Goal direction and mattering are both motivational components and synonymous with purpose and significance, respectively. The third component – one’s life making sense – is a cognitive component, akin to significance. However, the second variation of this question – how we find meaning in life – is psychological and of more interest to us. While goals can be vital to meeting our long-term plans, they can cause us to lose sight of what is important. We may be so focused on finding a partner, owning a house, or starting a family that we lose sight of enjoying life and building a group of friends.
- This exercise helps you bring these meaningful things into focus—literally.
- To live a fulfilling life, you must learn to forgive the people who’ve hurt you.
- Likewise, a life that has meaning feels purposeful and significant.
- First and foremost, Locke’s Theory of Goal-Setting puts intentions squarely at the center of our behavior (Locke, 1968).
- Perhaps you might go for a 15-minute walk today, or forego a sugary snack.
Making Life Changes
Significance is augmented when your behaviors, or experiences more broadly, matter to yourself. This aspect of significance is related to psychiatrist Viktor Frankl’s idea of finding beauty and meaning in life through lived experience. For example, the experience of meaningfulness can be found by enjoying riveting musical performances, being in awe of natural beauty, or simply appreciating an authentic interaction with how to create meaning in life another person. We now have personally meaningful life goals designed and we can start thinking about different potential pathways for achieving them. Luthans and colleagues’ PsyCap Intervention invited participants to brainstorm multiple pathways without worrying at first about their feasibility. ‘As many possibilities as they could think of’, essentially, and not unlike ‘there are no bad ideas in brainstorming’.
Make time for friends, family, and social events
This exercise helps you bring these meaningful things into focus—literally. By having you photograph, then write about, things that are meaningful to you, it encourages you to pay closer attention to the varied sources of meaning in your life, large and small, and reflect on why they are important to you. There is great comfort in believing that your life and actions matter in the grand scheme of things. This conviction is referred to https://ecosoberhouse.com/ as “existential mattering” and is a strong component of the experience of meaning in life. But we now know that most people, most of the time, report that their lives feel more meaningful than not. Although actively constructing meaning may be required in some cases—for example, when your world is turned upside down after a traumatic event—cultivating meaning in life may be as simple as detecting the meaning that is already there.
Goal Exploration Worksheet
Another activity is to consider the character strengths that strongly correlate with meaning. Look for opportunities to use those strengths in your daily life. On the days when you use those strengths, you could pay extra attention to how a meaningful life feels.
Having a more meaningful life often means making real changes to your life. It’s not enough to just feel like you’re a small part of something big; you also need to feel driven to make a positive impact on the world. So, if you’re feeling a crisis of purpose in your life, go to the bookstore or library or university. Find books that matter to you—and they might help you to see what matters in your own life. But they can, at the very least, keep you pointed in the right direction, so you’re always working toward a life that’s meaningful to you.
If you recognize that developing friendships is something that is important to you — despite your shyness — what actions might you take this week, or today, to work toward that goal? Perhaps you might initiate several conversations with co-workers that you would not otherwise talk to, or sign up for a social event in your town, even though you don’t know anyone. If being healthy so you can run around with your young children is important to you, how might this value motivate you and affect the choices you make as you go through the day today? Perhaps you might go for a 15-minute walk today, or forego a sugary snack. Finding meaning in life is a journey that could start with something as simple as a pen and paper, deep reflection, and one of our tools mentioned above. Or your journey could start by stepping out the door and connecting with a neighbor, making a newfound friend, or starting a hobby you have wanted to explore but never got around to.
According to Bronk, it’s also about trying out new things and seeing how those activities enable you to use your skills to make a meaningful difference in the world. Volunteering in a community organization focused on something of interest to you could provide you with some experience and do good at the same time. In her work with adolescents, she’s found that some teens find purpose after experiencing hardship. Maybe a kid who has experienced racism decides to become a civil rights advocate. Of course, experiences like poverty and illness are extremely hard to overcome without help from others.
If you are eating a meal, notice the textures and flavors as if they were ones you had never experienced before. Of course it is likely that you may slip back “into your head” as you try this, but each time you catch yourself, gently and compassionately bring the focus of your attention back to your present moment experience. Start with just a few minutes at a time that you can designate as your mindful moments.
- Working with an organization serving others can put you in touch with people who share your passions and inspire you.
- If you feel like you don’t belong, then you have a lower sense of meaningfulness.
- In regard to the second lesson in my nieces’ acting class, making each scene seem fresh and not rehearsed, this raises another important question.
- We have spent years conducting research on meaning and have guided practitioners and the general public on this topic.
- We all have dreams, but some merit more of our energy than others.
- Many seem to believe that purpose arises from your special gifts and sets you apart from other people—but that’s only part of the truth.
What Mike and his research team found was that all 24 character strengths have significant correlations with meaning in life. That means, endorsing any of the VIA strengths to a higher degree is linked to also perceiving your life to be meaningful. While still a graduate student, Mike conducted a study of the VIA Survey and of meaning in life among a sample of twins. The original intent was to understand whether meaning in life, and character strengths, were genetically heritable (Steger, Hicks, Kashdan, Krueger, & Bouchard, 2007). However, Mike never had the chance to publish the connections between meaning in life (as measured by his Meaning in Life Questionnaire) and the VIA Survey.
Age, routines, and a sense of purpose may help foster the belief that life means something.
As such, they give us something to focus on and impact positively on our motivation. Of all of the facets of meaning, coherence likely represents a basic psychological need. Similar to the anguish we feel when our need to belong is thwarted, our world seems to fall apart when things suddenly do not make sense.