The Power of Meaning Quotes

“As much as we might wish, none of us will be able to go through life without some kind of suffering. That’s why it’s crucial for us to learn to suffer well.”
― Emily Esfahani Smith, The Power of Meaning: Finding Fulfillment in a World Obsessed with Happiness

“To Aristotle, eudaimonia is not a fleeting positive emotion. Rather, it is something you do. Leading a eudaimonic life, Aristotle argued, requires cultivating the best qualities within you both morally and intellectually and living up to your potential. It is an active life, a life in which you do your job and contribute to society, a life in which you are involved in your community, a life, above all, in which you realize your potential, rather than squander your talents.”
― Emily Esfahani Smith, The Power of Meaning: Finding Fulfillment in a World Obsessed with Happiness

“Plenty of people have dreams, after all, but many do nothing to actually accomplish them.”
― Emily Esfahani Smith, The Power of Meaning: Finding Fulfillment in a World Obsessed with Happiness

“They are the four pillars of meaning: belonging, purpose, storytelling, and transcendence.”
― Emily Esfahani Smith, The Power of Meaning: Finding Fulfillment in a World Obsessed with Happiness

“Many of us are so caught up in our own lives, so rushed and preoccupied, that we acknowledge the people we are interacting with only instrumentally—as a means to an end. We fail to see them as individuals.”
― Emily Esfahani Smith, The Power of Meaning: Finding Fulfillment in a World Obsessed with Happiness

“When people explain what makes their lives meaningful, they describe connecting to and bonding with other people in positive ways. They discuss finding something worthwhile to do with their time. They mention creating narratives that help them understand themselves and the world. They talk about mystical experiences of self-loss.”
― Emily Esfahani Smith, The Power of Meaning: Finding Fulfillment in a World Obsessed with Happiness

“Leading a meaningful life, by contrast, corresponded with being a “giver,” and its defining feature was connecting and contributing to something beyond the self.”
― Emily Esfahani Smith, The Power of Meaning: Finding Fulfillment in a World Obsessed with Happiness

“Yet no matter what occupies our days, when we reframe our tasks as opportunities to help others, our lives and our work feel more significant. Each of us has a circle of people—in our families, in our communities, and at work—whose lives we can improve. That’s a legacy everyone can leave behind.”
― Emily Esfahani Smith, The Power of Meaning: Finding Fulfillment in a World Obsessed with Happiness

“The beauty of a high quality connection approach is that you don’t have to overhaul the culture at your workplace to create meaning. Anyone, in any position, can change how they feel, and how their coworkers feel, simply by fostering small moments of connection. The results would be transformative. Dutton has found that high quality connections can revitalize employees emotionally and physically, and help organizations function better.”
― Emily Esfahani Smith, The Power of Meaning: Finding Fulfillment in a World Obsessed with Happiness

“Research has shown that among the benefits that come with being in a relationship or group, a sense of belonging clocks in as the most important driver of meaning.”
― Emily Esfahani Smith, The Power of Meaning: Finding Fulfillment in a World Obsessed with Happiness

“when people say that their lives have meaning, it’s because three conditions have been satisfied: they evaluate their lives as significant and worthwhile—as part of something bigger; they believe their lives make sense; and they feel their lives are driven by a sense of purpose.”
― Emily Esfahani Smith, The Power of Meaning: Finding Fulfillment in a World Obsessed with Happiness

“That’s why it’s crucial for us to learn to suffer well. Those who manage to grow through adversity do so by leaning on the pillars of meaning—and afterward, those pillars are even stronger in their lives. Some go even further. Having witnessed the power of belonging, purpose, storytelling, and transcendence in their own lives, they’re working to bring these wellsprings of meaning into their schools, workplaces, and neighborhoods—and, ultimately, they’re hoping to make a change in our society at large. It is to these cultures of meaning that we now turn.”
― Emily Esfahani Smith, The Power of Meaning: Finding Fulfillment in a World Obsessed with Happiness

“On December 25, 1968, a day after the photograph was taken, the poet Archibald MacLeish wrote in the New York Times : “To see the earth as it truly is, small and blue and beautiful in that eternal silence where it floats, is to see ourselves as riders on the earth together, brothers on that bright loveliness in the eternal cold—brothers who know now they are truly brothers.”
― Emily Esfahani Smith, The Power of Meaning: Finding Fulfillment in a World Obsessed with Happiness

“In life there will be good things and bad things,’ ” he realized, “ ‘and you can try to pull in all of the good things and push away all of the bad things, but everything will change anyway, so just let go.’ Once I did, there was no pushing or pulling anymore. I could just be with my experience, and that left me with a deep sense of equanimity.”
― Emily Esfahani Smith, The Power of Meaning: Finding Fulfillment in a World Obsessed with Happiness

“Positive psychology was founded by the University of Pennsylvania’s Martin Seligman, who, after decades of working as a research psychologist, had come to believe that his field was in crisis.21 He and his colleagues could cure depression, helplessness, and anxiety, but, he realized, helping people overcome their demons is not the same thing as helping them live well.”
― Emily Esfahani Smith, The Power of Meaning: The true route to happiness

“Attar: “Since love,” he writes of the seeker, “has spoken in your soul, reject The Self, that whirlpool where our lives are wrecked.”
― Emily Esfahani Smith, The Power of Meaning: The true route to happiness

“even though many of the Sufis I knew had led difficult lives, they were always looking forward. Their demanding spiritual practice—with its emphasis on self-denial, service, and compassion over personal gain, comfort, and pleasure—elevated them. It made their lives feel more meaningful.”
― Emily Esfahani Smith, The Power of Meaning: The true route to happiness

“If religion was once the default path to meaning, today it is one path among many, a cultural transformation that has left many people adrift.9 For millions both with and without faith, the search for meaning here on earth has become incredibly urgent—yet ever more elusive.”
― Emily Esfahani Smith, The Power of Meaning: The true route to happiness

“The philosopher John Stuart Mill wouldn’t have been surprised. “Those only are happy,” he wrote, “who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness; on the happiness of others, on the improvement of mankind, even on some art or pursuit, followed not as a means, but as itself an ideal end. Aiming thus at something else, they find happiness by the way.”
― Emily Esfahani Smith, The Power of Meaning: Finding Fulfillment in a World Obsessed with Happiness

“The world isn’t just the way it is,” as Pi says. “It is how we understand it, no?”
― Emily Esfahani Smith, The Power of Meaning: Finding Fulfillment in a World Obsessed with Happiness

“The only certainty is that we are here, in this moment, in this now. It’s up to us: to live fully, experiencing each moment, aware, alert and attentive. We are here, each one of us, to write our own story—and what fascinating stories we make!”
― Emily Esfahani Smith, The Power of Meaning: The true route to happiness

“They are the four pillars of meaning: belonging, purpose, storytelling, and transcendence”
― Emily Esfahani Smith, The Power of Meaning: Finding Fulfillment in a World Obsessed with Happiness

“The philosopher John Stuart Mill wouldn’t have been surprised. “Those only are happy,” he wrote, “who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness; on the happiness of others, on the improvement of mankind, even on some art or pursuit, followed not as a means, but as”
― Emily Esfahani Smith, The Power of Meaning: Finding Fulfillment in a World Obsessed with Happiness

“The only certainty is that we are here, in this moment, in this now. It’s up to us: to live fully, experiencing each moment, aware, alert and attentive.”
― Emily Esfahani Smith, The Power of Meaning: Crafting a Life That Matters

“When we try to pick out anything by itself,” he wrote, “we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.”
― Emily Esfahani Smith, The Power of Meaning: Finding Fulfillment in a World Obsessed with Happiness

“Kant’s ideas, as the contemporary philosopher Gordon Marino points out, fly in the face of the current cultural imperative, often heard during graduation season, to “do what you love.” To Kant, the question is not what makes you happy. The question is how to do your duty, how to best contribute—or, as the theologian Frederick Buechner put it, your vocation lies “where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”
― Emily Esfahani Smith, The Power of Meaning: Finding Fulfillment in a World Obsessed with Happiness

“Echoing Camus, she wrote: “The only certainty is that we are here, in this moment, in this now. It’s up to us: to live fully, experiencing each moment, aware, alert and attentive. We are here, each one of us, to write our own story—and what fascinating stories we make!”
― Emily Esfahani Smith, The Power of Meaning: Finding Fulfillment in a World Obsessed with Happiness

“It’s the time you spent on your rose that makes your rose so important…You become responsible forever for what you’ve tamed.”
― Emily Esfahani Smith, The Power of Meaning: Finding Fulfillment in a World Obsessed with Happiness

“did the wrong thing,” Jonathan later said. “I didn’t accept his kindness. He wanted to do something meaningful, but I treated it as a transaction.”
― Emily Esfahani Smith, The Power of Meaning: Finding Fulfillment in a World Obsessed with Happiness

“On the Meaning of Life, which was published in 1932.”
― Emily Esfahani Smith, The Power of Meaning: Finding Fulfillment in a World Obsessed with Happiness