Welcome to section two and I hope you find many of these ideas that are shared with you in Section 1
to be quite thought provoking hopefully quite insightful even in the context of your own life.
No no life coaching course could ever really call itself an actual life coaching course.
If we were to ask some of those bigger questions in life you know the ones that I mean come on you must
have done a google search at some point.
What is the meaning of life.
What is the purpose of life.
Well in all seriousness at some point in pretty much most of the conversations you have with your clients
moving forward these questions will come up I guarantee you all right.
No.
One of the major issues that many people have is that they don't know which direction to look and for
purpose or meaning.
What I thought would do just just for some entertainment value is do a little Google search right to
see what some of the most common and popular opinions are in terms of what the meaning of life is.
I mean we've got some fantastic comments up here.
We've got the meaning of life is whatever you ascribe it to be.
Being alive is the meaning.
Fantastic.
What the hell does that mean.
And we've half for it to whatever that means life has no meaning.
Each of us has meaning and we bring it to life.
It is a waste to be asking the question when you are the answer.
Again fantastically philosophical but I thought of the faintest idea what that means.
And there's a really great one over here actually.
Cookie monster right.
I'm going to do a best.
Put on the Cookie Monster voice life not all guessing games.
Maybe this is more like Master Yoda.
I'm not sure.
Sometimes we have to care about friends especially friends who love cookies.
Right.
Okay.
I'm not sure if that one's really going to serve you or your clients too much.
But here we go here's a good one.
The meaning of life is to find your gift.
The purpose of life is to give it away.
No I like this one right and I have done a little bit of research before I jumped in front of the camera
today.
Here's another one over here.
I feel the capacity to care is the thing which gives life its deepest significance.
Pablo Casals fantastic.
The literal meaning of life is whatever you're doing that prevents you from killing yourself.
Fantastic right that's all morbid and miserable though what I'm seeing here all right is pretty much
every single person on the world is going to have a different opinion a different perspective different
thoughts different views when it comes to the meaning of life and life's purpose.
I'm going to recommend a little book here for you to invest into it's called Man's Search for Meaning
by an author named Victor Frankl.
No this is a fantastic book again I recommend it right at the end of the course with a few other books
as well.
Victor Frankl and he was involved back in the Holocaust.
I think he'd been taken prisoner he was ended up in one of the Nazi concentration camps and over the
span of around about three and a half to four years he experienced many of his friends his loved ones
his family being executed tart charts and and worse and he was one of the survivors.
Another story goes that the book is kind of broken into two different sections section number one he's
giving an account of his experience and this traumatic life altering experience that most of us couldn't
even imagine.
And then the second half of the book he starts asking the question for what purpose why did I go through
this.
He was looking for meaning through his experience.
And if you think about what many people do in life they'll have an experience a good one makes them
happy to have a bad one or a series of bad ones and many people end up spiraling down words into this
whole earth despair and hopelessness and helplessness and I'm gonna share with you a little story to
help you develop a better relationship with the whole moving forward as well.
But what this man demonstrates inside of this book is how it's actually it's not that the events have
meaning within themselves.
It's not that our our experiences in life have they have any meaning but rather as meaning making machines
as human beings we are just simply assigning meaning to absolutely everything that we do we assign meaning
onto every single experience that we have.
You're going to be assigning meaning onto this video as you're watching me right now.
You're going to be assigning meaning on to what's going on in your life today.
Every single thing that is said to you every interaction you have everything that you do is going to
mean something to you.
All right.
And what I'm saying here is that we each get to decide what our life means to each get to decide what
our history means for all of the highs and the laws.
Whatever that means.
And here's the thing.
Say for example you have been through in life failure after failure after set back after set back after
rejection after rejection and many people do you might be one of the fortunate ones who's just had a
plain sailing life.
But if you have had the struggles that many of us do then it might be the case that you have decided
that life means struggle.
Challenge difficulty rejection.
All of these things.
And bear in mind all we can ever assign meaning on to are events and things that have happened at some
point in our past.
We can't assign meaning on to anything that hasn't happened yet.
No we could ask the question What is the meaning of life on a global universal scale.
But I guess that's going to kind of be completely irrelevant.
In response to how it is that we live our life.
The only relevant meanings that we have in our life is the meanings that we assign onto our life's events
and our life's experiences.
All of our past experiences will either mean that we are enough and skilled enough and competent enough
and all these things to move into the future and go to achieve some significant things or all of our
past experiences and events are going to mean that we are not quite ready you are not skilled enough
we're not confident enough we are not enough full stop to do the things that we want to do and believe
it or not there is some must have questions.
But as the meaning that people sign onto the life's events that will either project them forward with
excitement and passion into the future or the meaning that people will sign onto their life's events
and experiences will act as a noose around the neck to fundamentally hold them back.
So what is the purpose of life.
Well again that's another extremely large ambiguous generalized question and I guess that the only question
you really need to consider answering you first and foremost especially so you can assist your clients
in answering the same question is what is the purpose of your life.
Well in order to get an idea of what our purpose might be we've got to look at all of the lessons that
we've learned in the past.
All right.
We kind of project ourselves so into the future and not actively be effective at you know guiding people
or helping people were coaching people through anything that we ourselves have already overcome and
been through.
If that makes sense.
So just coming back to the book here to give you a fantastic fantastic example.
Victor Franco had gone through this Nazi concentration camp he'd experience so much death and pretty
much and the worst of human nature.
Know what many people might have done as you know especially here in Scotland today right.
Many people would've just got depressed and given up a life.
You know what.
You know what I mean today.
People get depressed when they lose their job or a relationship pans or they don't get what they want
or Mommy doesn't give them enough cuddles or something like that.
This guy here lasted three and a half years on the receiving end of pretty much the worst of brutal
human nature.
But he survived that you live to tell the tale and what he decided was that his past didn't have to
mean that he was a crushed man.
Instead he used his past as kind of like a foundation a stepping stone that he built and based on the
rest of his life upon.
He went on to become a psychologist who he initiated he formed as a form of therapy back then called
Local therapy and it's not really one of the most common forms of therapy to be honest with you today.
But what this primarily does it helps people to evaluate their pasts for the purpose of drawing the
best possible meaning from their past that allows them to find purpose and direction for their future.
So where many people allow their past experiences to crush them.
Right.
What this way of thinking does is allows us to learn from our past experiences.
And then as I've mentioned put them down use them as a platform or a set of foundations upon which we
can build the rest of our lives.
All right.
So why did I get into life coaching.
Well how I got into life coaching is probably pretty similar to how it is that you've gotten into life
coach and why you've landed on this course there's going to be one of a few reasons why people are taking
this course right now.
And I've already covered this at the start the last section.
Some people will be watching this video right now for the purpose of growing and developing themselves.
Some people will be taking this course for the purpose off at some point in the future helping and assisting
and coaching and making a difference in other people or the world at large.
I'm guessing that it's only when we reach the stage in life where we decide that we are we are we are
ready to start making an impact in the lives of other people.
It's really only then that life actually becomes meaningful for us when life becomes about more than
just ourselves.
No this is how I've experienced life.
This is how I've interpreted my own experiences when I lived my own life working in business and sales
and even in the military for all these years.
Yes I might have believe that what I was doing was a good works and all that kind of thing.
But to be honest with you I never found anything particularly rewarding or meaningful.
It was only when I started guiding and helping and assisting other people making a positive difference
in other people by just simply sharing with them the lessons that I learned in my past that life became
meaningful for me.
Does that make sense.
So what is the meaning of your life.
Well the meaning of your life is whatever meaning you choose to put on it what is the purpose of your
life.
Well if you look at your past experiences look at all the challenges and hurdles and the obstacles that
you've overcome.
Many people see these things as a fill stop as a sticking point in life where I see failure in all these
sorts of things as is just kind of like the training ground that prepares us for whatever it is that
we're willing to share with other people.
Next it's our hearts or scars that ultimately build up our intrinsic value in life.
And it's the intrinsic value which other people then find in us that ultimately makes our life meaningful
to us and valuable to them.
Are you with me.
But not everyone gets there.
All right.
You're watching this course right now.
But many of your future clients haven't watched this course right.
No they're not even thinking about watching this course right now because their lives are possibly in
the process of falling apart.
So in the next video I'm going to share with you a story to help you understand what happens when we
don't start asking ourselves the bigger questions of life.