What is the meaning of life to me?

When I ask myself this question, it has a tendency to change based on the stage of life that I am in. When I’m in work/grind mode, the meaning of life is to provide for my future family, but when I am burnt out, I always want to take my foot off the gas and be present. Very hot/cold life, as these cycles happen a lot within one singular month.

Absolutes

Like I said, I have two modes and there is no between. I think I’ve convinced myself that I have to put myself through something so unbelievably painful in order to change. I recently hit a burnout stage at work. Without going into further detail of the actual circumstances, I had a couple of options to turn this around:

• <redacted>
• reframe my thinking and actually look at the reality of my situation
• take care of myself physically (which is something I was lacking in at the time)

I decided to do the last 2 options.

I’ve gone through this cycle so much that at this point, learning how to actually take care of my self mentally and physically is important, and the longer that I can manage to get myself out of the rut by making the most drastic change I can has been effective. But i still think being able to let yourself sit in it is valuable so you can feel how painful it is (masochistic lol).

Putting myself into survival mode

To the point of putting myself in survival mode, It’s something that I’ve always done. And at this point it’s not something I can fully rewire myself away from doing, but I think a frame shift can happen here. But now that I think about it even more, this is totally unhealthy, as realistically the worst that will happen is I will always have a place to come home to and I will not die. To that point, there needs to be another reason why I do things other than to survive because that universally, happens to everyone.