Meaning

What Is Meaning?

From the beginning of time, humans have been driven by big questions:

• Why are we here?
• What is my purpose?
• What is the meaning of life?

These questions fuel our curiosity and shape everything from our cultures to our personal beliefs.

In scientific terms, meaning is a topic explored from different psychological and philosophical perspectives. Two key approaches are:

• Existential Psychology: This approach digs into how people find meaning, especially in the face of life’s uncertainties and tough times. It often tackles the "darker" aspects of existence, like guilt, suffering, and the reality of death. It asks: How do we find purpose when things get tough?
• Positive Psychology: On the flip side, positive psychology focuses on the "brighter" side of life. It looks at how meaning contributes to happiness, well-being, and life satisfaction. It asks: How can finding purpose help us live happier, more fulfilling lives?

Meaning helps us deal with life's big challenges, like uncertainty and fear of death, but it also propels us to thrive and grow. It’s essential for making sense of our lives, helping us see where we fit in the world, and guiding us toward a fulfilling life.

The Importance of Having a Sense of Meaning

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is a straightforward way to understand what drives us as humans.

It breaks down our needs into five levels, starting with the basics and moving towards the more complex:

1. Physiological Needs: These are our most basic survival needs—food, water, shelter. Without these, nothing else matters.
2. Safety Needs: Once our basic needs are met, we look for safety and stability. This includes feeling secure in our environment, finances, and health.
3. Love and Belonging Needs: After we feel safe, we seek connection. We want to be part of a community, to have friendships, love, and a sense of belonging.
4. Esteem Needs: Next, we want respect—from others and from ourselves. This includes our desire for status, recognition, and independence.
5. Self-Actualisation Needs: Finally, at the top of the hierarchy, we have the desire to realise our fullest potential. This is about personal growth, creativity, and finding meaning in life.

While our basic needs like food and safety are essential for survival, the need for meaning is what gives our lives depth. It’s about more than just getting by; it’s about understanding our experiences, finding purpose, and making sense of the world around us.

The need for meaning in life boils down to four core needs:

• Purpose gives us direction.
• Values help us decide what matters.
• Efficacy is the belief that we can make a difference.
• Self-worth is about feeling valuable.

When these needs are met, we experience a deep sense of meaning. But if any of these needs are lacking, it can feel like something important is missing.

Purpose

Purpose is about seeing how your current actions connect to future outcomes. It comes in two forms:

• Goals: These are specific targets you aim for, like losing weight. While the process (like exercising) might not be enjoyable, it’s meaningful because it serves a purpose. Long-term goals provide direction, and breaking them into smaller steps can help you stay motivated and avoid frustration.
• Fulfillment: This is about achieving a state of happiness or satisfaction. It’s a more abstract concept that involves feeling positive and achieving goals that you believe will make you happier.

Both goals and fulfillment can guide you toward a meaningful life. What matters most is that your current activities are linked to future outcomes or states, giving your life a sense of purpose.

Value

The need for value is about feeling that your thoughts and actions are right and justifiable. Values are structured hierarchically, meaning actions are judged based on broader principles. For example, religious beliefs often serve as a fundamental value base, providing ultimate justification without needing further proof.

Cultures and societies are the ultimate providers of values and provide these foundational principles. We naturally seek value and morality, but we rely on our culture to supply the options. Without a strong value base, ideologies lose their impact. Values help us determine what’s right or wrong and allow us to justify our actions, boosting our self-esteem and reducing guilt or anxiety.

Efficacy

Efficacy is about feeling that you can make a difference and control your outcomes. It’s more than just having goals and values; you need to believe in your ability to achieve them.

You experience efficacy when you tackle challenges that are neither too easy nor too hard. If tasks are too simple, they’re boring; if they’re too tough, they’re frustrating. The sweet spot is finding tasks that push you enough to enter a "flow" state, where you feel both effective and engaged.

Efficacy overlaps with control but is more about your perception of control rather than the actual control itself. You can feel efficacious even if you don’t have real control, as long as you believe you do.

Self-Worth

Self-worth is about feeling positive about yourself and finding ways to boost that feeling. One common method is downward social comparison, where you compare yourself to others who are worse off to feel superior.

Another strategy is the self-serving bias, where you credit yourself for successes and blame external factors for failures. This bias helps protect your self-esteem, especially when you feel threatened. Essentially, it’s a way to maintain a positive self-image and boost your self-worth, even if it means bending the truth a bit.

Happiness in Meaning-Making

Our culture plays a significant role in shaping how we perceive both happiness and meaning. It teaches us what to value and influences our worldview (i.e., the mental framework through which we interpret our experiences).

This worldview answers three essential questions that impact our happiness:

• Who am I? This question addresses our sense of identity.
• What should I do? This relates to our goals and the choices we make.
• How am I related to others? This concerns our relationships and connections.

In Western societies, this is influenced by three major forces:

1. Individualism: This promotes personal freedom and self-determination but can also lead to isolation and a focus on self-interest. As a result, happiness is often seen as a personal achievement rather than a collective experience.
2. Capitalism: While capitalism fosters innovation and can improve quality of life, it also emphasizes economic success and consumerism. This focus can trap us in a cycle of constant striving, leading to dissatisfaction.
3. Domination: Societal structures that prioritize individual success over others can create a competitive culture that damages self-worth and fosters discrimination. In such a system, worth is often measured by outshining others rather than inherent humanity.

These cultural forces often lead us to answer the questions of identity, purpose, and connection in ways that emphasise inadequacy, achievement, and separation, and can leave many people feeling unfulfilled and disconnected from true happiness, contributing to a culture that encourages pursuits such as:

• Striving for perfection
• Accumulating wealth
• Gaining material possessions
• Following a prescribed path
• Working incessantly
• Seeking fame and recognition
• Competing and winning

However, as Martin Luther King Jr. observed, true happiness comes from seeking the well-being of others rather than pursuing these external markers of success. This shift in perspective encourages us to look beyond momentary pleasures or external achievements and instead focus on deeper, more enduring sources of fulfillment.

Furthermore, you can find meaning in life without being happy, but it's rare to be truly happy without finding some meaning. A striking example of this is the "parenthood paradox." Studies show that while happiness may decrease for parents due to the demands and challenges of raising children, the sense of meaning and purpose increases. This paradox highlights how meaning can enrich our lives even when happiness feels elusive.

Common Misconceptions About Finding Meaning

In today’s world, people often hold mistaken beliefs about finding meaning in life. These misconceptions can shape how we seek and perceive meaning.

There are four myths of meaning:

• Completeness: Many believe life should provide clear answers and solve all problems, creating a perfect, unified story. This drive for completeness can lead to frustration when some questions remain unanswered or issues remain unresolved.
• Consistency: We want our beliefs and experiences to be free of contradictions. This desire for consistency can lead us to ignore or rationalize inconsistencies, creating an illusion of coherence while masking life’s inherent complexities.
• Stability: We often expect life’s rules and relationships to remain constant, despite constant change. Trying to impose stability on a dynamic world can lead to disappointment when things don’t stay as we hoped, like believing a relationship should always be perfect.
• Fulfillment: There’s a common belief that achieving certain goals, like finding true love or becoming wealthy, will lead to lasting happiness. However, research shows that the joy from new achievements often fades over time, as people adapt and the initial sense of fulfillment becomes temporary.

Understanding these myths can help us manage our expectations and find more realistic paths to meaning and satisfaction.

How to Avoid Myths of Meaning

There are four ways to avoid these myths:

1. Embrace Uncertainty: Accept that life may not always fit neatly into a complete, coherent narrative. Recognize that unanswered questions and unresolved problems are a natural part of the human experience.
2. Acknowledge Complexity: Understand that consistency is an ideal, not a reality. Be open to contradictions and complexities in your beliefs and experiences, and learn to navigate them without needing everything to align perfectly.
3. Adapt to Change: Accept that stability is an illusion in a constantly changing world. Instead of seeking permanence, focus on adapting to changes and finding meaning in the present moment, even when things are in flux.
4. Seek Ongoing Fulfillment: Recognize that fulfillment is often temporary and can be influenced by changing circumstances. Aim for continuous personal growth and satisfaction rather than expecting specific goals to provide lasting happiness.

How to Find Meaning

Finding meaning in life often comes down to two key actions: discovering who you truly are and using that self-awareness to help others.

1. Discover Who You Really Are

To find meaning, start with self-discovery. This means taking time to understand your values, beliefs, and passions. Engage in activities that you enjoy and that give you a sense of accomplishment. These experiences can reveal what truly matters to you. By setting goals that align with your core values, you can shape a life that feels purposeful. This approach, known as life design, involves actively creating a life that reflects your authentic self. It’s about making intentional choices and exploring paths that bring you closer to your vision of a meaningful life.

2. Use It to Help Others

Once you know who you are, channel that understanding into helping others. Building strong relationships and connecting with people can give you a sense of belonging and purpose. Acts of kindness, compassion, and service not only strengthen your bonds with others but also create a sense of shared purpose. Whether it’s through volunteering, mentoring, or simply being there for someone in need, helping others can offer deep fulfilment and reinforce your sense of meaning.

An Unconventional Way to Meaning

An unconventional way to find meaning is to keep death in mind every single day, or in other words, Momento Mori.

You might have heard of Bronnie Ware, an Australian palliative care nurse who spent eight years helping people at the end of their lives. Her book, The Top Five Regrets of the Dying, reveals common regrets people express in their final days. Here are the key insights she uncovered:

• "I wish I had let myself be happier." Many people regret not embracing joy and choosing a lighter path, despite having the chance to do so.
• "I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends." Relationships and connections often take a backseat to work and daily responsibilities, leading to regrets about lost friendships.
• "I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings." Bottling up emotions and not sharing true thoughts can lead to a sense of missed authenticity.
• "I wish I hadn’t worked so hard." Work can consume time and energy, leaving little room for other fulfilling aspects of life.
• "I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me." This is the most common regret—a longing to have lived authentically, rather than conforming to others’ expectations.

The common thread among these regrets is not about external circumstances but about not aligning with one’s ideal self. A study from Cornell University, titled "The Ideal Road Not Taken," highlights three key aspects of self-perception:

• The Actual Self: Who you believe you are right now.
• The Ideal Self: Who you aspire to become.
• The Ought Self: Who you feel you should be based on societal expectations and responsibilities.

The gap between your actual self and your ideal self creates dissatisfaction and regret. It’s this disparity that often leads to the feelings of missed opportunity and unfulfilled potential.

Dan Sullivan encapsulates this perfectly:

"The definition of hell is: Your last day on Earth, the person you became meets the person you could have become."

To live without regrets, strive to close this gap. Make conscious choices that align with who you want to be, not just who you are expected to be, and use the reminder of your mortality as a guide to ensure that each day is a step toward becoming your ideal self.

Best Meaning Books

• Man's Search For Meaning by Viktor Frankl
• When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi

All meaning Articles

• Time Anxiety: How to Worry Less and Live More
• How Reflecting on Death Can Bring Meaning to Your Life
• You’re Going to Die Anyway, Might as Well Try
• Fear Setting: An Exercise to Define and Conquer Your Fears
• Passion vs. Practicality: Finding Your Ideal Work Life
• 3 Ways The Stoics Can Help You Find Meaning

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