Using your inner life to serve your dreams

Years ago, the travel startup I worked for had a period of layoffs, transitions, title changes, office moves, team rotations and the other usual suspects of corporate transition.

It was bonkers. If you’ve never been through a company restructuring, buyout or other merger and acquisition before, highly recommended. You learn a lot about resilience. Or the lack thereof.

When the organizational rug suddenly gets pulled out from under a group of people, it’s very clear who has a toolkit and who doesn’t.

During orientation of our transition, at least half of my coworkers were out sick. Some of them for an entire week.

But not everyone was sick. Which got me wondering about the role of the existential in this kind of biological pattern.

Viktor Frankl knew better than anyone that meaning in life was the primary, most powerful motivating and driving force in humans. He pioneered the field of logo therapy, stating that each of us can retreat from terrible surroundings to a life of inner riches and spiritual freedom.

The intensification of our inner life can help us find refuge from the emptiness, desolation and spiritual poverty of our existence.

In fact, as our inner life becomes more intense, we also experience the beauty of art and nature as never before, to the point that we forget our own frightful circumstances.

In short, meaning is made, not found. It’s not a decision, it’s a discovery. Each day is a negotiation where we make choices about feeling fulfilled with the experiences we’ve been saddled with.

Back to the corporate acquisition. Personally, it made me feel shitty like anyone else. I had symptoms of headaches, nausea, dizziness and exhaustion. And I was sad watching hundreds of my colleagues from around the world feel the same.

I won’t pretend to be immune to the noxious effects of organizational change. But thanks to my rich inner life, thanks to my many years of work around creating my own meaning making mission, bouncing back was surprisingly fast and easy.

Everything from meditating to journaling to exercising to making art buoyed me during this frightful time. Between you, me and the internet, I found it exhilarating to watch myself take out my tool kit and predictably pop myself out of this state of imbalance.

But not everyone on my team was the same. Particularly the junior employees, for whom this was their first job out of college. They didn’t know what hit them. Probably still don’t.

Lesson learned, meaning is always an investment worth making. Not only does it create fulfillment in the moment, but the existential muscle memory that we build over time becomes a stabilizing force when the shit hits the fan.

Meaning making moment after meaning making moment builds the foundation of our resilience, creating an inner resourcefulness that not even the worst of circumstances can destroy.

Reminds me of the advice my yoga teacher once gave me:

We only a few breaths away from a calmer physiology.

Similarly, we are only a few choices away from making meaning.

Are you using entirety of your inner life to serve your dreams?