3 Useful Secrets – May Edition

How to live a life that is meaningful?

As a coach, I often work with clients who are in search of a more meaningful life, one that doesn’t feel as draining and that leaves them feeling good about themselves at the end of the day, and at the end of their life.

Everyone is looking for fulfillment, and while the idea is appealing, in practice it doesn’t necessarily work that way. We’ve been sold the idea that if we do what we love, work will no longer feel hard, and we will move through life with a certain lightness. We’ve been told that finding our life purpose, our passion, is what will make all the difference.

And yet, for many of us, this creates pressure rather than relief.

Sometimes it isn’t clear what that “one thing” is, because we’re interested in more than one thing. Or we may have found something we truly enjoy, but the market is saturated, making it difficult, or even impossible, to make a living from it. And even when we do find that thing, once we’ve “got it,” it doesn’t necessarily resolve everything. We may still find ourselves searching, questioning, wondering if there is something more.

Or we tell ourselves: when I save enough, when I get the promotion, when my kids grow up, when X or Y happens, then I will start living the life I really want. The bar keeps moving, and life continues in the meantime.

So the question becomes: what if meaning is not something that sits somewhere in the future, waiting for us to finally get there? What if there are ways to experience more meaning and even joy in the life we already have?

This month, the 3 useful secrets I am sharing may help you do exactly that.

Secret no. 1: Letting go of the idea that there is only one path to your happiness

Stanford researchers Dave Evans and Bill Burnett, authors of Design Your Life, noticed something surprising in their work. Even when people made significant changes, better jobs, more aligned choices, many still didn’t feel fulfilled.

“Fulfillment […] is a dead end […] you’re bigger than a lifetime… So the idea that one job, one role, or one version of yourself can express it all, is a dead end[…] The better goal [… ]is to be fully alive.”

There is something both confronting and relieving in that idea.

If you are “bigger than a lifetime,” then of course no single path, job, or identity will ever feel like enough. Which means the problem is not that you haven’t found the right thing yet, but that the expectation itself may be unrealistic.

Instead of asking What is the one thing that will fulfill me? we need to ask ourselves: Where do I already feel a sense of aliveness?

My new place of wonder and curiosity, wilderness in the middle of Lisbon (Photo: Liza Debevec)

That might show up in moments of curiosity, when something catches your attention and you want to follow it a bit further. It might show up in flow, when you lose track of time. Or in connection, when you feel genuinely met by someone.

These moments are often easy to overlook because they don’t necessarily look grand or life-defining. But they are available, in different ways, much more often than we think.

So, Burnett and Evans wrote a second book, called How to live a meaningful life. Evans recently spoke about this and more on the Hidden Brain podcast, and the conversation is genuinely worth a listen (granted, I am a fan of the podcast). Have a listen here:

Secret no. 2: Shift from urgency to curiosity

Suleika Jaouad has been living with cancer for many years, and has written and spoken openly about what that has meant for how she relates to life. She describes how the advice to “live each day as if it were your last” didn’t feel liberating to her. Instead it felt overwhelming. As if every day had to carry a kind of weight and significance that is simply not sustainable.

So she began to experiment with a different approach: “living every day as if it’s your first — to wake up with curiosity and wonder and playfulness.”

What I find powerful here is not just the reframing itself, but the space it opens up for possibility. Because when you relate to a day as if it is your last, there is a sense that something has to be done with it, there is a pressure to succeed, to leave a mark for posterity, there is no space for regrets. But if you relate to each days as if it is your first, there is space to notice things, to be curious, to make a mess, and to simply enjoy life.

She also speaks about what she calls “small acts of creative alchemy,” and the practice of writing down ten memorable moments from the past 24 hours and she shared that it is always the small things that are memorable.

This connects directly to the first secret. If meaning is not something we arrive at once and for all, then it is something we are in relationship with, day by day. And our attention plays a big role in that.

So this is a simple place to start: at the end of the day, write down ten moments you remember, the ones that stayed with you, as small or insignificant as they may seem at a first glance. Over time, this begins to shift what you notice, and what you value. And if ten is a daunting number, start with five or even two things. I have written about a similar practice last year:

Secret no. 3: Use your values as a compass

If the first two secrets open things up, loosening the idea of one defining path and bringing your attention back to lived experience, then the question becomes: how do you make choices within that openness?

This is where values come in.

Knowing your values is one of the most practical ways I know to create a sense of direction without falling back into rigid ideas of purpose or “the right path.” It is a tool that I keep returning to with my clients and in my own reflection around what gives my life meaning.

Values don’t tell you what to do in a prescriptive way (because, remember, values are not virtues). But they do help you recognise what feels aligned, what feels off, and what matters to you underneath external expectations.

They show up in very concrete ways: in how you relate to people, the kind of work you move towards or away from, what you choose to prioritise when time or energy is limited, what you say yes or no to, and even how you express yourself creatively. In that sense, values become a kind of steady reference point, something you can return to when things feel unclear or when you find yourself pulled in too many directions.

I’ve written more about this in the February edition of 3 Useful Secrets, where I shared a number of tools and prompts you can explore on your own.

3 Useful Secrets - February Edition

This month, I’m taking this a step further and creating spaces where you can work with this more directly:

• I’m running a second edition of the Values as a Compass workshop for women on Sunday, May 31. This is a space to get clearer on your own values and begin to apply them in a concrete way in your life and work. You can still register at this LINK until May 29th.

  📅 May 31
  ⏱ 90 minutes
  📍 Live on Zoom
  7 pm London&Lisbon / 2pm New York
  💶 €45

• I recently co-hosted a live conversation, with the lovely Rebecca Blackwell, on values and brand design for Substack writers (originally aimed at subscribers of the Mastermind for Food Writers, but relevant far beyond that), where we explored how values can shape not just what you write, but how and why you write. We’re also offering a more in-depth version of this as a paid workshop (2 x 90 min- find more information at this LINK.

How To Create a Values Led Brand

What ties all three secrets together, for me, is a shift away from chasing a single and finite answer to the question of meaning. Instead, it becomes something more ongoing, something you can engage in until you draw your final breath. Living a meaningful life becomes a way of paying attention to where you feel alive, allowing space for what is already there, and making choices that reflect what matters to you. This means letting go of the chains of perfection or bucket lists. You only have to do what is possible from where you are right now.

This is it for May’s Useful Secrets. I hope they offered you some inspiration and food for thought. Let me know if you have tried any of these out in the past and what has worked for you.

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