If there is one thing that makes us human it is our need to find meaning in our lives. No matter what we are doing, at some point the question of purpose will come up. Why are we here? What’s the meaning of our lives? How can we make our lives more fulfilling and meaningful? Rather than trying to answer this question solely by using our rational mind, I believe this is where our emotions are a great source of information, once we learn how to listen to them.

The more aware we become of our emotions and feelings, the more we will notice how they change over time: how they sometimes peak with feelings of happiness and fulfilment and at other times slump towards a sense of dread, stress and emptiness. Our emotional system is our mind-body’s monitoring and regulating system. It keeps track of everything that goes on around and inside us and evaluates that in terms of its relevance to us. Even without us paying attention, our emotions are working 24/7 to help us find the optimum state possible for our system, striving for what some people call “optimum homeostasis” or the best stable state achievable at that moment in time.

Keeping our system in an optimum state of balance is no easy job. In fact, given the complexity of both our system and the world we live in, and the many, often contradictory, demands and forces we are subjected to, there will never be a truly optimum state, nor will it be stable for very long. All we can hope for is an approximation of that optimum and a relative stability that doesn’t wildly swing back and forth at the merest change in conditions.

If we accept the fact that our emotional system is there to find the best possible state for us under the given conditions, we can learn a lot from working out what our changing moods and feelings are trying to tell us about us and the situations we find ourselves in. Some states feel better than others. Some states energise us and help us achieve great things, other states drag us down and stop us from doing anything much. Some states we feel as stressful and uncomfortable, other states are pleasant and relaxed. Sometimes we feel focused and ‘in the zone’, at other times we can barely articulate coherent thoughts or keep our attention on a single thing for more than a few seconds. Our emotions are not just regulating our body-mind system, they are communicating to us as well. They are telling us, through the way they make us feel, what is beneficial and healthy for us, and what is detrimental and damaging.

There is one state in particular that is important for us finding our purpose and fulfilment in life. That is what is often called the state of ‘flow’ or ‘being in the zone’. It’s a state in which we get so absorbed in what we are doing that we seem to stop thinking about it and just go with what is happening in and around us. It’s as if we are being led by a different intelligence: a mode of thinking and acting that doesn’t require our self-aware and conscious mind to interpret, classify, explain and decide before we can act. This state allows our body-mind to just act, with ease and spontaneity, in harmony with our situation. When we’re in the flow we often achieve our best performance and produce our best work, but it almost feels as if it gets performed through us, rather than us consciously and laboriously producing it.

There’s a lot that could be said about this state of flow and, indeed, whole books have been written about it. For now, all I want to point out is this: the state of flow, or states that are similar in feel and effect on us, are our best tool to discover our purpose and fulfilment in life. Our emotional system produces the state of flow when we are closest to our optimal state of being, where our situation, actions, mindset and intentions are all aligned and work harmoniously together; where we are not struggling with ourselves or with the world; where we are not ignoring or suppressing our true feelings; where we can just be in the moment and run with it, not against it. By identifying the moments we were in the flow in the past and recognising the unifying patterns and similarities between them, we can use that information to start shaping the foundations for our own personal narrative. This is what I call “Making Your Personal String of Pearls”. In the next instalments of this blog I will tell you exactly how to do this.