Lately, things feel just like a blur and quite mechanic. You wake up, have your good old cup of coffee, and set out on the rest of the day already drained. Things feel empty and meaningless; maybe you feel a bit disconnected from yourself too, or maybe you just feel nothing at all.

So many of us, unfortunately, experience this emotional state at a point in our lives. The question naturally spurs up in our mind:

Am I missing something from my day-to-day life?

What can help us find what exactly is missing from our lives? This is exactly what I pondered about exactly a year ago back in the first week of March 2020 as I write this post. I experienced a significant moment that paved the way towards the creation of the five pillar approach - something which can help us find what’s missing in our lives. Check out the post where I discuss the story behind this model in more depth if you’re interested.

Core Values Exercise

Essentially, the core five pillars that I believe are fundamental to assess your values in your personal day to day life and build an authentic lifestyle are:

1. Relationships

2. Health

3. Career

4. Finances

5. Impact/Growth

If you’re feeling like something is missing in your life, try to carve out some time to explore your core values. They may align with the pillars listed above or be completely different; the guiding principles/pillars above can serve as merely a starting point in this exercise. You might even find that you aren’t sure of what your core values are - that’s perfectly normal! Heck, even I didn’t know what core values had anything to do with this stuff until I experienced that inexplicable feeling of being lost and vulnerable just like you. We got this though and are here to help each other figure this mystical puzzle of life out!

Once you’ve gained a stronger grasp of your core values, dig a little deeper into what makes your core values important and how they might be segmented out into even smaller subsections. For example, I break down the health pillar into physical health, mental health, and my relationship with respect to food and sleep and then dive deeper into each of those segments to see how I want to value them.

Now comes the toughest part. Are you ready?

You have to assess whether you are living up to your core values on a daily basis. Oof is this a hard pill to swallow. No one likes to realize that we’re not living up to the values we hold most dearly. But this five pillar model doesn’t solve the problem to its root entirely. Try telling that to me a year ago and I’d be exasperated thinking I finally figured it out. There’s still hope though.

The main goal of the five pillar model is that it provides clarity of direction in our lives. A large part of that feeling like something is missing is often rooted in not having a clear vision of the direction, or core values, for our lives.

Clear direction in our life provides the ultimate basis and foundation for living out and expressing our own individuality. When you think about it, the feeling that we’re missing something is often interlinked with the fact that we carry an “adaptable personality” with us through much of our teenage and adult lives. This adaptable personality leads to us being social chameleons who are agreeable and ultra-trustworthy, up to the point that you get burnt out from carrying this burden of faking it till you collapse.

Now things are all settled and clear, right? Unfortunately not, because we still have a dilemma to know what exactly is missing in our lives. We’ve solved the problem only from an internal perspective and have yet to consider a more outside-looking-in type of perspective. Hear me out.

Question Reframing Exercise

What goes through your mind when you ask yourself:

What is missing in my life?

Think of just one thing if something concrete can come to mind. Sometimes though, we think of nothing in particular but still have this niggling feeling that something just feels slightly off.

Now, let’s slightly change that question to look something like these:

What currently exists in my life that prevents me from getting what feels missing?

What’s missing from my current way of trying to get what’s missing in my life?

Interesting change of perspective, eh? Instead of focusing solely on the actual end result (i.e. what is missing), we shift the focus on the process of getting to the end result. This ties back well with the five pillar model which you can tinker with.

By looking at how your process of.. well living in general works, you can tinker with your processes in association with each of the guiding principles from the five pillar model, or from your own personal core values, and start working your way towards what exactly is missing in your life. Or on the flip side, you may realize that that type of “ideal” process doesn’t align with your core values and that something else may, in fact, be more subconsciously hidden.

One question that helps to uncover the underlying subconscious is a variation of the two questions above:

If someone swapped into my life, what would I tell them is the missing part to living a truly fulfilled life?

Now, this really gets deep into your subconscious to pull out the answers that you already know but had a tough time tapping into. It’s a humbling exercise that can unveil things that we take for granted and find, or at least get closer to, the truth.

What truths will you discover that can help unveil what’s missing in life and empower you?

Hopefully, this strategy of breaking down your core values and reframing your questions can help you get closer to finding the truth of what is missing in our lives. Maybe, nothing’s missing at all! Or maybe it’s always been within touching distance but you’ve been afraid to seize it. Regardless, I hope these exercises can provide the clarity and fresh perspective to finally discover the truth to what’s been missing!