Have you considered lately what gets you out of bed in the morning? What are you enthused about accomplishing? What brings you happiness and makes your life satisfying? Do you feel that your life matters? Questions like these turn our attention to significant aspects of resilience: meaning and purpose. Let’s discuss what we know about these topics and how to benefit from them.
Purpose refers to what one determines to do—goals one intends to accomplish. Meaning implies that one’s purposes, actions, or experiences are worthwhile and significant to the person.
People who sense that their lives have meaning and purpose are generally happier and more resilient. What might explain this?
Some of the most profound thoughts on meaning and purpose were expressed by the psychiatrist Viktor Frankl. He based his thinking largely on his experience in WWII concentration camps. Frankl was fond of quoting the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, who said, “He who has a why to live can bear with almost any how.” In other words, meaning and purpose can help us survive and even thrive in difficult circumstances.
Frankl observed that those who endured their suffering best had a reason for living—something that life expected of them, something that impelled them to persist, something that lifted their spirits. Some found joy and meaning in serving their suffering comrades in the camps. In fact, at great peril to his own health, Frankl volunteered to care for prisoners who were sick with typhus, applying his much-needed medical skills. He further transcended the misery of camp life by envisioning his beloved wife and by imagining himself in the future giving lectures on the lessons of the concentration camps. He also marveled with consummate pleasure at nature’s beauty. From his experience, he declared that your physical freedom might be taken away, but no one can take away your inner freedom—the freedom to choose your attitude toward suffering and your ability to impose meaning on even the greatest adversities. His experience actually helped him develop the school of psychotherapy called logotherapy, which helps people find meaning in their lives. In his own life, Frankl found great satisfaction in helping others find meaning and purpose. He wrote that what human beings need “is not a tensionless state but rather a striving and struggling for some goal worthy” (1963, 166) of them.
Psychologists Philip Zimbardo and John Boyd (2008) further suggest that looking forward to a meaningful future stimulates one to set satisfying goals, make plans, and work hard to succeed and be healthy. These behaviors tend to promote happiness, health, and resilience. And focusing on creating a meaningful and purposeful future helps to protect against post-traumatic stress symptoms and mental disorders generally—perhaps by countering the tendency to get stuck in the negatives of past experiences.
Circumstances in life, particularly difficult ones, will cause you to summon your strengths—your abilities, values, loves, desires, experience, and wisdom. Applying your strengths in a meaningful way is a very personal, creative, heartfelt process: no one else will combine the strengths you have in the same way. When we immerse ourselves in challenging causes that matter, meaning and purpose increase (Nakamura and Csikszentmihalyi 2003). Unlike fleeting material pleasures, the satisfaction we gain from meaningful endeavors tends to persist and even increase with time.
How do we discover, or increase, meaning and purpose in our lives? It can be useful to consider three domains: life in general, work, and crisis.
Frankl stressed that each person finds his own unique path to meaning and purpose in his own time. The meaning and purpose checklist (adapted from Schiraldi 2016a), which is based on Frankl’s work, lists possible routes to meaning and purpose. As an exercise to stimulate ideas, place a check beside an item that you might be interested in pursuing, either now or in the future. In other words, check those items that you think might increase meaning and purpose in your life. As you complete this checklist, consider what you really want from life and what you want to contribute to the world. The items are grouped in three broad areas. The most satisfied people will generally strike a balance between the three.
Establish, join, or recommit to a social or political cause that excites you (politics, science, church or synagogue, Mothers Against Drunk Driving, Parents of Murdered Children, urban sanctuaries for children, youth mentoring, strengthening your own family, and so forth).
Create art, poetry, and writing or explore other creative expression that makes something new, beautiful, or useful.
Give money or material support to a worthy cause.
Engage in selfless service, seek self-transcendence, and build up or help others.
Give even in small ways that help or please others, such as by picking up trash by the side of the road; beautifying your yard for your neighbor’s benefit, not yours; giving a coworker, spouse, or neighbor an unexpected hand; lifting up anyone in any small way (a smile, a thank-you, a listening ear).
Commit to do your best at your job today.
Simply observe what you do, or can do, to meet others’ needs.
Share with others what you have discovered to reduce your own suffering.
Adventure
Cathedrals
Connecting with neighbors
Exercising your body
Faces
Friends
Intimate love
Nature (for example, get up early and watch the sunrise; gaze at the constellations at night)
Noticing what you appreciate in others (tell them)
Recreation
Teamwork
Watching children play (hearing them laugh)
Courage, taking responsibility for your own life (According to Yalom 1980, “I can’t” often means “I won’t take responsibility for my own life,” which is a form of avoidance.)
Improving the mind
Loyalty and honesty
Peace of mind, serenity
Personal growth, holiness, goodness of character, self-actualization
Refraining from criticizing, complaining, whining, backbiting, and other negative behaviors
Understanding, empathy, patience, compassion
Meaning and purpose spring from our deepest values. Before proceeding, please consider these questions: What do you notice about the items you’ve checked? What do they say about what you value in life? Is there balance among the three areas? Does this checklist suggest actions you’d like to take? Perhaps you’d wish to write about this in your journal, if you keep one.
Many people find meaning and purpose in their work. Ideally, find an occupation that you love to do. People who are happy at work tend to be more successful. If you can’t have the job you most love, figure out how to love the job you have.
How might you turn your job or career into a vocation in which your strengths are utilized in a meaningful and satisfying way? How might you redefine your job as a calling rather than drudgery? As an exercise, rewrite your job description so that people would want to apply for it. Highlight the benefits. Especially consider those aspects of the job that call forth your strengths, skills, and values—and give you the greatest pleasure, including interactions with others. After you complete this job description, imagine hiring yourself. Keep the new job description handy. Reread it when you get frustrated with your boss or when you wonder why you are doing the work you are doing.
Amy Wrzesniewski and colleagues (1997) found that one-third of a hospital’s cleaning staff viewed the work as a calling—a calling to make the hospital experience positive for patients and staff alike. While the other two-thirds complained about the degrading work and low pay, this minority believed that its work mattered. They went beyond their job requirements, bringing flowers and smiles to patients. They reasoned that beautifying the environment would help patients heal and the medical staff to be more effective. Similarly, a customer service representative might turn cynical as she considers the rude people she constantly must confront. Or, she might find meaning in remembering that she gets to help frustrated people feel better.
Each job can be meaningful. In World War II, General George Patton told his truck drivers that without them the war would have been lost. If your whole job is not satisfying, what parts can you find satisfaction in completing? If completing a task is not possible in the near future, can you find satisfaction in the process of making progress?
You might reconsider your goals and expectations for work. For example, a physician might focus on external rewards, such as prestige, income, and pleasing his parents with the status of his job. Alternatively, he might focus on the more intrinsically satisfying goals of serving others.
Barbara Fredrickson and colleagues (2003) found that resilient people feel more positive after crises because they are more likely to find positive meaning from the crises. They suggest that meaning and purpose might be the most powerful ways to cultivate positive emotions during and after crises. (Recall that positive emotions, in turn, help to improve performance under pressure.) It is understandable that we will likely feel negative emotions as we deal with life’s difficult situations. However, finding positive meaning can help us to cope better during and after such situations. These researchers suggest the following activity for finding meaning in adversity.
Activity: Finding Meaning in Adversity
Identify a current problem, such as conflict, the end of a relationship, having too much to do, a troubled family member, a move, major life changes, the illness or death of a loved one, or your own illness. Take time to ponder and then respond to these questions in writing.
Additional questions to consider:
Although there is no single road to meaning and purpose, many of the pathways contain common themes. Much of meaning and purpose is about developing our strengths and investing them in something larger than the self. Much of what is meaningful in life relates to using our strengths to elevate, serve, or love others—in short, helping to make others happier, which is the ultimate source of happiness (see helps for identifying strengths in the recommended resources). These efforts are uniquely personal and can be made consistent with our individual capacities.
Happiness tends to increase when we are absorbed in meaningful and satisfying activities—investing our best selves in ways that are challenging but not overwhelming. So seek meaningful pursuits. Do what you can, but don’t overdo it.
I have repeatedly stressed how happiness and resilience are closely linked. Having a cause (or causes) that matters makes us happier and helps us persevere through difficult times. Please consider these reflections on meaning and purpose:
The primary motivational force in man is his striving for meaning.
It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. —Viktor Frankl
Identify your regrets. This tells you something about what you still value, what matters to you, what is meaningful. —John Burt
Without a firm idea of himself and the purpose of his life, man cannot live, and would sooner destroy himself than remain on earth, even if he was surrounded with bread. —Fyodor Dostoyevsky
At one time I used to say that all those guys died [in Vietnam] for nothing. Now I know better. Any man that lays down his life so others can be free is not only rich, I believe he sits at God’s right hand. —Sergeant David A. Somerville