Finding meaning, purpose in life

Meaning, purpose & happiness

It can be tempting to think that happiness and life satisfaction comes from the pleasure we get from relationships, leisure, entertainment or money. But psychologists tell us that these pleasures are short term and don’t give us enduring happiness.

Feeling that our lives have meaning is an important part of happiness and life satisfaction.

Our lives have meaning if we think they have significance, our lives matter in some way and they make sense. Our sense of meaning allows us to interpret our experiences. Meaning provides a framework for our lives.

Generally we’ll feel our lives have meaning if we live for some purpose and we feel significant in ourselves. That purpose most likely will come from something outside ourselves, such as religion, caring for the world or improving life for people, but may be some personal goals such as a sportsperson might have.

The purpose(s) we commit to will give our life direction and guide our choices.

Psychologists are clear that we need both meaning and purpose to have a fulfilled and happy life. Purpose alone won’t get us there, for once we have achieved a goal we’ll feel empty unless we have some larger goal, and our goals or purpose give our lives meaning.

So for a happy fulfilled life, our purposes and goals must form part of the meaning we give our lives.

Sources of meaning and purpose

In the past, people often found their meaning via:

• family, e.g. providing better opportunities for children than the parents had;
• religion, e.g. serving God and living in a way that pleased him or her;
• community, e.g. caring for the poor, the aged or the disdvantaged; or
• their work, e.g. having a successful career.

Sometimes people found meaning in several of these together – e.g. a successful career might provide more resources to allow children more opportunities, or serving God might include community service.

In all these cases, the “cause” which gave life meaning would give them direction and purpose in the way they lived their lives and the choices they made.

The problem of meaninglessness

Many people still find meaning in those things. But it seems that many people have somehow lost that sense of meaning. Maybe they don’t believe in God, their family is broken. Perhaps they don’t have time or interest in community volunteering. And their work may be mundane, or they have to work at two jobs just to make ends meet and they have little time for anything else.

It seems more and more people are feeling like life cannot actually have any meaning. There’s no God to give our lives purpose, they believe, and human beings are no more than intelligent animals. Wars and inhumanity seem to prove this is true. Many people are cynical.

This is a problem because if our lives feel meaningless to us, we will likely be anxious, lose hope and be unhappy.

Arthur Brooks reports more and more people saying things like: “My life feels empty. I feel disconnected. I don’t know what I’m working toward.”

Psychologist Darren Edwards sees in many people “very real pain in the form of the ache of loneliness, the numbness of disconnection, the craving for significance”.

Viktor Frankl, who survived Nazi concentration camps in WW2, observed that those who were generous and supportive of others in meaningful ways had a greater sense of purpose and survived longer. He concluded: “Those who have a ‘why’ to live, can bear with almost any ‘how.’”

Nihilism in the Age of Information

We live in an age of screens, electronic connection and social media. This technology allows us to easily to be in contact with people all the time, even those on the other side of the world. We know technology is addictive, but that addiction is hard to break.

Our brains work in a way that can be summarised (somewhat simplistically): “The left brain is associated with logic, analytical thinking, and language processing, while the right brain is linked with creativity, intuition, and holistic thinking.”

Social scientist Arthur Brooks observes that screens are re-programming our brains, and “tend to shift us into a left-brain focus on “how” and “what” is going on”.

But meaning is more of a right brain function. So, Brooks argues, over-use of phones and other screen-based technology is making us less likely to think about meaning and the big questions of life..

And therefore less likely to be happy!

Forming or finding?

Do we “discover” or find our purpose, or can we form it by our own choice?

Psychologist Ross White argues that we can form our own purpose. Thinking it is something “out there” waiting to be discovered, he says, can make us frustrated if we cannot find it. Rather he says purpose is something that can be explored, it can change, evolve and be developed, and he suggests ways in which we can decide on purpose.

Arthur Brooks has a slightly different take. He says we don’t invent our purpose, but uncover it through intentional habits. Viktor Frankl said, “I think the meaning of our existence is not invented by ourselves, but rather detected.”

It seems both views come to a similar practical process of examining ourselves and finding what meaning and purpose suits or comes out of who we are and what we have experienced and believe. More on this below.

Re-discovering meaning and purpose

We can take steps to re-discover or form purpose and meaning. Here are a few ideas.

Healthy use of phones

For the sake of our health and happiness, Arthur Brooks urges us to take greater control of our phone use. Most important, he says, is to put our phones away at these times:

• first thing after we wake up, for it is then we prime our brains for the rest of the day;
• meal times – phone use weakens social connections and may cause less healthy eating (evidence is unclear);
• last thing at night – phone use stimulates our brains when they need to be winding down, and thus delays sleep or leads to less restful sleep.

Use right brain thinking

Brooks also suggests we should be asking ourselves (and presumably pondering) the big why questions: “Why do things happen the way they do? Why are you doing what you’re doing? Why does your life matter — and to whom?”

It is also helpful, he says, to “immerse ourselves in natural, aesthetic & moral beauty”. Engaging with beauty can lead to feelings of awe and inspiration, promoting a sense of responsibility towards the environment and others, and so help us develop a sense of meaning and purpose outside ourselves.

Using our imagination

Psychologist Ross White suggests we can work out purpose for our lives by imagining a satisfying day, where we have no restrictions on us. We can look beyond self to do something meaningful to ourselves which also connects us to the world beyond ourselves. If we then examine why we made those choices, we’ll start to understand what gives our lives meaning.

Spiritual & sacred

Counsellor & psychologist Andy Tix suggests happiness and wellbeing involves looking beyond ourselves to “something larger: our families, communities, natural environments, and maybe even something Sacred”. Instead of making our purpose about self improvement, we can make it about “the well-being of both myself and the world around me”.

These aren’t new ideas, but Tix takes them further. He says sometimes, especially in nature, we can feel something that is meaningful, beyond ourselves, something that may inspire awe or even reverence. He calls this sacred or spiritual and believes it can provide meaning.

Arthur Brooks agrees. He suggests we replace the self focus of “Use people, love things, worship yourself” with “Use things, love people, worship the divine. You figure out what the divine is.”

Actor Rain Wilson follows Brooks’ advice and suggests we need a spiritual revolution that leads us to “personal growth through practices like meditation, prayer, and self-reflection” balanced with “service, advocacy, and social justice”.

Practical steps

The Harvard Medical School has developed ten exercises to help us find purpose. You can read all of the steps for yourself, but they can be boiled down to these:

• Think about your life – your skills, the obstacles you have overcome, your role models and what you were aiming at in different times. These can all give clues to what has been meaningful for you so far.
• Think about what you would do if you won the lottery, and how you’d like to be remembered after you die. How do these thoughts help you identify your purpose?
• Read what experts say about purpose – they recommend Viktor Frankl’s book Man’s Search for Meaning.
• Think about what the world needs and how you could be part of meeting that need. Perhaps you could mentor someone who would benefit from your skills and experience.

Meaning, purpose & God

It is interesting that most psychologists are saying that to find meaning and purpose, and thus happiness, we need to look outside ourselves. That seems to entail either the altruism of caring for others or the world, or some transcendent spiritual experience, or both.

So while in theory we can choose our own purpose and our own meaning, some of the more self focused things we could choose don’t seem to work. It almost seems like there is an ethical basis to meaning and purpose.

Our recognition of right and wrong actions seems to point to something outside ourselves. Most of us agree that some things, such as torturing babies, genocide or pedophilia, are really deeply wrong, but it is hard to justify that view in a universe without God.

In the same way, it seems to me that the psychologists’ findings on meaning and purpose also point to God, or at least a spiritual reality. Of course good people who don’t believe in God will still be altruistic, but it seems to me that they’re missing the signs.

Let’s go!

I wish you well in your pursuit of meaning and purpose.

References

• Is meaninglessness driving unhappiness today? Arthur Brooks thinks so. Deseret News.
• Meaning and Purpose in Life. Michael Steger, Psychwire.
• Finding Meaning in a Meaningless World. Darren Edwards, Psychology Today.
• Your purpose isn’t something to find, it’s something you form. Ross White, Psyche.
• The Difference Between Meaning and Purpose: Why you need both meaning and purpose for true happiness. Jordan Grumet, Psychology Today.
• What If Our Idea of Well-Being Is Too Small? Why flourishing depends on more than personal happiness. Andy Tix on Substack.
• Purpose in Life Can Lead to Less Stress, Better Mental Well-being. American Psychiatric Association.
• Soul Boom: Why We Need a Spiritual Revolution. Rainn Wilson.
• 10 ways to find purpose in life. Harvard Health Publishing.

Top photo by William Fortunato. Bottom photo by Manual Gvzman.