The meaning of life is whatever you ascribe it to be. Being alive is the meaning.
~ Joseph Campbell
January is officially over. It is no longer the time to create new resolutions, but the time has come to implement those resolutions and test our motivation. It could also be the time to review our resolutions in light of what happened in January. Were you able to start acting on those resolutions or have you postponed it, thinking that February was as good a month to start as January could be? Let’s take a look at this list of ours: what are we aiming for in 2020? Are we searching for happiness or are we looking for purpose in life?
Those two concepts – happiness and meaning – are not necessarily mutually exclusive, as finding meaning leads to increased life satisfaction, optimism, greater social inclusiveness and a better resistance to stress, as well as reducing health issues. As far as I am concerned, that sounds good enough. It might not be a pure burst of happiness but it sure seems to be leading to it. On the other hand, I’m not sure that being perpetually on the lookout for happiness increases our chances to find it. It is great on the short-term, with very few frustrations and a strong hedonic way-of-life. On the long term however, I don’t know if it’s worth it.
Finding a purpose to our life is the key to a sense of fulfilment and the road to happiness. Sounds great, right? But how exactly do we find meaning in life?
In the last decade, researchers and psychologists have investigated the things that give meaning to people’s life. If every individual is their own person with their own sense of meaning, studies have identified 26 components, divided into 5 dimensions, that we use to provide meaning to our life. They are as such:
- Horizontal self-transcendence has to do with our place in the world, our sense of being part of something bigger than us that we can influence.
Its 5 components are: Meaningfulness of action (probably the most important overall: what we do is important, for self and others); Link with nature; Social engagement; Health; Self-knowledge.
- Vertical self-transcendence refers to our beliefs in something bigger than ourselves that overview our lives.
Its 2 components are: Spirituality; Explicit religiosity
- Self-fulfilment involves all the things we can do to improve ourselves and increase our purpose-value on Earth.
Its 8 components are: Creativity; Individualism; Development; Knowledge; Performance; Power; Freedom; Challenge.
- Order is based on our direction (what are our values and what are our goals) and a sense of coherence (there is a form order/harmony in our life, things do not happen randomly).
Its 4 components are: Moral; Reason; Traditions; Putting down roots
- Feelings of wellbeing and belonging finally refers to our self-fulfilment and our sense of belonging (to feel like you belong to the world, through society, family, planet, groups…).
Its 7 components are: Pleasure; Wellbeing; Community; Conscious perception; Concern (knowing that people rely on you, that you are needed); Harmony; Love.
In order to feel like our life has a meaning, we do not need to feed all 5 dimensions. Based on our personality, our upbringing, our life choices… we will rely more on some dimensions than on others. Each an everyone of us will create their own sense of meaning, using different components in various dimensions. Intuitively, we could assume that the more dimensions we rely on, the easier it is to create purpose. If the need to create meaningfulness is not our only source of sense, it is easier to accept that said meaningfulness might take time to occur in our lives.
It is healthier to rely on multiple sense of purpose; putting all our eggs in one basket can be a source of stress, leading not to a sense of purpose but anxiety and burnout. The most common example of this is the search of meaning through work. And it makes sense I guess: if you are to go to work, 5 days a week, 7 hours a day (applicable to any type of jobs really), finding purpose in what you do makes it easier to get out of bed every morning. When you feel your job contributes to your self-fulfilment and increase your self-knowledge, while being useful to society, you are more willing to work long hours and don’t mind as much receiving lower salaries. If you feel that you have a purpose at work, you seem to be less likely to ask for a pay rise… while your colleagues that don’t have this sense of purpose will. Additionally, the more you expect from your work, the easier you’ll feel frustration if you can’t do things as you think they should be (most likely due to budget restrictions…). Frustration often leads to burnout, which can lead to depression. Moral of the story: don’t over-invest in your work. Find something you enjoy doing but do not rest all your hopes of meaning and happiness on it.
Looking for purpose is having the courage to say: “I don’t know where my life is going at the moment or what the meaning of it is”. It doesn’t mean your life doesn’t have meaning; it means you never stopped to ask yourself what it could be. Taking the time and the mental space to assess our believes and our expectations can help us figure out how to find purpose in life. What matters to you? What direction would you like your life to have? It is okay to realise you are on the wrong tracks, the important is recognising it, accepting it, and forming a plan to change it.
The first scientist to have highlighted the human need for meaning, Viktor E. Frankl, said: “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms is to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” So the only remaining question is: what way are you going to choose?
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