What matters most in life? (Please don't tell me self worth)?

Question

I've spent the majority of my life as a Christian, convinced that life matters because it is eternal and there is a God to follow who will make sense out of life and give me the answers I need.

I've long ago left that belief alone. I know that everything is transient and my existence is temporary.

Is there something objective that I should be working towards?

Answer 1

Lose all presuppositions that life has purpose and a predetermined destiny and realise that nothing can have purpose until it has been given a use. Coal has no purpose until it is discovered and given a use. What matters most in life is what is needed to survive physically and emotionally. You need food to keep your body alive and you need all the things that make you happy and content to keep you mentally alive. If you like chocolate, eat chocolate. If you like watching sports, watch sports. As long as you're not killing or hurting anyone, do whatever you like. One other thing that preserves life is being good to the people around you and avoiding people who aren't good for you.

Answer 2

What matters most in life? Rather subjective.. If I do not have water, in a few short hours, water will be the most important matter in life. If you take that perspective through all our needs, we need connection to what is eternal. Without the eternal we are, in the scope of eternity, quite pointless. Except that we continue, what we are has no meaning or value. You said you were once Christian. This brings the obvious aspect of Christ's life into this topic in that Christ died and was raised up again. Christ continued and it is widely speculated that He continues to this day. Christ becomes a connection to the eternal for us with his invitation to follow Him. That in mind, I am having difficulty understanding why you determined in your own mind to discount this.

Answer 3

What matters most in one life may not matter at all in another.



The universal goal for everyone is happiness. What defines happiness is simply the lack of mental stress. Peace. What will help one attain this peace may well be different for each individual.



Life is about perception and focus. If we are not able to see and enjoy the good in our lives, all the fame and money in the world could not make us happy for long.



The key to happiness is in our head and attitude. What we are all looking for is peace of mind. Peace of mind is simply the absence of mental stress or anxiety. See the good in everything you purvey. Learn from the mistakes you make and move on, without fear.



The only constant in life is change. Learn and practice clear and honest critical thinking. You could start here: https://www.criticalthinking.org/pages/defining-critical-thinking/766



Happiness is an attitude of mind, born of the simple determination to be happy under all outward circumstances. The happiest of people don't necessarily have the best of everything they just make the most of everything that comes their way. Love and joy is an emotional experience, not an activity necessarily.

The greatest discovery of my generation is that we can alter our life simply by altering our attitude of mind. We cannot change our past. We cannot change the fact that people act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. We cannot save the entire world in a day. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude. We must BE the change we want to see. We can DO what we wish everyone would do. This is the place to start, and this will help us manage life’s constant barrage of changes.



The greatest day in your life and mine is when we take total responsibility for our attitudes. That's the day we truly grow up. Attitudes are a secret power working twenty-four hours a day, for good or bad. It is of paramount importance that we know how to harness and control this great force.



Our attitudes control our emotions. Our emotions control our lives. We control our attitudes.



Think about that.



Good luck, love, and peace to you, forever my friend.

Answer 4

Lots of things and it's different priorities for everyone. Love is very powerful but wisdom and enlightment are also up at the top of the list.



In Maslows terms self actualisation. That which allows you to realise your maximum intellectual potential.

Answer 5

If you (seriously) put your thinking-cap on & watch www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVPYvwxRu3c [this is, like, 95% more-powerful {logically-speaking} than anything I've found in my many decades here on Earth], he says that the universe is shaped like a toroid (donut) & I think he says that movement along this shape can be either inward or outward; so i'm gonna say to look inward to the most subtle depths you can find within yourself & outward to find out how many others you can help with that knowledge.

Answer 6

The letter and spirit with which one follows the philosophic instructions matters a lot in his overall growth in life. I mean he should drop the matter portion and have a tight grip on the spirit only. As desired by you I will not touch the subject of your self-worth.

Answer 7

I think a good life project is to learn how to be happy and then achieve that. We have our 80 years or so to fill, and filling them with happiness seems to me to be the best thing. It's not without work, and growth, but it is achievable.

Answer 8

You will only live today to a 100 at the most with common since and being a Christian as one grows older in Christ, we begin to see all men and women or our sisters and brothers and we treat them as such and if one allows the love of God in their soul become their stay in life and believe me, the path will be exciting non the lease if you follow it.....for as Jesus said, "Straight is the gate and narrow is the way" but he did not say what was sitting on that path to play with....and that I'll not go into.....so answer your calling....

Answer 9

Christianity taught you what to value in life. You have rejected that set of rules and values partly or wholly. If I say "Value this and this" I am just substituting for Christianity. I don't want that job. I will share a quote that has helped me form my own values:



If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am not for others, what am I? And if not now, when?

-Rabbi Hillel

Answer 10

Great question..... we really need to think deeply over it in order to know our course in life.... Life is worth living provided we understand and follow what is most important in life........I thought over it for quite a while and came to the conclusion that neither wealth nor success nor fame nor anything else that we aim for, has the quality and consistence to keep us satisfied and happy for long.... sooner or later we begin to look for something else in life. Finally I realized that all we need is the feeling and satisfaction of making progress in our life... this is what we can maintain for long through continuous improvement...... thinking through, I also realized that this is indeed the most important thing in life because of the simple reason that life itself is extremely dynamic and transient and in an environment of unavoidable continuous change, what alone can keep us satisfied and happy is a sustained feeling of continuous improvement and progress in our life.... more than an isolated event of failure itself, what makes us really unhappy is the feeling if we think that our life is getting into a degression or depression instead of moving up and ahead cheerfully.



Does this seem rather mundane or ordinary? That is our Ego wanting us to achieve something very very special just to win cudos from others and gather envy of neighbours.... trying to satisfy our Ego is the most meaningless purpose in life because the requirements of ego are mere illusions without real substance.

Answer 11

Love and someone to love. Even if you're happy then you need to someone to share your happiness with in order to keep yourself even happier because sharing is caring and having someone there for you and someone to care for you is something special and nothing can bring you more happiness than that.

Answer 12

Helping all species that belong to earth. Mike

Answer 13

Happiness. Work towards your own happiness, then spread that happiness throughout the world if you can.

Answer 14

To be at peace with yourself.

Answer 15

No.