Introduction
What is the meaning and purpose of life for you? Please take a moment to reflect on this question. Whether you have asked yourself this question before or not, it is very helpful to check in from time to time, and ask yourself, with an open heart and open mind, once again.
After all, your answer may shift over time, including by reading this book, which lays out a science-based path to help you find a deep sense of meaning and purpose in life.
Using science to address life’s meaning and purpose may seem surprising to many. After all, the traditional mainstream approach believes that science can’t answer big life questions – that’s the job of religion.
Courtesy of Cerina Gillilan
Well, actually there’s been a wave of recent research in psychology, cognitive neuroscience, and other disciplines on how we can find a rich sense of meaning and purpose in life. The workbook combines an engaging narrative, academic research, and stories from people’s everyday lives, and provides a set of exercises to help you figure out your personal sense of meaning and purpose. In writing this, I drew on my own scholarship on meaning and purpose, and my experience in giving workshops, teaching classes, creating videos, and writing blog posts that translate such research into practical strategies for finding life meaning and purpose.
Now, many people who come to my workshops and classes are looking for a simple, clear, and straightforward answer to what life is all about. They want certainty about life’s meaning and purpose. Well, I’d love to address life’s meaning and purpose for all people and for all time, but I can’t give the absolute right answer to the big question of “what is the meaning of life.” I don’t deal in sound bites and dogmas.
What I can do in this book is provide you some clear and practical research-based strategies for figuring out a personal sense of life’s meaning and purpose. In other words, I offer the answer to the question “what is the meaning of life for you?”
Those who attended my workshops and classes on this topic found these techniques very helpful.
One participant stated in an anonymous feedback form that s/he gained “a better understanding of what it means to search for meaning, with the research basis especially greatly contributing to my comprehension.” A second noted that after attending the workshop, “I have a much better sense of how to consider questions of meaning and purpose.”
A third wrote that “from attending this workshop, I have gained the basic knowledge for greater self-exploration.” Several chose to give videotaped interviews about their experience in a workshop on meaning and purpose. They kindly permitted me to include their names and links to their videotaped feedback, for example Ryan Mulholand; Brenda Penn; Karen
Thimmes, and Jake Calaway. Their descriptions of their experience testifies to how much they benefitted from engaging with the research-based strategies to finding a deeper sense of meaning and purpose in life.
I got in touch with some of these workshop participants a few weeks after the workshop, to see whether it influenced them in the long term. It did. The most illustrative statement came from Ryan, whose story I will share throughout this book. Ryan, who is a 21-year-old college student, stated that when he first came to the workshop, “my original highest order goals revolved largely around living a comfortable life.” Yet in the course of the workshop, he realized that “the issue with this mindset was that it was too shallow and self-centered for me to be content with for long.” As a result of the workshop, he stated that “ “I reached several conclusions in what I desired most out of life. I figured out that I wanted to build a life that was centered around bettering myself and other people. I wanted to be someone who constantly was learning and growing, while at the same time, being a teacher of sorts to help those around me… With these thoughts in mind, I promptly changed my major and have since then, begun to work toward making these wants into realities.” His full statement describing his experience is available here.
You can gain similar benefits by engaging with the content and exercises in this workbook, which offers:
• Stories from people’s everyday experience finding life’s meaning and purpose • Some diverse approaches to this question informed by recent research and contemporary thinkers
• Pragmatic and straightforward strategies for working out the meaning and purpose of life for yourself
Let me give a real-life example of how the workbook helps people, by once again turning to Ryan. He read through a draft of the workbook, and described his thoughts as follows. “The majority of the book’s content focuses on exercises to help you establish the initial ideas of what hold the greatest amount of meaning and purpose... The total sum of initial work is no more than two hours, but what is that compared to the time that will be spent living life as you see fit? It is in this investment of time, both initially and continually, that you will come closer and closer to your objective. The reason for the need to revisit your plans and goals is because your answers may change. In short, life happens, and with it comes new experiences. If you do take the time to evaluate your purpose and meaning in life, then, with time, you will achieve the goals you set forth.” For his full evaluation of his experience with the book, click on this link.
John, currently 27 and studying to become a teacher, also read a draft version of the workbook. Unlike Ryan, he did not go to any previous workshops or engaged with any other Intentional Insights content beforehand. This is what he wrote about his experience: “I was able to gain a new perspective on my own life and priorities. Its research-based strategies for evaluating one’s purpose and meaning have helped me develop a clearer vision for my future.
I am currently pursuing a new set of goals—both personally and professionally—that align with my values. In short, I have clearer understanding of who I am and of my place in the community.” I hope the workbook will help you like it helped Ryan and John.
The first section of this workbook describes the relevance of meaning and purpose to people’s lives; the second section deals with studies and thinking on finding life’s meaning and purpose; and the third section relates the strategies and tools for figuring out your own sense of life’s meaning and purpose. Some of you may wish to skip straight to the third section, and you are welcome to do so, after taking the questionnaire described below.
This workbook comes out of my engagement with a nonprofit organization, Intentional
Insights. The nonprofit’s mission is to empower people to refine and reach their goals by providing research-based content to help improve thinking, feeling, and behavior patterns.
One of the areas we focus on is helping people reach their life goals, such as finding meaning and purpose in life. Intentional Insights delivers such content through in-person presentations, through online channels such as free online classes, videos, and blogs devoted to this topic, and workbooks such as this one. Our work has been covered in mainstream media such as The Columbus Dispatch, The Examiner, and elsewhere.
As part of that organization, I led the creation of a comprehensive program offering participants practical and pragmatic strategies for figuring out their personal answers to life's big questions. This program draws from my research on how people found purpose and meaning in diverse historical contexts (Tsipursky, “Having Fun;” “Citizenship”; “Conformism;” “Living ‘America’”), and research by many others as well, from a variety of disciplines. As a historian of science, I research the intersection of history, psychology, and cognitive neuroscience, specifically focusing on meaning and purpose, emotions, decision making, and agency in historical contexts. Thus, I am in the fortunate position of having scholarly expertise in combining research from many different fields into a cohesive whole, and translation of this information for a broad audience. I am especially grateful to have collaboration and feedback from experts in a variety of disciplines, which includes psychology, social work, and therapy, (Dr. Joe Guada and Dr. Bo Bennett), education (Dr. Bob Bhaerman), cognitive neuroscience (Dr. Carlos Cabrera), philosophy (Dr. Richard Carrier and Dr. Amy White), religion (Unitarian Universalist Rev. Dr. Mark Belletini and United Methodist Rev. Caleb Pitkin) and many others. All the good things in this book are the combined result of all of these efforts, while I take full and sole responsibility for any mistakes and oversights.
Before proceeding, let’s clarify some terms. Scholars on meaning and purpose define these words differently than they are used in common language. Researchers use “purpose” to refer to a broad aspiration in life that motivates one’s everyday activities. They use “meaning” as a more overarching term to refer both to one’s life purpose, but also one’s broad comprehension of one’s life, self, and the world. However, since life meaning and purpose are used interchangeably in everyday speech, I will use them interchangeably in this workbook (Steger et al. “Acceptance”).
Now, you may say that well, research and strategies based on it are all well and good, and they may work for the majority. And it’s helpful to learn about people’s personal stories, such as the one Ryan chose to share. Yet how do I know the strategies in this workbook will help me to get a deeper sense of meaning and purpose in my life?
Excellent question! I know the feeling. I often read studies and advice based on them, and am not sure whether the conclusions of studies would be relevant to my life. And while personal stories are gripping and powerful, they don’t necessarily apply to me. Moreover, as this book will describe, there are many ways one can try to gain a deeper sense of meaning and purpose. How would you know what are the best ones to pursue for you?
This is why it’s so important to evaluate and quantify your personal sense of meaning and purpose, and to tie the quantification to the different types of meaning-making activities that you may choose to do. To help you accomplish that quantification, I developed a tool, the “Meaning and Purpose Questionnaire (MPQ),” based on research on meaning and purpose, my own and that of others as well (Steger, Frazier, Oishi, Kaler, “The Meaning in Life Questionnaire” ; McDonald, Wong, Gingras). The MPQ will provide a baseline for you to evaluate your own progress in finding meaning and purpose. You can get a copy of the MPQ if you email us at info@intentionalinsights.org, and it is also available here. We are also working on a web and mobile app where you can take the MPQ at regular intervals and graph your sense of meaning and purpose over time. Doing so will help you understand:
• whether you are making progress in gaining a deeper sense of meaning and purpose
• what specific activities are most impactful for you in having meaning and purpose in life • finally, how to customize the science-based strategies to gain the most benefit for yourself.
Sign up to the Intentional Insights newsletter to learn more about the app and our other offerings that help people refine and reach their goals. Also check out the Intentional Insights Facebook Page, Twitter, and Pinterest to engage with our content, ask us any clarifying questions, and imprve your ability to gain a richer sense of life purpose.