A meaningful life is one where your life positively contributes to the lives of others.
- If you live your life to make yourself happy, you can only feel a single person’s worth of pleasure.
- But if you positively influence 1000 people, you create 1000 people’s happiness.
Unfortunately, most people don’t ever get to live meaningful lives.
Not because they don’t want to help others.
It’s because they:
a) Aren’t aware they can help millions of people with the information already in their heads.
b) Don’t know how to share that information.
They don’t understand that writing is modern evolution — that writing can reveal your purpose, create a life of meaning, and change the world.
Living a life without documenting it is a tragedy.
You’re not only stunting the growth and depth of yourself, but you’re stunting the growth and depth of the collective human race.
And these 3 reasons will prove it.
Reason 1 — Learning from your mistakes
“Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.”
— Jalaleddin Rumi
If you don’t reflect and journal your thoughts, you don’t give yourself a chance to consciously manipulate your character for the better.
What’s gone right, what’s gone wrong?
You’re trying to learn how to shoot a basketball, but you never focus on WHY you are missing, or WHY you are making it.
You’re just throwing it up there and hoping for the best.
That’s madness!
Why not stop and analyse your life? What’s more important than becoming the best version of yourself?
It’ll improve the lives of your loved ones, your coworkers and everyone you come in contact with.
There was something I discovered while reflecting on my character — something big.
When you reflect, your subconscious automatically gets a software update.
All you have to do is be aware of what you are proud of/not proud of and your subconscious mind adjusts accordingly.
It’s easier than you think.
Once you sit down with pen and paper, and become honest with yourself, your mind will do the rest.
It’s almost like your deep soul looks at you and says:
Well done, I knew you’d work it out — I’ll take it from here.
Reason 2 — If you don’t “save” and explore your ideas, they’ll be deleted forever → instead, explore them and become a deeper person
“Writing is not life, but I think it’s a way back to life.”
— Stephen King
If you don’t write, your ideas are deleted.
They’re whisked away, lost into the ether — like deleting a file from a computer.
But when you write, you bring your ideas to life — you bring them into reality.
You immortalise yourself — like saving a document on your desktop.
Without writing about your ideas, you are a painter whose head is filled with beautiful visions but never paints.
Without action, and idea is nothing!
No-thing.
Just an idea.
Writing is thinking.
When you begin to write, you realise that the initial idea is only a spark.
When you sit down and explore that idea, you nurture it into a huge bonfire.
You begin to peel back the layers, and see if your idea is valid after all — I often end up completely changing my take on the situation.
Writing is taking the initial idea and creating a much deeper and thoughtful version of it — and in the process, creating a much deeper and thoughtful version of you.
Writing about your ideas, and your life, will give you depth to your character and personality.
It’s not the icing on the cake, it IS the cake.
Part 3 — Writing is modern evolution
“A life worth living is a life worth documenting.”
— Jim Rohn
Historically, animals passed the lessons they learned vertically through their family tree.
But everything changed when humans developed the ability to share information horizontally — education could suddenly spread through society.
Scripture and books catapulted us into a completely new realm.
Suddenly, we could document our ideas and life lessons — sharing them with millions of others, and for thousands of years.
That, my friends, is the boom that has gotten us to this point.
And now we’re in the midst of another major change in humanity. The internet has unlocked unimaginable potential for the human race to cast our net of ideas further and wider than ever before.
We can share our knowledge across time and space at light speed.
We have the unique opportunity to create a meaningful life — to positively contribute to the lives of others — by spreading our lessons learned and ideas (with next to no barrier for entry).
Don’t miss this opportunity.
What if Marcus Aurelius never wrote what became Meditations?
What if Lao Tzu never wrote the Tao Te Ching?
What if one day people say that about YOU?
What if YOU never wrote your ideas down?
What a shame, what a tragedy that would be. Your amazing ideas would just drift off into the unknown void, the place of meaninglessness.
One day, your offspring will read the ideas of their ancestor and skip the trials and tribulations you went through — allowing them to focus on the next problem.
This is modern evolution!
Growing as a collective, and guiding each other through the complexity that is the human experience.
Moving toward mastery of life.
In summary…
If you don’t learn to write,
- You don’t learn from your mistakes as efficiently — you never stop and reflect.
- You don’t give your ideas an incubator to grow in. You let your ideas die prematurely.
You have amazing conversations with people, only to let them drift away into the unknown. - You have stunted the evolution of your society — because you haven’t documented how you got through the challenges in your life.
Leaving it up to others to figure out the exact same things.
Writing has given me more than I could’ve ever bargained for.
It’s changed my life, and I believe it’ll change yours too.
Together, our writing — the documentation of our lived experience — will eventually change the lives of millions of others.
So start writing, start giving meaning to your lived experience.
Thank you for reading! Let me know why you write, or if this helped push you over the edge to start!
I’m Eren and I use stories from experiences in my life to explain self-improvement — and how you can change your life but just changing your thoughts.
PS. If you subscribe to the free weekly newsletter and you’ll get my 8 spell-like reminders to say to yourself to snap out of frustration, anxiety and stress, in the welcome email.
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