by Tina B. Tessina, Ph.D.
Tina B. Tessina, Ph.D., is a licensed psychotherapist in South California, with over 30 years’ experience in counseling individuals and couples. She is the author of 13 books in 17 languages, including It Ends With You: Grow Up and Out of Dysfunction and her newest, Lovestyles: How to Celebrate Your Differences. She publishes the “Happiness Tips from Tina” e-mail newsletter, and the “Dr. Romance Blog.” Online, she is “Dr. Romance” with columns at Divorce360.com, Wellsphere.com, and Shine from Yahoo!, and she appears on radio and TV. She tweets @tinatessina and is on Facebook at www.facebook.com/tinatessina and www.facebook.com/#!/DrRomanceBlog.
Perhaps the most important lesson I’ve learned is that a meaningful life is about growing your soul — and it happens slowly, in the process of engaging life.
My own soul was battered early when my whole family died during my teenage years, and I was left alone, terrified, without money, education, or an idea of what to do. I just stumbled through the days, months, and years, too afraid to feel what I feared was inside me, grasping at the wrong lifelines and clinging to the wrong people until, divorced, bereft, suicidal, and single, at age 27, I entered therapy and began to develop my soul through exploring my feelings. This decision saved my life and became the basis for a personal renaissance. As I searched for meaning and purpose, I began to understand I’d been put on Earth to learn and grow, and to use what I’d learned in the process of healing myself to help others. Now that I’ve just turned 62, I find that sense of purpose is still serving me well and has been the source of many blessings.
As a child with no religious training, but growing up in the beautiful surroundings of the Catskill Mountains, I sensed a Power behind the workings of the Universe, which has inspired me to yearn and aspire, comforted me in times of pain, and provided clarity and direction when I needed it. Human relationships bruise, batter, and comfort me, and teach resilience and humility. Love urges my soul to blossom and grow; compassion causes it to blur at the edges. And so I learn to accept others as they are.
Every day, I have the delight and privilege of loving Richard, my husband, a real, human, fallible man. My friends are an equal blessing and challenge. We can be cranky, we occasionally hurt each other’s feelings, and we don’t always say the right thing. But we are here for each other when we’re really needed, we do our best to be caring and kind, and we forgive each other’s imperfections.
Most of my clients come to me, not searching for the meaning of life, but focused on some crisis in their lives: a relationship disaster; marriage or family problems; lack of direction and motivation; some huge loss for which they’re grieving; an emotional problem, such as anxiety or depression; or perhaps for help in recovering from an addiction. As we sort through the crisis, handle immediate problems, get everything settled down, and then embark on an extended process of figuring out what happened and what must change, their life gets easier.
Then, frequently, a patient asks: “Now that I’m in charge of myself and have a lot of extra energy, and life is a lot easier and my relationships are working, it feels like I’m missing something. The question is: What am I doing here?”
Once the basics of life are established and understood, many people need a sense of meaning and a higher sense of purpose than just survival. When self-confidence and self-esteem are in place, we need a challenge to feel satisfied, a way to express our uniqueness and individuality — to ourselves, to friends, and to the world.
If your life’s purpose is not evident to you already, how do you find out what it is? Where does a sense of purpose come from? It comes from within and cannot be imposed or chosen from outside. Your purpose may be your livelihood, or it may have nothing to do with how you make a living. Your purpose may be a simple one, like making a good, healthy life for yourself and your children, or it may be more dramatic and based on what you’ve learned by healing your own childhood experience. Inner purpose has the power to transform anxiety, anger, fear, and rage into powerful, life-affirming action. A life’s purpose gives you the means to control your destiny, no matter what the force of the hardships you have incurred.
Most of the world’s spiritual thinkers agree that we all have the wisdom to guide each of us — if we just know how to listen and to trust what we learn. Purpose may make itself clear in one instant flash or gradually — by following clues, one at a time. Whether you get insight all at once or a piece at a time, work and experience are required to nurture it. Inner wisdom is not rational or practical in nature, but intuitive and spiritual. It can provide a way to see the big picture or a more detached and objective viewpoint of the issues and problems of life. Each new idea must be tested through practical use to see how it works. Step by step, using both intuitive wisdom and clear thinking, you can bring your inner motivation to the surface and use it to create what you want. Inspiration expressed through action will develop the meaning of your own life.
Here’s how I expressed my own life experience, in a poem called “Grace”: