What do I locate myself inside?

A guided 20 to 25 minutes conversation, here in TAIU. Not a search for a cause. Most people are already inside two or three things and have never named one of them.

GUIDES

You have named it. Now spend some time on it.

Each Guide gives you a clear way to look at one subject in your own time. Choose where to begin. You do not need to work through everything.

Where you already belong

What you already locate yourself inside

Look at what you already belong to, before deciding whether any of it is enough.

Where this often ends up: A plain account of what you already locate yourself inside.

It may also end with a clearer view of something, or with nothing that needs doing.

Around twenty minutes

The source

Where the meaning actually comes from

Test what gives your life meaning against the times it held and the times it did not.

Where this often ends up: Your own account of where meaning comes from, with the evidence next to it.

It may also end with a clearer view of something, or with nothing that needs doing.

Around thirty minutes

Time and attention

What you would give time to

Look at what you would give time to, including the answer that nothing needs adding.

It may also end with a clearer view of something, or with nothing that needs doing.

Around twenty minutes

This Guide is free, like everything else in The Clearing.

You can see what it covers before you begin.

Start this Guide

Volunteers of mixed ages building raised beds in a community garden, one man carrying a plank among them

If you disappeared for a month, what would stop happening?

That list is the honest map of what you are part of.

Small counts. Obligation counts. You are already part of enough is a legitimate result here.

What you'll look at

01Who would notice if you disappeared for a month
02Something you turn up to that you would not call important
03Something you would defend that has nothing to do with you personally
04Something you want to still exist after you are gone

A note from Mark

I distrust the word legacy. It usually turns up when somebody wants their name attached to something rather than the thing itself to continue.

What I have noticed is that the people who are most obviously part of something rarely talk in those terms. They talk about the Tuesday committee, or the trade, or their grandfather, or the state of the river. They turn up. They are irritated by it half the time. And if they stopped, several things would quietly fail.

That is what being inside something looks like from the outside. Not a statement of purpose. An attendance record and a few people who would notice.

Read my full view ↓

So I would not go hunting for something larger before checking what you are already in. Most people are surprised by the answer, and a fair number find they are inside more than they can currently sustain, which is a different problem entirely.

What you'll get

This will not sort you into a personality type.It will give you answers about your own life that you can test.

01
What you already belong to
02
What it asks of you
03
What you contribute
04
Whether anything is missing
+
Your TAIU handover: a summary of what the conversation found, written so you can take it with you.

See everything included ↓

01What you came here with
02What you already belong to
03How it shows up
04What you contribute to it
05Where it came from
06What you have lost
07The rival reading
08What it asks of you
09What deserves protecting
10The credible alternative
11What, if anything, should change
12What remains unresolved
13Where this goes next

When you finish

Bring it back to your tree.

Your tree is where TAIU keeps a picture of your whole life, in parts like work, money and health.

This session works on the whole of you, not one part of your life. Nothing is scored. At the end, you are asked once which part of your life this touched most. You can answer none.

The conversation writes this summary for you. Keep the sheet, print it or paste it into My Tree. Nothing from the conversation is stored by TAIU.

Session
Date
The part of life this belongs to
What we found
The alternative we tested
What deserves protecting
What should change, if anything
Next actions
What to notice or find out
What remains unresolved

Open My Tree

What now?

01 · Save it
What you already locate yourself inside, named from evidence rather than aspiration.
02 · Test it
Turn up once to the thing you keep half attending, and pay attention to whether it costs or restores you.

See more ↓

Before you go looking for something to join

Adding a commitment to a full life is a real cost. If the exercise found you are already inside enough, take that seriously.

Where something was lost rather than missing, replacement is rarely the right first move. Name what it gave you before you look for a substitute.

What I would do

01
Look at attendance before belief. Turning up repeatedly is the strongest evidence of belonging there is.
02
Include the ones that annoy you. Obligation is a form of membership and it is often the truest kind.
03
Do not measure by scale. A choir counts. A canal restoration group counts. Half the useful things in Britain are run by nine people.
04
Ask what it costs you. Belonging that asks nothing is usually an interest rather than a membership.
05
If you genuinely belong to nothing, resist the urge to fix it in one move. Establish first whether it is loss, choice or circumstance.

Test it

01
Work out what would fail if you stopped. If nothing, that is information rather than a verdict.
02
Ask who taught you the thing you are best at. Whatever they were part of, you are downstream of it.
03
Take the obligation you resent most and ask whether you would actually resign it. The answer is usually no, and it is worth knowing why.

The alternative

The obvious conclusion is that you need something larger in your life and should go and find it. Occasionally true. More often you are already inside several things and have been withholding the word from all of them because they are not impressive enough. Sometimes what you belong to is a craft rather than a group of people, which is why every conversation about community has felt wrong. And sometimes the honest answer is that you left something and have not replaced it, and naming the loss is more useful than filling it quickly.

Think about this

Who would notice if you disappeared for a month, and what would stop happening.
Something you turn up to that you would never describe as important.
Something you would defend that has no personal benefit to you at all.
Somebody older who handed you something you still use.
Something you want to still exist after you are gone, whether or not it is yours.

Take this to Ask Mark

You have done the exercise. Now look again at what it found.

This looks at what you found and helps you understand it. It is not another exercise to repeat.

Take this to Ask Mark →

Want to go further?

READ · BOOK

Man's Search for Meaning

Viktor E. Frankl

Read it if this exercise concluded that a heavy responsibility is genuinely yours. Read the last third rather than mining the famous lines.

Awe

Dacher Keltner

Best for locating the experiences that make you feel small in a good way.

Awe, the small self and prosocial behavior

Paul Piff and colleagues

Best for the evidence that feeling small changes conduct.

Recommended by the TAIU community

What helped you?

If you've read, watched, listened to or tried something that helped you think about this differently, we'd like to hear about it.

We review recommendations before sharing them with the community.

Finished the exercise?

What did this uncover?

Tell us whether it helped and what you discovered. It takes less than a minute.

A woman in her thirties handing a bench machine over to a younger person in a community workshop

Next tool

Who benefits from my life besides me?

If it found belonging but no clear contribution

Continue →What do I believe? →

Further thinking

Awe
Dacher Keltner
Awe, the small self and prosocial behavior
Paul Piff and colleagues
Man's Search for Meaning
Viktor E. Frankl

See the thinking ↓

Book

Awe

Dacher Keltner

Keltner spent years collecting accounts of awe from across cultures and found it turns up far more often in ordinary life than in cathedrals or canyons. Music, moral beauty, other people's courage. Useful when you are trying to name what you locate yourself inside without reaching for language that is not yours.

Article

Awe, the small self and prosocial behavior

Paul Piff and colleagues

The interesting finding is not that awe feels good. It is that experiences which diminish the sense of self are followed by more generous and more cooperative behaviour. It gives a practical reason to take seriously what makes you feel small, rather than treating it as a matter of taste.

Book

Man's Search for Meaning

Viktor E. Frankl

Frankl spent three years in the camps and came out arguing that a life is held together by what a person answers for, not by what they are spared. The useful part here is not the survival story. It is his insistence that freedom without responsibility is only half a life, which is the exact counterweight to the modern habit of treating every obligation as a burden to be renegotiated.