can hold on to? And in that meaninglessness, you recognise that—why not just let go of life?
Charles McLachlan is the founder of FuturePerfect and on a mission to transform the future of work and business. The Portfolio Executive programme is a new initiative to help executives build a sustainable and impactful second-half-career. Creating an alternative future takes imagination, design, organisation and many other thinking skills. Charles is happy to lend them to you.