A Wasted Life?
Quite frequently, my clients seek therapy because they feel a sense of remorse about how they live their life. They feel as if they are wasting their life, not living it to its full potential.

Exactly what does it mean to waste one's life? I've found that it can translate to a number of interpretations. First, one wastes life if he has some particular skill talent and fails to utilize it to its full powers. Second, clients feel that they are wasting their life when they don't feel as if they are "changing the world" or "leaving the world a better place". Finally, some clients equate wasting life with feeling that they're being lazy or enjoying themselves too much.

It does not surprise me that I frequently hear about wasted life in my practice. In the modern world, we put an extraordinary emphasis on measuring the utility of our actions. We talk about establishing personal visions and attainable goals that we seek to systematically achieve. With the incredible technologies at our disposal, we actually do achieve a lot of these goals in reasonably short periods of time. And, we equate our achieving of these goals as a mark that we make the world better somehow. Our technologies of communication and transportation allow the impacts of our actions to have universal impacts--effecting not just the people near us but countless strangers around the world. In our competition to stand out, we equate the import of our achievements with the broadness of their direct impact. A person who sells software to millions of users globally has more impact than an account who helps a handful of people with their tax return.

Strangely, the achievement of the goals that people set often does not alleviate their sense of wasting life. With each goal ticked off the list, we feel a sense of longing for the next goal that will continue to make our life meaningful, lest we grow complacent or rest on our laurels. Furthermore, even after achieving a world-changing goal, we realize that we cannot really see the huge change that we thought we would bring on. Our achievements lead to our feeling empty and pursuit of something bigger and more grand.

Thinking about this dilemma--this need for life to make a difference yet feeling empty when you achieve the things you thought would make that difference--I have come to the conclusion that we have an inflated estimation of how much we can control how we change the world. Sure, I believe that virtually everything we do does change the world. I just suggest that the ways in which our actions translate to changes in the world go well beyond our ability to predict. What seems like an important contribution to the world of science might have untold consequences as people use or misuse its implications. Or, what seems like a small gesture to a friend might have profound impacts as its domino effect ripples through the network of people who that person touches in turn.

I also think that we've inadvertently made an error in focusing so much on achievable goals as a source of progress in our lives. Ironically, if we can identify an unachievable goal, we will always have our work cut out for ourselves--and a sense that we have not wasted our lives.

So, what does this suggest we do to make sure that we don't waste our lives? I believe that it all comes down to pursuing the things that selfishly motivate us, picking projects that give our own lives individual meaning. Where possible, we should attempt to understand why we derive meaning from these activities. What do they have in common? What clues does this give us about what future activities we should persue to achieve this personal satisfaction in the future?

By looking at the things that we most enjoy (and being honest with ourselves about what those things are), we can often find a sense of coherence that suggests a pursuit that we might never fully achieve. A goal that is larger than we are but that guides us in our future activities. This grandness and unconquerable aspect of our goal actually provides comfort because we know we will always have things to do in our quest. At the same time, we must have faith that in our pursuit of our passions, we will still manage to touch the world in many varied and unpredictable ways.

We will not waste our life if we pursue activities that appeal to our personal sense of meaning. In practice as a therapist in Seattle I help my clients to find the common links between the activities that they most enjoy and to frame them in a pursuit that they will never fully achieve (and hence will keep them engaged for a long time to come). Often, getting to these personal sources of meaning requires examining the impact that our families and friends have had on our values for what we ought to do. But, for my clients who have a sense that they are in the process of wasting their lives, the identification of a life long and selfish curiosity often lifts the depression that comes from feeling hopeless about how they can impact their world.
- posted by Eric @ 5:51 PM

 
Introduction
Having never posted here before, I suppose I should give some information about who I am and what has inspired me to write a blog.

For starters, I'm a therapist in Seattle with a private practice. I offer individual therapy and couples counseling to a wide variety of adult patients in the Seattle area.

I have created a website for my practice at www.candell.org. It has lots of information about me and my views about therapy. If you are looking for therapy in Seattle or couples counseling in Seattle--or you just want some more information about choosing a therapist, feel free to stop by my main site.

I have chosen to work in the field of psychotherapy because I'm fascinated with people--why we behave the way that we do and how we change the way that we behave to fit the situations in our lives. In the course of working with clients, I hope that I will gain additional insights on these topics (though I know that I will never completely solve the puzzle).

I primarily want to use my blog to reflect on some of the lessons that I learn from my clients. Much in the way that therapy helps us to work out the personal issues that we're facing, I would like to use my blog as a way of putting into words some of the lessons of life that come from seeing people solve their problems and change the way they think about the world. Given that I have devoted my life to understanding how people change, the putting of my thoughts into words and making them make sense to potential readers seems like an important step in moving my own understanding forward.

For the sake of privacy, I do not intend to talk about specific clients or therapy cases in this public forum. While my clients might see parts of themselves here in my writings, I will only write about lessons that seem to emanate from enough sources that they potentially have relevance to us all.
- posted by Eric @ 12:03 PM