What does it all mean? 

It’s 3 in the morning, and you snap awake, go to the kitchen and drink a glass of water. 

Something feels off. 

A cold wind blows through the trees outside. There’s a persistent emptiness inside and it’s crept up on you. 

A sense that you’re performing rather than living.

This is the Ordinary World: competent but not coherent, successful but not satisfied, functional but fundamentally stuck. 

You’re not exactly in crisis. You’re not being called anywhere. You’re just… here. And here feels increasingly like nowhere.

Meaning gives your life depth, colour, and purpose.

Three thinkers might be able to offer a way to find a meaningful way of living. 

Viktor Frankl, who survived Auschwitz, argued that meaning emerges from how we respond to life’s questions. 

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi discovered that fulfillment comes through complete engagement—flow states where self-consciousness dissolves into purposeful action. 

And Joseph Campbell revealed that every powerful story in myth, legend, and folk tales, begins in a kind of stuckness. It’s an Ordinary World that needs to change.

“But before the call, before the adventure, before the transformation, there’s the need to see clearly where you actually are.”

And writing—not as art, not as therapy, but as a diagnostic tool, is a simple way to pierce through the fog and discover what’s missing.

The Will to Meaning vs. The Pursuit of Comfort

Frankl said our deepest drive isn’t pleasure or power.

It’s meaning. 

“Man’s search for meaning is the primary motivation in his life,” he wrote in Man’s Search for Meaning. 

This stands in stark contrast to the surface motivations that rely on finding comfort, status, security, the steady accumulation of achievements that should satisfy but don’t.

Once you have the basics like air, water, food, and shelter, you can optimise your workflows as much as you like. But doing this within a meaningless framework just makes the emptiness more efficient.

Csikszentmihalyi’s research on flow states reveals why.

Happiness doesn’t come from comfort or achievement. It emerges as a by-product of complete engagement. 

In other words, happiness happens when you’re so absorbed in a challenge that self-consciousness disappears. 

The surgeon lost in a delicate operation. The artist absorbed in creation. The climber focused entirely on the next hold.

When did you last experience that? 

Not scrolling, not consuming, not even relaxing. But a complete absorption where time disappeared and you forgot yourself?

Write: In the past month, list any moment where you lost track of time. Not numbness or distraction—actual engagement where hours vanished. Be specific about what you were doing, where you were, what you were focused on.

If the page stays mostly blank, that’s information. 

The absence of flow experiences is the Ordinary World’s signature. You’re nowhere near the edge of your abilities. You’re operating well below capacity, performing tasks that require just enough attention to feel busy but not enough to feel alive.

Now write: What percentage of my waking hours am I fully present versus going through motions? Be honest. Include commute time, work tasks, conversations, evenings, weekends.

Freedom to Choose Your Attitude (Even Here)

At the heart of Frankl’s philosophy lies a radical freedom. 

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing, the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

He wrote this from a concentration camp. 

If you’re lucky, you’re reading this in a fairly comfortable, safe place. Yet the freedom he describes applies here too. You cannot always change your circumstances. But you can examine and change how you feel about them.

The Ordinary World creates a particular kind of trap. 

It’s not dramatic enough to force change.

 It’s not painful enough to demand escape. 

It just… persists. 

And in that persistence, you forget that you’re choosing it, day after day, through tiny decisions that add up to a life you didn’t quite mean to build.

Write: What would I do differently this week if I weren’t afraid of disappointing someone? Be completely specific. Not “I’d quit my job”—but “I’d skip the Thursday night dinner with colleagues I don’t enjoy” or “I’d spend Saturday morning writing instead of running errands.”

It’s not about letting people down. It’s about finding your flow. 

Because the gap between what you do and what you’d do without fear of judgment reveals where you’ve traded freedom for approval. 

Most people in the Ordinary World discover the list is long. They’ve been performing for an imaginary audience for so long they’ve forgotten what they’d actually choose.

Follow up: Who am I performing for? Whose approval am I working to maintain? Write their names. Then honestly answer: did they actually demand this performance, or did I assume they did?

Write quickly, without editing. Let the truth surface. Often the harshest judge is the one you’ve internalised, not the actual people in your life. 

It’s shocking to find so often you’re the prison and the guard.

Three Pathways to Meaning (And Which Ones You’ve Closed)

Frankl identified three ways we create meaning. 

1. Through what we give to the world (creative values), 
2. Through what we take from the world (experiential values), 
3. Through the stand we take toward unavoidable suffering (attitudinal values).

The Ordinary World tends to collapse all three into one. 

Productivity. 

Creation becomes output. 

Experience becomes consumption. 

Suffering becomes something to manage, medicate, or ignore. 

You’re achieving things but not making anything that matters. You’re consuming experiences but not actually receiving them. You’re enduring difficulty but not transforming through it.

Create three columns on a page: Creative, Experiential, Attitudinal. Under each, honestly map where you currently find meaning.

Creative 

What are you making, contributing, bringing into existence? 

Not what you’re producing for work—what are you creating that reflects something only you can give?

It doesn’t have to be a big deal. Think about what you enjoy. Cooking, fixing things, creating events etc.

Experiential 

What are you receiving? 

When do you stop and actually witness beauty, connection, love, nature? 

When does something stop you cold not because it’s useful but because it’s real?

Attitudinal: 

How are you meeting difficulty? 

What unavoidable suffering are you currently facing, and what stance are you taking toward it? Bitterness? Avoidance? Dignity? Numbness?

Look at what you wrote. Most people stuck in the Ordinary World find at least one column nearly empty. Usually two. Sometimes all three.

Now write: What parts of myself did I exile to become who I am today? What did I reject to be acceptable, successful, safe, appropriate?

Be specific. 

Not “I gave up my dreams”—but “I stopped painting when I was 23 because it seemed impractical.” 

Not “I became too serious”—but “I started censoring jokes that might offend anyone, and now I barely laugh.” 

Not “I lost touch with myself”—but “I stopped going to the woods alone because it felt selfish to take that time.”

These exiled parts aren’t gone. 

They’re in the basement of your heart. And they’re often the reason everything feels flat. 

You can’t build a coherent life on a fragmented self.

It’s not dramatic enough to force change.

 It’s not painful enough to demand escape. 

It just… persists. 

And in that persistence, you forget that you’re choosing it, day after day, through tiny decisions that add up to a life you didn’t quite mean to build.

Meaning in the Ordinary

This too shall pass.

Perhaps Frankl’s most challenging insight is that meaning isn’t found in extraordinary circumstances. 

It’s created in response to what life presents. 

Even when what it presents is mundane, repetitive, or seemingly insignificant.

“If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death, human life cannot be complete.”

The Ordinary World has its own form of suffering. 

Not dramatic. Not cinematic. 

Just the slow erosion of aliveness, the persistent sense that you’re half-asleep in your own life. 

It can be the growing awareness that the years are passing while you’re waiting for something to happen.

This suffering is unavoidable if you stay where you are. 

But it can be meaningful if you examine it honestly.

Write: What’s the cost of staying in my current life exactly as it is? 
Not vague feelings—concrete costs. 
What am I sacrificing? What’s dying from neglect? What will I regret if another five years pass like this?

Don’t soften it.
Don’t rationalise. 
Just map the actual cost of this desire for a deeper purpose.
The creative projects you’re not starting.
The conversations you’re not having. The experiences you’re postponing. 
The version of yourself you’re not becoming.

What’s the cost of staying in my current life exactly as it is? Not vague feelings—concrete costs. What am I sacrificing? What’s dying from neglect? What will I regret if another five years pass like this?

Don’t soften it. Don’t rationalise. 

Just map the actual cost of this desire for a deeper purpose.

The creative projects you’re not starting.

The conversations you’re not having.

The experiences you’re postponing. 

The version of yourself you’re not becoming.

Then write: What am I afraid will happen if I change anything? Be brutally specific. Not “things might go wrong”—but “I might lose financial security” or “my parents will judge me” or “I’ll discover I’m not actually good at what I think I want to do.”

The fear is information. 

It reveals what you’re protecting. Usually it’s the stuckness itself. We can wear it like armour. 

Even when the known is slowly killing something essential.

Life as a Question You’re Not Answering

Frankl suggested we find new ways to question our lives: 

“We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life—daily and hourly.” 

In other words, life doesn’t owe you any meaning. 

Life asks you what meaning you’ll create through your choices and actions.

Old habits keep us safe.

But they can also chain us to the ground.

The restlessness you feel, the flatness, the sense that something’s wrong that you can’t quite name.. this is life asking a question you’re refusing to hear.

Write: If my current life situation, this specific configuration of work, relationships, location, daily routine, what question is life asking me underneath it all?

Don’t immediately jump to solutions. 

Just write the question. 

Maybe it’s: “Will you keep performing, or will you risk being real?” 

Maybe it’s: “How long can you endure half-presence?” 

Maybe it’s: “What are you willing to sacrifice for aliveness?”

Then write: What answer am I currently giving through my daily choices? Not what I wish I was answering—what my actual behavior is saying.

This is where writing becomes surgical. 

Your thoughts can lie. 

Your rationalisations are sophisticated. 

But your calendar, your bank statement, your evening routines—these tell the truth about your priorities.

If you say meaning matters but spend every evening numbing out, you’re answering life’s question with: “Comfort over consciousness.” 

If you say creativity matters but haven’t made anything in six months, you’re answering with: “Safety over expression.” 

If you say connection matters but have no conversations that go beneath the surface, you’re answering with: “Performance over intimacy.”

A sense of stuckness is built on these unanswered questions. 

Life keeps asking. You keep giving the same useless answers. 

Nothing changes.

Writing Into Flow: The Diagnostic Tool

Csikszentmihalyi discovered that flow, a state of complete absorption where self-consciousness disappears, requires specific conditions. 

Clear goals. 

Immediate feedback. 

A balance between challenge and skill. 

Complete focus.

Writing, done a certain way, creates these conditions. 

Not writing as self-expression or therapy, but writing as a method to pierce through the performed self and access what’s actually there.

Try this for 5 minutes: Set a timer. Write continuously without stopping about what your life feels like right now. Not what you think about it—what it feels like. Don’t edit. Don’t force it to be grammatically correct or even coherent. Just keep the pen moving.

This kind of writing bypasses the defended self. That part of you that maintains the story, manages the image, masks the conflict. 

When you write fast enough, the editor can’t keep up. 

Things surface that you didn’t know you knew.

Another approach: Describe your typical Tuesday in excruciating detail. Not how you’d like it to be—exactly what it is. From waking to sleeping, write what you actually do, how it actually feels.

The specificity matters.

When we’re stuck, we hide in vagueness. “I’m fine” means nothing. “I wake up already tired and spend the first hour checking email I don’t care about” means something.

Flow inventory: Make a list: moments in the past six months where I completely lost track of time. For each one, note: What was I doing? What skills was I using? Was I alone or with others? What made it absorbing?

If the list is short, that’s the problem.

You’re not regularly accessing flow states.

You’re not pushing against the edge of your abilities. 

You’re maintaining the flat mood through tasks that require just enough attention to seem busy, but not enough to create engagement.

The gap map: On one side of the page, write activities where I’m fully present. On the other side, activities where I’m going through motions. Then calculate: what percentage of my waking hours fall in each column?

For most people who are stuck, 80-90% of their time is in the “going through motions” column. 

They’re competent, functional, getting things done. 

But they’re nowhere near flow. 

They’re nowhere near aliveness.

Self-Transcendence in the Ordinary World

Fulfilment often comes from dedicating ourselves to others as well to creative expression.

It comes from our devotion to love and belonging.

But our small selves tend toward self-protection rather than self-transcendence. 

You’re managing your life, setting goals, protecting your interests.

The defended self is in charge. 

And it’s exhausting.

Research on flow states reveals something profound. 

When the prefrontal cortex quiets (the part of the brain responsible for self-monitoring, judgment)people report experiences of ego-dissolution, timelessness, and connection to something larger. 

The defended self is neurologically expensive. 

Maintaining that performance requires constant frontal lobe activity.

Another angle: Write a letter from your older, wiser self. Explore how you could live differently, love more, and move towards a new kind of life, even with small changes.

Don’t write what you think you should say. 

Write what’s actually true.

 If nothing surfaces, that’s information.

If you’ve given in to living on the surface of things and successfully made you the centre of your own life, that’s precisely why it feels empty.

The Spiritual Dimension

When Frankl talked about the “unconscious God”, he was speaking to the deep human orientation toward ultimate meaning.

It doesn’t matter if that’s explicitly religious or not. 

And flow experiences can often feel timeless, sacred, transcendent.

If you find ways to access moments when life feels deeply real, when meaning breaks through the ordinary, when the performance drops and something larger becomes briefly visible.

Current data from Pew Research shows that while institutional religion is declining, reported spiritual experiences are rising. 

People still hunger for the sacred but  they’re finding it outside traditional structures. 

In natural environments that calm your mind. 

In work that pulls you into flow. 

In connection that temporarily dissolves the boundaries of isolated selfhood.

Write: When do I feel connected to something larger than myself?

Be concrete.

Describe. 

Not “when I’m in nature”—but “watching storms move across the sky from my garden, alone, before dawn.” 

Not “with my family”—but “the specific moment when my son is falling asleep and his breathing changes and I realise he trusts me completely.”

These moments reveal where the sacred breaks through for you personally. 

They’re not exotic. They’re available. .

Writing as Integration: Seeing the Whole Picture

Meaning is not discovered like a hidden treasure.

 It’s created in response to life’s questions. 

But you can’t respond to questions you won’t acknowledge. 

And you can’t create meaning with a fragmented self.

Sometimes, life as it stands fragments you. This part goes to work. This part handles relationships. This part manages appearances. The parts don’t talk to each other. You’re competent in each domain but coherent in none.

Writing forces integration. 

When you write honestly about your life, the contradictions become visible. 

The gap between what you say matters and where you actually spend your time. 

The difference between who you present and who you are. 

The distance between what you once wanted and what you’ve settled for.

Try this: I am [who I show the world] but I’m also [qualities I hide]. 

Write a list of 10 different versions of this.

For example: “I am responsible and reliable. But I also am impulsive and chaotic.” 

“I am strong and capable. But I’m also frightened and uncertain.”

 “I am successful and put-together. But I’m also lost and confused.”

The parts after “but I’m also” are lurking in the shadows.

The exiled parts of yourself.

They’re the reason everything feels flat. You can’t have meaning without wholeness, and you can’t have wholeness while parts of yourself are locked out.

Synthesis exercise: Based on everything you’ve written or thought about so far, write a single paragraph describing your current state.

Include: 
* where you find flow (if anywhere), 
* where you’re performing versus present, 
* what you’ve exiled, 
* what question life is asking that you’re not answering, 
* and what you’re protecting by staying fragmented.

This is a powerful exercise in clarity.

You can’t navigate into a new story without first admitting where you actually are.

Growth, your new character arc, hasn’t started yet. 

You’re still in Act One, in the world that works but doesn’t satisfy, in the life that looks right but feels wrong. 

The defended self is still in charge. The performance continues.

But writing creates the first crack. It makes the invisible visible. It names what you’ve been refusing to see. 

And in that naming, the possibility of something else becomes real.

Your Ordinary World Mapped

You’re not being called anywhere. 

You’re not ready for transformation. 

You’re just here, in the stuck in a liminal space, trying to understand why everything that should work doesn’t feel like enough.

Flow reveals how meaning deepens through complete engagement. 

Frankl demonstrates how meaning comes from responding to life’s questions. 

Campbell shows that every hero’s journey begins exactly here—in an Ordinary World that’s stopped working due to some deep inner conflict.

Final writing prompt: If I had to describe the life I’m living right now to someone who would understand completely, what would I tell them? 

What does it look like from the inside?
 
What keeps me here? 

What needs to change?

Write until you’ve told the truth. Not the story you tell at parties. Not the version that makes you look good. The actual truth about where you are and how it feels.

The question isn’t whether life has meaning. 

The question is whether you’ll create it. 

But creation requires first seeing what you’re working with. Because the materials of your life are what you’ve got to work with, not the story you’ve been telling yourself.

That choice is this: to see clearly, to write honestly, to stop performing long enough to locate what’s real. 

That’s where meaning begins. 

Writing Prompts for Mapping the Ordinary World

Flow Inventory: When have you lost track of time in the past month? What were you doing? What skills were engaged?

Performance Map: What percentage of your waking hours are you fully present versus going through motions?

Freedom Assessment: What would you do differently this week if you weren’t afraid of disappointing someone? Be completely specific.

Meaning Pathways: Create three columns (Creative, Experiential, Attitudinal) and honestly map where you find meaning in each. Which are empty?

Exiled Parts: What parts of yourself did you reject to become acceptable? Name them specifically.

Cost Analysis: What is the concrete cost of staying in your current life exactly as it is for another five years?

Life’s Question: If your current situation is life asking a question, what is it? What answer are you giving through your daily choices?

Time Distribution: Make two columns: “Fully Present” and “Going Through Motions.” What percentage of your time falls in each?

Self-Transcendence: When do you forget about yourself entirely? How often does this happen?

Sacred Access: When does life feel most real? How much time passes between these experiences?

Shadow Sentences: Complete ten times: “I am [public self], but I also am [hidden self].”

Current State Synthesis: Write one paragraph describing where you are right now—the honest version, not the story you tell.