By Emily Esfahani-Smith December 08, 2018 ⋅ 4 min read ⋅ Books
Introduction
What is the meaning of existence?
How can I live a meaningful life?
Psychologists help people overcome their demons, but it isn’t the same as helping them live well.
Although it would be best to have both happiness and depth, we would give up some happiness to gain depth.
Nozick Matrix thought experiment.
There is more to life than feeling happy.
Hedonia vs eudaimonia. Happiness vs meaning.
Happiness as a positive mental and emotional state.
Feelings are fleeting.
Meaningful lives: 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.
Happy people are takers, meaningful people are givers.
They crafted lives that matter.
Chapter 1: The Meaning Crisis
Wealthier nations had significantly higher suicide rates than poorer countries. Why?
Happiness and unhappiness didn’t predict suicide.
With meaning no longer imposed on us from an outside source, we have the freedom to create it for ourselves.
When we devote ourselves to difficult but worthwhile tasks, our lives feel more significant.
There are four pillars to meaning
Belonging
Purpose
Storytelling
Transcendence
Chapter 2: Belonging
People feel like they belong when two conditions are satisfied
They’re in relationships with others based on mutual care.
They have frequent pleasant interactions with other people.
People naturally grow to like others whom they see regularly.
Our culture makes it easy to dismiss potential friends or partners based on a single interaction.
People are more likely to befriend those with whom they share common experiences and values.
Many of us are so caught up in our own lives that we acknowledge the people we are interacting with only instrumentally; as a means to an end.
E.g. I didn’t accept his kindness. He wanted to do something meaningful but I treated it as a transaction.
Social rejection can make both the rejected and the rejector feel alienated and insignificant.
The most common way the cleaners felt devalued was by being ignored.
Close relationships and high quality connections have an important feature I common: both require us to focus on others.
Compassion and empathy lie at the center of the pillar of belonging.
If we want to find meaning in our own lives, we have to begin by reaching out.
Chapter 3: Purpose
Some people are willing to sacrifice pay, time, comfort, and status because they believe they have a duty to use their gifts.
Purpose has two important dimensions
Purpose is a stable and far-reaching goal.
Purpose involves a contribution to the world.
Most of our goals are mundane, but purpose, by contrast, is a goal towards which we are always working.
A quarter of the emerging adults were “disengaged, expressing virtually no purpose.”
But living your dream is not necessarily the same thing as finding your purpose.
Living purposefully requires self reflection and self knowledge.
E.g. What kind of person am I and what kind of person do I want to be?
A purpose-driven person is ultimately concerned not with personal benefits but with making the world a better place.
E.g. Good Will Hunting construction scene. In the scene, Will’s friend states how if he had Will’s skills and talents, then he would choose to help the world instead of following his own desires.
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.
Chapter 4: Storytelling
The stories we tell should come from scars and not wounds.
Storytelling is an act of creation which is the composition of our lives. By taking the disparate pieces of our lives and placing them together into a narrative, we create a unified whole that allows us to understand our lives as coherent.
Storytelling emerges from our need to make sense of the world. To add a layer of meaning.
People who are driven to contribute to society and to future generations are more likely to tell redemptive stories, stories that go from bad to good.
Counterfactual thinking - imagining what if some pivotal moment in your life didn’t happen.
It would’ve been an easier life, but would’ve it been a better life?
The world isn’t just the way it is, it’s also how we understand it.
Chapter 5: Transcendence
A transcendent experience is one in which we feel that we have risen above the everyday world to experience a higher reality.
Mystical experiences share four qualities
Passive
Transient
Ineffable
Noetic
Transcendence paradox: it simultaneously makes individuals feel insignificant and yet connected to something massive and meaningful.
Transcendence causes people to feel more connected to the universe and not fear death.
Chapter 6: Growth
To grow deeper and more meaningful lives through adversity.
After a traumatic experience, many people feel a strong drive to help those who have suffered as they have.
Five ways that people can grow after a crisis
Their relationships strengthen
They discover new paths and purposes in life
The trauma allows them to find their inner strength
Their spiritual life deepens
They feel a renewed appreciation for life
Earthquake metaphor
Reflecting and introspection is the difference between growing after trauma and not growing.
Write about the most upsetting experience in your life.
Expressive writing heals.
Writing helps forge meaning in several ways
By probing into the causes and consequences of the adversity.
A shift in perspective.
Their ability to find positive meaning in their traumatic experience.
Venting raw emotions does not lead to health benefits, but sustained and thoughtful writing does.
It helps us move beyond our initial emotional reactions to something deeper.
People who have endured traumas and emerged from them bent but not broken.
Ten characteristics that distinguish the resilient from the rest
Purpose: having a worthy goal or mission in life
Social support
Transcendent sources of meaning
Genetics
Chapter 7: Cultures of Meaning
Meaning seekers face an uphill battle in our culture.
Our “work and spend” culture alienates people from what really matters.
Transitioning from material want to meaning want.
Leaving room for mystery.
A Dream Directory - a staff member that helps people achieve their dreams.
Nothing is so insufferable to man as to be completely at rest, without passions, without business, without diversion, without study.
How would you like to be remembered? What matters to them? What are you proud of?