The Power of Meaning: The true route to happiness

by Emily Esfahani Smith

Reading the belonging narrative helped them navigate college life more effectively.

The meaning intervention, it turns out, dampened the body’s physiological response to stress.

Keeping meaning in mind also protects us against the damage stress can do.

He wrote that we are in the middle of a “fourth great awakening,”10 which is defined by an interest in “spiritual” concerns like purpose, knowledge, and community over “material” ones like money and consumer goods.

That year, the company launched a nonprofit arm called the Life is Good Kids Foundation, devoted to children who are living with illnesses, violence, abuse, poverty, and other adversities. The primary program of the foundation is called Playmakers, an initiative that offers training and enrichment workshops to childcare providers like teachers, social workers, and hospital workers. During these programs, they learn about research on optimism and resilience, and how they can apply that research to improving the lives of the children they care for.

Having meaning in life, for example, has been associated with longevity, better immune functioning, and more gray matter in the brain.29,

Marc Freedman, for example, is the founder of an organization called Encore.org, which does for older adults what The Future Project does for teenagers—inspiring them to craft a new purpose for themselves during retirement.43

“Nothing is so insufferable to man as to be completely at rest, without passions, without business, without diversion, without study,”44 wrote the French philosopher Blaise Pascal in his Pensées. “He then feels his nothingness, his forlornness, his insufficiency, his dependence, his weakness, his emptiness. There will immediately arise from the depth of his heart weariness, gloom, sadness, fretfulness, vexation, despair.”

Freedman wants to radically reframe retirement from a time of leisure to a time when people use the skills and experiences they’ve accumulated over a lifetime to improve society.

Success Mentor,

StoryCorps,

act of listening to another person could make that person feel valued, respected, and dignified.

sharing stories strengthens the bond between the listener and the story teller and makes people feel that their lives are meaningful and have dignity and worth.50

“Part of the reason I feel lonely,” she said, “is because I don’t tell people things. I hold my thoughts and feelings inside. This taught me that I should make more of a point of talking to others—and not just for me, but for them.

When we tell our story, we do two things. We understand ourselves better and we offer support to people going through the same thing that we’re going through.”

His groundbreaking research shows that while the specter of death often leads people to conclude that their lives are meaningless, it can also be a catalyst for them to work out, as they have never done before, the meaning of their lives. Contemplating death can actually help us, if we have the proper mindset, to lead more meaningful lives and to be at peace when our final moment on earth arrives.

They were living in an “existential vacuum.”7

“peppered with references to people like Nietzsche and Kierkegaard and Schopenhauer,”

“What I suddenly discovered,” Breitbart explained, “was the importance of meaning—the search for meaning, the need to create meaning, the ability to experience meaning—was a basic motivating force of human behavior.

In the first session they are asked to reflect on “one or two experiences or moments when life has felt par-ticularly meaningful to you—whether it sounds powerful or mundane.” The second session deals with identity “BC and AD”—9 that is, with who the individuals were before the cancer diagnosis and who they are after the diagnosis. They are encouraged to respond to the question “Who am I?” to tap into the identities that give them the most meaning. One

In the third and fourth sessions, they share the story of their life with the group. “When you look back on your life and upbringing,” they are asked, “what are the most signifi-cant memories, relationships, traditions, and so on, that have made the greatest impact on who you are today?”

They also discuss their accomplishments and points of pride, and what they still have left to do. They think about lessons that they want to pass along to others. For homework, they are asked to share their story with a loved one.

Session five is one of the most difficult. Here, they confront life’s limitations—the greatest limitation of all being death. They talk to each other about what they consider a “good” death: whether they want to die at home or in the hospital, what their funeral will look like, how they hope their families will ...

In the next two sessions, they dwell on their “creative” and “experiential” sources of meaning—the people, places, projects, and ideas that helped them express their most important values and “connect to life.” They discuss their responsibilities and any “unfinished business” they have and what’s preventing them from accomplishing those goals. The...

In the final session, the patients consider their hopes for the future and their legacy, the part of them that will go on living even after they are dead. They present a “legacy project” to the group, which is generally something they do or create that represents how they want to be remembered.

By the end of the eight sessions, the patients’ attitudes toward life and death had changed. They were less hopeless and anxious about the prospect of death. They no longer wanted to die. Their spiritual well-being improved. They reported a higher quality of life. And, of course, they found life to be more meaningful. These effects not only persisted over time—they actually got stronger.

Psychologists call this “the deathbed test.”14 Imagine that you’re at the end of your life. Perhaps a freak accident or diagnosis of disease has suddenly shortened your life, or maybe you have lived a long and healthy life, and are now in your eighties or nineties. Sitting on your deathbed, with only days ahead of you to live, reflecting on the way you have led your life and what you have done and not done, are you satisfied with what you see? Did you live a good and fulfilling life? Is it a life you are glad that you led? If you could live your life over again,

what would you do differently?

Their principal regrets included not following their true aspirations and purposes, giving too much of themselves to their careers rather than spending more time with their children and spouses, and not keeping in better touch with their friends.15 They wish they had spent more time during their lives building the pillars of meaning.

The salvation of man is through love and in love.”

The act of love begins with the very definition of meaning: it begins by stepping outside of the self to connect with and contribute to something bigger.

“Being human,” Frankl wrote, “always points, and is directed, to something, or someone, other than oneself—be it a meaning to fulfill or another human being to encounter. The more one forgets himself—by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love—the more human he is.”