Identify a situation in your life where you feel you have no choice. Look at it again: what is the stimulus, and what are the possible responses? You may not be able to change the stimulus. But the response is yours. Even choosing to endure without complaint is a choice.

Ask yourself: what am I living for right now – not in abstract terms, but concretely? What gets me out of bed when everything else feels pointless? If the answer is unclear, that is important information. The search for meaning is itself meaningful.

Identify a source of suffering in your life that cannot currently be changed. Ask: is there a way to bear this that would reflect who you want to be? Not to pretend it isn't painful. But to bring something of yourself – courage, patience, honesty – to how you face it.

Replace 'what do I want from life?' with 'what does this situation demand of me?' For one day, treat every challenge as a question about what you can contribute or how you can respond – rather than what you can get or avoid.

Identify something you are currently over-thinking about yourself – your performance, your health, your worth. For one week, redirect that energy toward a specific task or person that needs your attention. Notice whether the self-concern diminishes when you are absorbed in something outside yourself.

Think of the most difficult thing you are currently facing. Can you find any meaning in it – not to justify it, but to live through it with more intention? What does facing this honestly, without pretending it is fine, demand of you?

Write down three things that feel genuinely meaningful to you right now – not what should be meaningful, but what actually is. Then ask: how much of your daily life is organised around these things? The gap between what feels meaningful and how you actually spend your time is one of the most important things to understand about yourself.