Speaker 1: Welcome to the Psychology Podcast, where we give you insights
Speaker 1: into the mind, brain, behavior, and creativity. I'm doctor Scott
Speaker 1: Barry Kaufman, and in each episode I have a conversation
Speaker 1: with a guest who will stimulate your mind and give
Speaker 1: you a greater understanding of yourself, others, and the world
Speaker 1: to live in. Hopefully we'll also provide a glimpse into
Speaker 1: human possibility. Thanks for listening and enjoy the podcast. So
Speaker 1: today we have Michael Steeger on the podcast. Doctor Steeger
Speaker 1: is a professor of psychology and the founding director of
Speaker 1: the Center for Meaning and Purpose at Colorado State University.
Speaker 1: He studies the link between meaning and life and well being,
Speaker 1: as well as the psychological predictors of physical health and
Speaker 1: health risk behaviors, and the facilitators and benefits of engaging
Speaker 1: and meaningful work. Michael, really an honor to talk with
Speaker 1: you today. Thank you. I'm excited to be here and
Speaker 1: it's an honor for me to be invited to talk
Speaker 1: with you. Oh, that was very kind of you to say. So.
Speaker 1: I'm a you know, a grand miner of your work,
Speaker 1: and I consider your work meaningful. And I know I'm
Speaker 1: not just saying that to be like to come with
Speaker 1: some corny, you know thing, you know comment there, Like, seriously,
Speaker 1: your work is has a lot of meaning in itself
Speaker 1: because what is you know, you really cut at the
Speaker 1: core of human existence with your research. I mean, you
Speaker 1: don't like mess around with like no offense like I'm
Speaker 1: thinking of like visual cognition researchers or like those who
Speaker 1: study like you know, the fourth cortex of the visual neuron.
Speaker 1: But you know that's important work for sure, But I'm saying,
Speaker 1: you know, in terms of what really resonates right with
Speaker 1: like what it means to be alive, your work really
Speaker 1: cuts to the core of that, right Well, it's really
Speaker 1: nice for me to say. I mean, I think you
Speaker 1: know that that V four cortex of you know, that
Speaker 1: visual processing area probably is the one that maybe that
Speaker 1: processes que kittens and babyfaces. Life would be pretty pretty
Speaker 1: bad without it too. So what I would say the
Speaker 1: I'm just attracted to the situation we find ourselves in
Speaker 1: that were these complicated blends of abstract ever seeking aspiring
Speaker 1: creatures within these messy bodies that get angry and make
Speaker 1: weird smells, and you know, this whole combination of the
Speaker 1: limitations that we have as individuals, along with the knowledge
Speaker 1: that there's something really huge out there that we might
Speaker 1: strive for. I think that's to me the human condition
Speaker 1: and why not try to learn more about that if
Speaker 1: you can? For sure? Yeah? Why not? Right? Yeah? And
Speaker 1: you could you know? Well, I mean, what was your
Speaker 1: dissertation topic? What was your topic? As a grad stent?
Speaker 1: Was it meaning? It was? So my dissertation topic I
Speaker 1: as a little background, I got my PhDa in counseling
Speaker 1: and also a specialization in personality psychology at Minnesota, and
Speaker 1: a lot of psychology would tell you that behavior is
Speaker 1: the foundation of psychology, and that Minnesota there the motto
Speaker 1: seemed to be that measurement was the foundation of psychology.
Speaker 1: So when I said I was interested in this weird
Speaker 1: philosophical topic of meaning in life, my advisor, doctor Patricia Fraser,
Speaker 1: was fine with that to some degree, but she basically
Speaker 1: said that we have to prove that it's a real thing,
Speaker 1: and the way you do that is to measure it.
Speaker 1: So my dissertation was trying to figure out how to
Speaker 1: get a maybe easier to use, more recent and modern
Speaker 1: measure of meaning in life. And so that was something
Speaker 1: I ended up calling the Meaning of Life Questionnaire. Wait,
Speaker 1: so you one of the first ever researchers in the
Speaker 1: history of the field of psychology to operationalize and measure meaning.
Speaker 1: Oh that's a statement. No it doesn't. It'd be cool,
Speaker 1: but no. The first measure of meaning from which a
Speaker 1: pretty decent sized research body came about, was published in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty four and Life Tests by Crumbau Maholic, and
Speaker 1: then nineteen seventy three had another one called the Life
Speaker 1: Regard Index, and that was a decent Almond sort of
Speaker 1: psychiatric bunch. Psychiatrists were the folks who developed the first couple,
Speaker 1: and then there's another batch in the mid eighties from
Speaker 1: Gary Reeker and Paul Wong who collaborated on the Life
Speaker 1: Attitude Profile. And then the biggest, well even at the
Speaker 1: biggest but a very important one that occurred nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: nine was Carol Riff's Psychological well Being model includes a
Speaker 1: measure of purpose purpose subscales as well, And there's even
Speaker 1: one more notable one out there called sense of coherence
Speaker 1: by Aaron Antoniovsky early nineteas. So there's a long history
Speaker 1: of people trying to figure out how to get a
Speaker 1: read on where people fall on thinking that their life
Speaker 1: does or doesn't have meaning. I think my attraction was
Speaker 1: to try to get a little bit easier to use
Speaker 1: version of something like that. Well, I started the measurement
Speaker 1: project in about two doesn't two, and we just happen
Speaker 1: to know a lot more about how to develop solid
Speaker 1: psychometrically robust measures. So I was able to target trying
Speaker 1: to have a really nice, clean measure, pretty easy to use,
Speaker 1: really strong psychometric properties. And it also measures something love
Speaker 1: full turn sit in regarding search for meaning, how intently
Speaker 1: people are motivated to parry more meaning in their lives.
Speaker 1: So I think you know, it wasn't a new idea
Speaker 1: to try to study this, It wasn't a new idea
Speaker 1: to try to measure it. I just wanted to bring,
Speaker 1: you know, the rigor of my of my training at
Speaker 1: Minnesota to this topic and maybe a new way. It's
Speaker 1: nice that you mentioned and those who came before you.
Speaker 1: It's very important to give credit, and that's great, But
Speaker 1: a lot of them, I'm not sure you're giving yourself
Speaker 1: enough credit. I guess this is the point I'm trying
Speaker 1: to make. So a lot of them came up with
Speaker 1: scales of purpose, but a big point of you know,
Speaker 1: what you're doing here is you're saying that meaning is
Speaker 1: not necessarily you know, purpose is one source meaning, but
Speaker 1: meaning might actually be a broader umbrella. So I feel
Speaker 1: like you actually brought to the table, maybe for one
Speaker 1: of the first times legitimately more sort of broader, deeper
Speaker 1: understanding of meaning than what had come before you. Is
Speaker 1: that at least a fair statement. Will you take that? No,
Speaker 1: you won't. I'll probably deflect that a little bit as well, Okay,
Speaker 1: because I think the issue is it's not something that
Speaker 1: I feel as one individual person. Everything really back my
Speaker 1: head around. I think the way that I entered into
Speaker 1: this topic was trying to just understand. I guess my
Speaker 1: main curiosity was how of people and maybe even the
Speaker 1: best of us tried to figure out what it's really
Speaker 1: all about to be a human and how to try
Speaker 1: to be the best version of that we can. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's almost an endless number of problems facing our planet,
Speaker 1: basing our societies, the bumble among us, and we need
Speaker 1: to figure out what the best part of ourselves is
Speaker 1: to bring together and work on these issues. And I
Speaker 1: certainly don't have any better answer than most people. And
Speaker 1: if you take a look all the way back to
Speaker 1: the epic of Gilgamesh, which I love to talk about.
Speaker 1: I've been talking Tosh for like a decade. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's the world's oldest written, solid, tangible story, and it's
Speaker 1: about one person's sort of struggle to find meaning in
Speaker 1: a finite life. So I think for me, understanding the
Speaker 1: way in which people have tried to understand meaning from
Speaker 1: a philosophical, from a historical, cultural, theological perspective is really important.
Speaker 1: And I'm not the first person to do that. I'm
Speaker 1: even the first psychologist to do that. So the lot
Speaker 1: of what I do is try to understand what's out
Speaker 1: there and try to just push it forward and keep
Speaker 1: learning as we go. Yeah. Absolutely, one of your influences
Speaker 1: goazally back to Victor Frankel, right, And how did he
Speaker 1: refer to a meaning when he was using the term?
Speaker 1: I don't speak German, but I was in a conversation
Speaker 1: with an Austrian existential psychologist who certainly does, and in
Speaker 1: fact was a student of Frankel's. This is Alfried Lengla,
Speaker 1: and I heard him given a presentation. I had the
Speaker 1: wonderful opportunity to have a conversation with him a little
Speaker 1: bit later, and he said that there's a reason why
Speaker 1: Francle translated his word for meaning into meaning and purpose.
Speaker 1: So there is a little confusion in our field about
Speaker 1: you know, kim meaning and purpose as terms be used interchangeably,
Speaker 1: and it sort of goes to Frankle because he wanted
Speaker 1: to capture this sense of, you know, knowing where we
Speaker 1: are in the fabric of existence as well as trying
Speaker 1: to figure out, you know what task, what big grand
Speaker 1: adventure especially for us in our lives. So as an
Speaker 1: influenced Francle was of course where psychologists, psychiatrists, you know,
Speaker 1: social scientists really started to try to understand meaning. And
Speaker 1: from the get go, Francle saw it as a complex,
Speaker 1: large notion that was going to be hard to nail
Speaker 1: down in little bite sized chunks. Yeah, yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1: And he did kind of tie it up with this
Speaker 1: process that allows us to overcome obstacles or allows us
Speaker 1: to overcome there's very much this element of post traumatic
Speaker 1: growth in his work. That's the modern term, but the
Speaker 1: post traumatic sort of purpose, postramatic purpose or something, you know,
Speaker 1: is sort of how he viewed it as like, what
Speaker 1: is the thing that the task that you believe you
Speaker 1: can fulfill that is very future oriented, that will help
Speaker 1: energize you to a certain degree, that will help you
Speaker 1: overcome sort of any optical that gets in your way
Speaker 1: or any hardship, including the Hall cost. I mean he
Speaker 1: generated all these ideas while he was in the Hall Cost.
Speaker 1: You know, he was a prisoner as a child, so
Speaker 1: you know he saw that a lot of people who
Speaker 1: thought there was some sort of task and fulfill when
Speaker 1: they get out. It kind of got them through things. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, once you've once you've read an encountered Pronkle,
Speaker 1: you just assumed that everyone knows such a profound and
Speaker 1: amazing story. And this was one of Freud's circle in
Speaker 1: nineteen thirties of Vienna, trying to understand how people work
Speaker 1: and trying to develop some of those early theories of
Speaker 1: the human mind. And you know, as I understand how
Speaker 1: things unfolded, he'd already begun to gravitate and try to
Speaker 1: write his thesis that humans are, at their most fundamental level,
Speaker 1: strivers for meaning and purpose, that what motivates us is
Speaker 1: a desire. He called it, a will deep within us
Speaker 1: to have some thing that makes living worthwhile. And you
Speaker 1: know when it takes a form of a purpose something
Speaker 1: to accomplish. Then that's a huge motivational step up. When
Speaker 1: we really can set ourselves a strong aspiration or mission,
Speaker 1: we can surmount the challenges and obstacles that come our way.
Speaker 1: And Frounkel lost essentially everything when his family, his loved ones,
Speaker 1: his colleagues, his culture, his people were you know, some
Speaker 1: to the atrocities of World War II, concentration camps and
Speaker 1: the Holocaust. And it's stunning to think that he came
Speaker 1: out of that with an optimistic mission for all of us. That, yeah,
Speaker 1: what he saw making the difference between the people who
Speaker 1: were able to somehow find their way through the concentration
Speaker 1: camp misery and damage were those who had some reason
Speaker 1: out there still to get through it. And when you
Speaker 1: think about that as a founding story for why we
Speaker 1: would want to study meaning as psychologists, social scientists, coaches, consultants, whomever,
Speaker 1: I think it's an amazing place to launch. It starts
Speaker 1: from this incredible survival and triumph story. Bruncle had a
Speaker 1: lecture career of almost fifty years after that, where he
Speaker 1: was trying to reach out and trying to help people
Speaker 1: feel empowered and motivated and liberated to pursue meaning in
Speaker 1: a world that oftentimes seems to have none or seems
Speaker 1: to propose false dead ends for having a better life.
Speaker 1: And you know, tapping into those deep well springs of
Speaker 1: motivation to strive for something huge and magnificent in our
Speaker 1: lives is such an amazing foundation, in my opinion, for
Speaker 1: building an understanding of how people thrive. Absolutely, those are
Speaker 1: very well said. So you've studied other meanings of meaning,
Speaker 1: there's two different directions we canet two different things we
Speaker 1: talk about. We talk about what are the different meanings
Speaker 1: of meaning? And then I want to talk about what
Speaker 1: are the different sources of meaning? Because I think that's
Speaker 1: a different question. Right. So yeah, so that's I think. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think we're struggling as a field too, don't We
Speaker 1: don't make philosopher is very happy. Let me just put
Speaker 1: that way. In the way that we define meaning in life,
Speaker 1: I see meaning in life really and in kind of
Speaker 1: operational terms. Right. So, the definition of meaning of life
Speaker 1: at some level is people say that their lives have meaning.
Speaker 1: That's not super helpful. If you unpack that box a
Speaker 1: little bit more, you can see that people seem to
Speaker 1: consult according to a lot of the literature out there.
Speaker 1: People seem to consult three kinds of judgments that they
Speaker 1: make about their lives in order to say, yes, my
Speaker 1: life has meaning. The first judgment is, as we already mentioned, purpose,
Speaker 1: as Francle talked about, this central sort of self organizing,
Speaker 1: almost life force giving, striving for something big across one's lifetime.
Speaker 1: The second piece, also is wrapped up in from work,
Speaker 1: is this idea of coherence or comprehension, that we can
Speaker 1: make sense of our experience, that we can make sense
Speaker 1: of our identity, our place in the world, so we
Speaker 1: just kind of get it makes sense of our lives.
Speaker 1: And then the third dimension is significant or what we
Speaker 1: call significant. But this notion that our lives are worthwhile,
Speaker 1: we maybe even make a difference. It matters that we
Speaker 1: exist if the world and the universe in some small
Speaker 1: but perceptible way would be diminished if we weren't around.
Speaker 1: And I think you could probably trace all three of
Speaker 1: those ideas into the writings of Franco and for sure
Speaker 1: they're present in varying proportions and the research and theory
Speaker 1: that psychologists have done in the years since. So that
Speaker 1: is a definition of meaning. Would suggests that life is
Speaker 1: meaningful when people feel that their lives have a sense
Speaker 1: of purpose, that they make sense, and that they are
Speaker 1: intrinsically worthwhile and worth living. From a philosophical standpoint, that
Speaker 1: still is. It's still positioned as a subjective judgment that
Speaker 1: people make, and that's been part of the tradition in psychology.
Speaker 1: But it does put us in a difficult spot where
Speaker 1: we might have despots and tyrants and serial killers and
Speaker 1: who knows who el it's saying that their lives have meaning,
Speaker 1: and we don't at this point in the evolution of
Speaker 1: the field have a place where we can stand and say, well, no,
Speaker 1: that person doesn't have mean, They just think they do.
Speaker 1: We are still at the point of measuring whether people
Speaker 1: think they're meaning or not. Well, I've studied the issue
Speaker 1: from one angle and that I've done some large scale
Speaker 1: studies on the dark triad of personality and meaning. I
Speaker 1: don't know if I've told you about this research I've
Speaker 1: been doing recently on you know, psychopathy, narcissism, and macavilianism.
Speaker 1: And they do self report low or meaning in life.
Speaker 1: So they do. Okay, so I did, right, at least
Speaker 1: there something particularly, you know, the antagonistic, those who are
Speaker 1: tendish more interpersonal antagonism on Rife's measures doud score or
Speaker 1: in purpose. So yeah, well, I mean I can remember,
Speaker 1: you know at Deaner wrestling with similar issues around subjective
Speaker 1: well being, that it's very difficult to come up with
Speaker 1: a prescriptive list. You know, a lot of people would
Speaker 1: turn to Aristotle's writings to try to develop a daimonic
Speaker 1: approach to well being, you know, to try to come
Speaker 1: up with like these qualifications that would say, well, well,
Speaker 1: you might think that you're happy, but you're not. You know,
Speaker 1: the experts have convenient and said that you're not. It'd
Speaker 1: be great if we get to that point. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think the striving of almost any science is to
Speaker 1: develop objective measures that are external to the phenomenon you're
Speaker 1: trying to study in the first place. At this point,
Speaker 1: it's not impossible for one of those people that you
Speaker 1: study with a dark triad of psychopathy to insist that
Speaker 1: his or her life is nonetheless meaningful, and with our
Speaker 1: given progression in the field, we could we can make
Speaker 1: guesses about ways in which that meaning that that person
Speaker 1: feels exists in her his life is worse in some
Speaker 1: ways are qualitatively different than you know, the meaning of
Speaker 1: a Nelson, Mandela or Archbishop Tutu or Gandhi or whether
Speaker 1: there's a king or all these other paragons of you know,
Speaker 1: human triumph. But you know, we kind of do end
Speaker 1: up with this idea at this point. We're still studying
Speaker 1: people's attitudes about themselves for the most part. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: was that you who came up with the Hitler problem? Right?
Speaker 1: I don't think no blame Hitler me Okay, sorry, that
Speaker 1: was going to be it was either you or Ken
Speaker 1: Shllon rights about the Hitler prompt. But I think we're
Speaker 1: all aware of it, right, Because so let's say that
Speaker 1: that we agree for now that that meaning of life
Speaker 1: is when someone feels when a person feels that her
Speaker 1: his life has a sense of purpose, something big you're
Speaker 1: trying to accomplish, sense significance. The world notices that you exist,
Speaker 1: that you have some sort of impact, and life makes sense.
Speaker 1: You have some sort of worldview. So huge and disturbingly
Speaker 1: huge stretches of Hitler's life as a you know, just
Speaker 1: unbridled force for evil in the world, It's possible to
Speaker 1: imagine that Hitler would endorse highly any one of or
Speaker 1: maybe all three of those things, just as Hitler might
Speaker 1: endorse high levels of positive motion on particular times, low
Speaker 1: levels of negative affect at particular times, high levels of
Speaker 1: life satisfaction. You know. So for a lot of well
Speaker 1: being researchers, the Hitler problem is shorthand for that notion
Speaker 1: that we don't have really an objective way to say,
Speaker 1: you know what, you might think you're happy, that you're
Speaker 1: not like. That's where that leads us to, Well, there's
Speaker 1: a very it seems like that there is a very
Speaker 1: important distinction between life satisfaction and having a lot of
Speaker 1: meaning in your life. You know, we do find on
Speaker 1: our narsis the questionnaires, they do score high in life satisfaction,
Speaker 1: but they don't score high on purpose. So there is
Speaker 1: at least amongst that population, there is that distinction, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and one can just be like just feel you know,
Speaker 1: one can have a lot of meaning but not feel
Speaker 1: happy as well. Right, can you have the reverse cain?
Speaker 1: You have like a great purpose, you feel like you're
Speaker 1: moving towards it, but you're not necessarily feeling like pleasure
Speaker 1: in your life. Yeah, I think that all of that
Speaker 1: is true. There is debate about whether people have different
Speaker 1: kinds of well being, but they can experience the two
Speaker 1: big two most notable divides I supposed to be between
Speaker 1: psychological well being, which Carol Riff, Rich Ryan and DC
Speaker 1: are kind of associated with that side, and then subjective
Speaker 1: well being, which maybe you might argue that at Deaner
Speaker 1: a Deaner developed that term subjective wellbeing, but that other
Speaker 1: maybe positive emotion researchers might be more on that side
Speaker 1: if they also argue that, you know, like the hedonists
Speaker 1: of ancient Greek philosophy or utilitarians of more recent times,
Speaker 1: that what is good and what is happiness is that
Speaker 1: which is pleasurable. So the dictum to maximize pleasure minimize
Speaker 1: pain is is one way of trying to argue for
Speaker 1: a particular type of happiness maybe that exists separately from
Speaker 1: what others might consider to be consistent with the more
Speaker 1: eudaimonic approach, which is kind of developing oneself toward a
Speaker 1: higher and more maybe actualized state and reflection on the
Speaker 1: duties and obligations one faces to those around him or her.
Speaker 1: So it meaning oftentimes is put over into eudaemonic area,
Speaker 1: and you know, subject of well being White SaaS faction
Speaker 1: gets put over with kind of clumped together with positive
Speaker 1: emotions and pleasure pain dynamics. But it's if you take
Speaker 1: a look at life satisfaction, if you're satisfied with your life,
Speaker 1: you might argue that's a lower bar to clear. Then
Speaker 1: my life is profound, meaningful to some degree, you know.
Speaker 1: But there's there's still elements of more complex calculations about
Speaker 1: one's life adds up to then yes, I'm in a
Speaker 1: good mood. No, I'm in a bad mood, you know.
Speaker 1: So so what we see with the with the research
Speaker 1: evidence is that the correlations among all three of those
Speaker 1: ideas meaning in life, life satisfaction, will just pick positive
Speaker 1: emotion for now, are pretty good. They're pretty solid point
Speaker 1: fives and a lot of in a lot of research,
Speaker 1: and sometimes as high as you know, maybe point seven
Speaker 1: for life satisfaction and positive emotion. So that means that
Speaker 1: a lot of people are saying, yes, my life is
Speaker 1: very meaningful, but I hardly ever experienced pleasure or joy,
Speaker 1: And a lot of people are saying life is super fun,
Speaker 1: I'm always thrilled, but there's no meaning to it. So
Speaker 1: there are people in both ends of the spectrum, but
Speaker 1: generally speaking, most people who are you know, experiencing joy
Speaker 1: and love in their lives also find those lives be meaningful.
Speaker 1: And most people who feel like life has no purpose
Speaker 1: or point to it also feel a little bit miserable.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm not very good at articulating this point
Speaker 1: that I'm trying to articulate that's in my head right now,
Speaker 1: so I'm trying to I don't even know if I
Speaker 1: should go for it, but I feel like there's a
Speaker 1: really important distinction to be made that isn't made between
Speaker 1: like momentary pleasure and like forward looking pleasure. Like again,
Speaker 1: and please just bear with me, you know, as I
Speaker 1: try to get this expressed, so like, you know, like
Speaker 1: I don't want to get dark here, but like serial killers,
Speaker 1: Sarah killers their purpose killing people, you know, like I
Speaker 1: don't think they viewed as a purpose. I think they
Speaker 1: viewed as a compulsion. I think that a lot of
Speaker 1: things that bring us, like Ory Baumeister has found, doesn't
Speaker 1: necessarily bring them pleasure. You know. It's more of like
Speaker 1: a dry reduction thing than a you know, like they
Speaker 1: need to do it to like move on with their
Speaker 1: life as opposed to bring pleasure. And I realized that's
Speaker 1: really dark, but we can build that up. We can
Speaker 1: generalize that to more beautiful things, you know, like pizza.
Speaker 1: Pizza is beautiful. Eating pizza good of good pizza or whatever.
Speaker 1: You know. Sometimes like if I'm really hungry, there's a
Speaker 1: certain kind of drive reduction pleasure there versus a like
Speaker 1: I'm going to grow from this experience pleasure. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I feel like even within the pleasure to mean, there
Speaker 1: needs to be a finer distinction. Am I articulating this
Speaker 1: at all? You are and definitely, you know, utilitarian philosophers,
Speaker 1: moral philosophers will will kind of persei part the different
Speaker 1: types of pleasure, anticipatory pleasure, moral pleasure, physical pleasure, sensory pleasure,
Speaker 1: superiority of pleasure, you know, things like you can find
Speaker 1: different ways of finding pleasure. When I think about meaning
Speaker 1: position within this whole area of trying to understand not
Speaker 1: necessarily whether one type of well being is better, but
Speaker 1: that perhaps we can understand different predictors and outcomes of
Speaker 1: different approaches to well being. I tend to think about
Speaker 1: that same sort of time frame. You are a bit
Speaker 1: or so had a book on the handbook of view
Speaker 1: diimonic well being. I was able to write a little
Speaker 1: chapter in there to try to articulate some of these ideas.
Speaker 1: And you know, one of the ideas I felt that
Speaker 1: to some degree, meaning captures this orientation towards enduring well
Speaker 1: being or enduring investment and also a constraint of one's
Speaker 1: own immediate impulses for gratification towards some consideration of not
Speaker 1: just long time frames, but also the fact that we're
Speaker 1: in webs of relationships, obligations, and reciprocal impacts within upon
Speaker 1: other people. So if to me, then meaning is a
Speaker 1: lot about durability, It's a lot about sustaining effort towards
Speaker 1: becoming the type of person that that coexists really positively
Speaker 1: with other people over time. And you know, that's not
Speaker 1: to say that someone who's you know, super oriented towards
Speaker 1: meaning can't ever do anything fun. I think a lot
Speaker 1: of people who know me would say that I'm pretty
Speaker 1: interested in meaning. And you know, if I find myself
Speaker 1: at the spare hour on a decent day, one of
Speaker 1: my favorite things to do is find a nice, nice
Speaker 1: craft brew, go out on my back and you know,
Speaker 1: grab a block. And it's not I'm not talking about
Speaker 1: I'm trying to you know, penetrate Seneca or any like
Speaker 1: Roman philosopher, and I'm talking usually mystery novels or something
Speaker 1: like that. And that's an awesome hour spent, even though
Speaker 1: it there's nothing for me in the long term, and
Speaker 1: it doesn't benefit anyone else either. So life is going
Speaker 1: to be about a blend in as long as that
Speaker 1: blend in my personals, as long as that blend includes
Speaker 1: a sense of responsibility that we have to be embracing
Speaker 1: the full nature of our lives and moving through them
Speaker 1: in ways that improve our chances of creating something important
Speaker 1: and beneficial with our lives. I think any blend that
Speaker 1: you have is is pretty good. It's good. Has anyone
Speaker 1: ever studied meaning and exhaustion? Can you burnout? Can you exactly? Like?
Speaker 1: It just made me think of that that could be
Speaker 1: a new construct where like it's like cheez, I need
Speaker 1: a break from like my purpose. Yeah, I'm sure that happens.
Speaker 1: You know. The research body that I think would be
Speaker 1: a really interesting pathway into that notion is Robert Valleron's
Speaker 1: work on harmonious versus obsessive passion. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: overlap between passion and purpose and trying to parse apart
Speaker 1: the type of pursuits that people embrace and love for
Speaker 1: intrinsic or self concordant reasons and those that people embrace
Speaker 1: for sort of you know, you might think of drive
Speaker 1: reduction reasons as fitting well with while around obsessive passion,
Speaker 1: you might think of extrinsic motivations as fitting well with that.
Speaker 1: And if people are really pushing, pushing, pushing, pushing, and
Speaker 1: that love of being in the moment of striving is
Speaker 1: subsumed by other concerns, I think people would still keep
Speaker 1: pushing because they're committed to that outcome. Sorry about that,
Speaker 1: but they wouldn't. They wouldn't get much out of it,
Speaker 1: and they might burn out. They'll keep working, but they're
Speaker 1: not getting fed by the process any longer. That's a
Speaker 1: good point, Yeah, idea, I think you could actually distinguish
Speaker 1: between obsessive or ceremonious meaning. Yeah. And another piece brings
Speaker 1: into play the social contact. I've done a little bit
Speaker 1: of research and thinking on meaningful work, or you mentioned
Speaker 1: sources of meaning. Work could be a source of meaning,
Speaker 1: but it's also one of those domains that we enter
Speaker 1: into with lots of energy expenditure, oftentimes lots of consequences
Speaker 1: and almost as often not a lot of guidance as
Speaker 1: to how we can have work become a source of
Speaker 1: thriving and vitality in our lives. And in meaningful work,
Speaker 1: you see people with a lot of passion, dedication, commitment
Speaker 1: to doing something they feel is extremely important, using work
Speaker 1: as a conduit for that, and in workplaces where that
Speaker 1: sense of dedication is exploited or where people start puppeting
Speaker 1: words like yes, we're a purpose driven and they're not. Actually,
Speaker 1: you see, cynicism and burnout really do happen as a
Speaker 1: part of the context in which people are operating, not
Speaker 1: necessarily as any particular shift in how any individual person
Speaker 1: views what they're trying to accomplish. Yeah, I love your
Speaker 1: work on meaningful work. I actually wanted to talk to
Speaker 1: you today a little about how organizations can cultivate more
Speaker 1: of it. Oh, I'd be happy to Yeah. Is that
Speaker 1: the question that how cat of organizations got? Yeah? Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: I mean we can go there. I have that in
Speaker 1: my list of questions later on. But you brought this
Speaker 1: topic up, so yeah, a lot of times we do so.
Speaker 1: A lot of the well being research, there's a model,
Speaker 1: a framework that talks about top down versus bottom up.
Speaker 1: So in life satisfaction or subjective wellbeing research, there's a
Speaker 1: huge body of work on domain satisfaction and its relationship
Speaker 1: to life satisfaction. So that might be work satisfaction, relationship satisfaction,
Speaker 1: and all those sorts of variables. I'm pretty sure that
Speaker 1: a similar thing is happening within with regards to meaning.
Speaker 1: So you can have great confidence in the meaning of
Speaker 1: your life, and that may exist separately, but it also
Speaker 1: might partially aggregate the meaning that you feel in your
Speaker 1: relationships and your hobbies and your personal development, physical health,
Speaker 1: whatever it is. So when we take a look at domains,
Speaker 1: you know, there's only a few that are just massively
Speaker 1: important to almost everybody, and work seems to be one.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think you can learn a lot about
Speaker 1: the more general case sometimes by looking at the more
Speaker 1: specific case. So in the case of work, what research
Speaker 1: and scholarship on meaningful work highlights for me in a
Speaker 1: lot of cases is that huge contextual dynamic. So in
Speaker 1: the workplace, we're very comfortable with the notion that the
Speaker 1: culture of the workplace and leadership and even work related policies,
Speaker 1: even work related policies around things like physical danger would
Speaker 1: play into how meaningful a person is likely to find
Speaker 1: that work. So someone can come to you with incredible,
Speaker 1: overflowing amounts of commitment towards meaningful work at your organization,
Speaker 1: you can kill it. Someone can come to you with
Speaker 1: never having thought about having a meaningful job. They just
Speaker 1: want to, you know, survive in a world that demands
Speaker 1: monetary transactions about every five seconds and seems like And
Speaker 1: you can as you create conditions where you inspire them
Speaker 1: to see their work as doing more than just paying bills. So,
Speaker 1: if you think about life in similar terms, one of
Speaker 1: the big blind spots in my research, and I think
Speaker 1: in other people's as well, is we oftentimes don't pay
Speaker 1: a lot of attention to the context You know, who
Speaker 1: are the leaders in our individual lives that inspire us
Speaker 1: or fire us to find meaning or murder it through
Speaker 1: cynicism and exploitation. What are the contexts that help us
Speaker 1: see how we have impact and contribution, and what are
Speaker 1: the contexts that systematically or randomly disempower us regardless of
Speaker 1: who we are or you know, what we're like on
Speaker 1: the inside. And I don't think we do pay very
Speaker 1: much attention to that. I would say that Paul Long
Speaker 1: is at the forefront of meaning, I guess, advocating for
Speaker 1: meaning around the world world. He does talk a lot
Speaker 1: about the need for us to understand social justice issues
Speaker 1: with regard to all the positive psychology, but also meaning.
Speaker 1: And you know, so it's really valuable to take a
Speaker 1: look at what might meaning look like in the context
Speaker 1: of parenting, or what might meaning look like in the
Speaker 1: context of psychotherapy, what my meaning look like in the
Speaker 1: context of business, as a way also of continue learning
Speaker 1: about how meaning might operate in life more broadly. Bit, yeah,
Speaker 1: I really like that. And I'm also thinking of Amy
Speaker 1: Rescu's work. Yeah, Andsky's work. I actually just talked to
Speaker 1: her today before you She's awesome. Yeah, I can remember.
Speaker 1: I'll just give you a little I think this captures
Speaker 1: so well Amy's amazing personality, and every one of her
Speaker 1: collaborators I've ever met is is incredible too. So I
Speaker 1: don't mean to say that she's the exception to this
Speaker 1: rule in that area of positive organization scholarship, but I remember,
Speaker 1: I think it was too. I was or maybe at
Speaker 1: one of the early positive psychology summits. And this is
Speaker 1: a loaded story, I guess because I remember that was
Speaker 1: the summit that there's still the GAALP organization at the time,
Speaker 1: and Shane Lopez was organizing that one. Shane Lopez, of
Speaker 1: all people who offered my very first talk at any
Speaker 1: kind of positive psychology event, you know, so I always
Speaker 1: think about where I've come as being facilitated by Shane,
Speaker 1: as so many people in our area do. I chose
Speaker 1: to present some research i'd just begun working on looking
Speaker 1: at kind of calling and meaningful work and whether people
Speaker 1: viewed those as sort of secular or sacred types of
Speaker 1: pursuits in their lives. And I gave this old talk.
Speaker 1: It was I probably overworked some angles and totally neglected
Speaker 1: others like I intended to do when I was a
Speaker 1: grad student. And Amy ros Newsky was kind of in
Speaker 1: the back of the room. But I was freaking out
Speaker 1: about that because you know, from nineteen ninety seven on,
Speaker 1: she's had such a powerful impact on our understanding of calling.
Speaker 1: And you know, she was very nice. If you've met her,
Speaker 1: she has this amazing smile. And then later on in
Speaker 1: her keynote, she referenced that I was one of these
Speaker 1: people who was interested in this topic even though you know,
Speaker 1: just a little a little dude. Well I'm a little tall,
Speaker 1: but I was a tall little dude, you know, just
Speaker 1: trying to talk about this new idea I had, and
Speaker 1: she was so generous and in donating to me, you know,
Speaker 1: some credibility in an area where she was so massively
Speaker 1: influential and important. Oh that's a nice story, true story too.
Speaker 1: I might have gotten the dates wrong, but everything else
Speaker 1: is for sure true. She was very nice in what
Speaker 1: she did, and you were very kind right now and
Speaker 1: giving your credit for that. So all around the feels
Speaker 1: as they say. So, you know, meaningful work any paid
Speaker 1: or unpaid work or occupational role people fulfill that is
Speaker 1: judged by them to possess meaning, purpose, or significance. I
Speaker 1: keep going back in my head to this distinction you've
Speaker 1: made between meeting and significance, and I'm trying to, you know,
Speaker 1: I want to know empirically, like do we know empirically
Speaker 1: that those are three separate things? Like has anyone actually
Speaker 1: created a scale to measure how much we have each
Speaker 1: of those and done like a factor analysis? Like have
Speaker 1: we really like gotten to the nitty gritty of this?
Speaker 1: We have gotten the nitty grit of this? Yeah, to say, yeah,
Speaker 1: the initial the initial nitty gritty, so maybe the nith
Speaker 1: of it or the Monty python is knee. I guess
Speaker 1: you'd say so. Logen George and Crystal Park have a scale,
Speaker 1: a multi dimensional meaning scale that measures purpose and coherence
Speaker 1: more or less, I think, and then their third dimension
Speaker 1: would be mattering. And you know, they find that there's
Speaker 1: a slightly differential pattern of predictors with other psychological variables.
Speaker 1: The factor analysis looks nice and fancy, and I also
Speaker 1: am working with the good friend Frank Martala at University
Speaker 1: of Helsinki to develop a similar measure tracking onto the
Speaker 1: three theoretical dimensions as we've articulated them. Hopefully we'll all
Speaker 1: come together and have a nice you know, three dimensional
Speaker 1: meaning jamboree someday. But just to get the ball rolling,
Speaker 1: we need we need data looking at a bunch of
Speaker 1: different things. And you know this is not published yet,
Speaker 1: so take it with a grain of salt, not pere review.
Speaker 1: But the factor analysis looks clean, and we're continuing to
Speaker 1: collect data to try and analyze the pattern of differential
Speaker 1: correlations with the types of variables you'd expect to correlate. So,
Speaker 1: for example, you know, variable like dogmatism, the right wing authoritarianism,
Speaker 1: you'd expect would correlate with coherence, Right, so people have
Speaker 1: their one way of looking at the world, and it's solid.
Speaker 1: It might be I want to actually expect that. I
Speaker 1: wouldn't expect that, I would expect a negative correlation. No, So,
Speaker 1: going back a few years now, I did collect data
Speaker 1: on just meaning a life and dogmatism right with authoritarianism,
Speaker 1: and those folks do report higher levels of meaning than
Speaker 1: the typical person. So there's something reassuring about thinking you've
Speaker 1: got the answer, as opposed to people like me who
Speaker 1: are like, oh, maybe it's this I did not done yet,
Speaker 1: I need to keep asking questions. So we think, you know,
Speaker 1: when you consider what the functional role of dogmatism is,
Speaker 1: which is kind of having you know, your set playbook
Speaker 1: that no one should challenge, that would seem like that
Speaker 1: would help people make sense of life. So we would
Speaker 1: expect stronger positive relationships between dogmatism and coherence. We would
Speaker 1: with like purpose necessarily, which is much more motivational in nature.
Speaker 1: So we are at that point. It's really exciting that
Speaker 1: two things had to happen. You know, there had to
Speaker 1: be enough research and enough smart people thinking about this stuff.
Speaker 1: So you know, like Laura King and some of her
Speaker 1: amazing students have been super influential in helping us delineate
Speaker 1: what meaning looks like and generating really interesting experimental data.
Speaker 1: And you know, Logien George has already mentioned was interested
Speaker 1: in this sort of triumvirate that was threading through the
Speaker 1: research and the scholarship for a long time, but hadn't
Speaker 1: had a measure to pull it apart. So I think
Speaker 1: it is cool we've got three the field. If I
Speaker 1: can say the field is a person, the person, the
Speaker 1: field is pretty certain that those three dimensions are at
Speaker 1: least important to meaning, and the field is starting to
Speaker 1: generate data on that because to be a little bit frank,
Speaker 1: well into the thousands of studies now on meaning in
Speaker 1: life as sort of a unidimensional construct, and pretty much
Speaker 1: any question you have about whether meaning is a good
Speaker 1: thing a bad thing you live longer you have less Alzheimer's,
Speaker 1: we can answer that because after a few thousand studies,
Speaker 1: almost all of which happened in the last eight years
Speaker 1: or so, we know a lot. We know a lot
Speaker 1: about just the general proposition, is meaning in life a
Speaker 1: good thing? It sures how get it. So it's cool
Speaker 1: that we can move into learning more about it. And
Speaker 1: the ultimate play for something like having three dimensions of
Speaker 1: meaning is that it gives us different ways to understand
Speaker 1: how to help people find and create and reinforce meaning.
Speaker 1: You know, if we can show that purpose is a
Speaker 1: unique pathway into meeting, that we can start really working
Speaker 1: on purpose and understanding that better and so on. Yeah,
Speaker 1: speaking of purposes, we chatted a couple months ago just
Speaker 1: for fun, and since then I crafted a definition of
Speaker 1: purpose that I'm going to be using in my book
Speaker 1: I'm working on. Can I run a by you? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's hear it all right. This is the need for
Speaker 1: an overarching, self organizing, future oriented aspiration that energizes your
Speaker 1: efforts and infuses your life with meaning and significance. So
Speaker 1: I love the middle part. I would say that, you
Speaker 1: know you're talking about a need for purpose. Then if
Speaker 1: you say it's a need for those things, it's a need.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah. So then it's just whether purpose infuses your
Speaker 1: life with meaning and significance. And then it just gets
Speaker 1: into like the obnoxious profit storial hair splitting, where I
Speaker 1: would say that meaning already in those purpose but so
Speaker 1: I would say that probably you know that you're right.
Speaker 1: I mean, when people have a sense of purpose and
Speaker 1: it self organizing, it captures their aspirations, it propels them forward.
Speaker 1: That they do in the little bits of data that
Speaker 1: we think we have that speak directly to that, they
Speaker 1: do pull out of meaning. From that, they do feel
Speaker 1: like life is significant and that they matter, They're making
Speaker 1: a difference somehow, and it also helps them understand themselves better.
Speaker 1: So just because I have probably a lot more stake
Speaker 1: in defining three dimensions of meeting than anyone rightly should, yeah,
Speaker 1: I would probably sneak it back into that kind of dynamic.
Speaker 1: And then, you know, as purpose helps reinforce a sense
Speaker 1: of significance of such significance helps inform us about who
Speaker 1: we are and maybe the sense that there's something special
Speaker 1: about us. And then we use that to gain a
Speaker 1: sense of coherence that then tells us well, maybe we
Speaker 1: can try for this type of purpose as well. So
Speaker 1: all those three in my mind work together then to
Speaker 1: generate this sense that, wow, life is really meaningful. I'm
Speaker 1: not one hundred percent convinced that we can neatly separate
Speaker 1: the mattering instinct from purpose. I get the coherence difference.
Speaker 1: But I feel like I'm a humps and sold yet
Speaker 1: that significance and purpose are like these different things. Like
Speaker 1: I'm trying to get the core humanity drive here, and
Speaker 1: I feel like the major drive underlying purpose is the
Speaker 1: mattering instinct, as Rebecca Goldstein refers to it. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: would probably take up a position to argue against that
Speaker 1: or for that either way. But I think in terms
Speaker 1: of differentiating the two, you know, the shortcut is to
Speaker 1: try and think of mutual exclusive cases. So can we
Speaker 1: think of someone who would say that they have a
Speaker 1: very strong self organizing, centrally important, long term sort of aspiration.
Speaker 1: Let's say we've got that person. Person comes to feel
Speaker 1: like there's no particular worth or value to his or
Speaker 1: her particular individual life. Is that possible that configuration? Like,
Speaker 1: is it free to say? But you know, someone's striving, striving, striving,
Speaker 1: striving and for what maybe that's the case, or striving
Speaker 1: striving striving but feels somehow just inherently worthless or bad,
Speaker 1: or has come to view the self as only important
Speaker 1: because of maybe some future promise that would be delivered
Speaker 1: upon the satisfaction of the purpose someday, and maybe you
Speaker 1: would say that one's hard to think of, but I
Speaker 1: bet the next one isn't quite so hard to think of.
Speaker 1: So someone who feels life has inherent worth, even my
Speaker 1: life has inherent worth. Life is worth living. But I'm
Speaker 1: not really striving for anything. It just is what it is.
Speaker 1: Life is fantastic. It's about being, and being is great.
Speaker 1: I matter because people love me no matter what I do. Right,
Speaker 1: So you can imagine can you imagine people achieving that state?
Speaker 1: You can imagine a kid experiencing that perception about his
Speaker 1: or her life. I think, not necessarily thinking yeah, I've
Speaker 1: got to develop this big plan for my life at
Speaker 1: some point. Yeah, I definitely understand the logic behind what
Speaker 1: you're saying. You know, I think that I could agree
Speaker 1: with the argument that there are multiple things that give
Speaker 1: us that fulfill that mattering instinct and then still say
Speaker 1: that purpose is one of the biggest ones, like, out
Speaker 1: of the mall that tends to be in the human population,
Speaker 1: one that like is a fast track it's significance in
Speaker 1: a sense. Yeah, I wonder. I mean, part of it
Speaker 1: is trying to figure out to what degree are we
Speaker 1: influenced by the culture in which we live. I don't
Speaker 1: know that this is true that because we live in
Speaker 1: a fair striving, hard work, valuing, capitalistic kind of make
Speaker 1: it on your own type of society, that we tend
Speaker 1: to assume that having a plan and working hard for
Speaker 1: things is important. It's possible for me to reflect on
Speaker 1: some forms of you know, some ways of if you
Speaker 1: think about maybe some religions as providing road maps for
Speaker 1: how to live, I mean, there's some out there that
Speaker 1: don't necessarily charge people with lofty goals. Instead they charge
Speaker 1: people with breaking free of desire and breaking free of striving.
Speaker 1: That's true, well regardless, at this point, I think it's
Speaker 1: useful to at least hold open the possibility that that's true,
Speaker 1: and to try to figure out a way to test.
Speaker 1: Are there people out there who feel like their lives
Speaker 1: are significant, who feel like the world in some way
Speaker 1: notices that they exist and that's good, who feel like
Speaker 1: there's at least some reason to stay alive rather than
Speaker 1: to end life. Can we find people who'd say that
Speaker 1: that's true, but don't also say, yeah, and I've got
Speaker 1: this huge life ambition that I want to accomplish at
Speaker 1: some point down the road, and I'm working towards it
Speaker 1: every day I see the source of our superficial disagreement
Speaker 1: in which I think that is superficial when you get
Speaker 1: down to it, because I think what I've done is
Speaker 1: I've baked significance into my definition of purpose. So I
Speaker 1: can't be wrong in the sense that, like, that's how
Speaker 1: I'm conceptualizing purpose. Some of the cases you're giving me,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't say they have a purpose. I don't think
Speaker 1: everyone who has a goal that they strive for has
Speaker 1: a purpose. It would be the point that I'm trying
Speaker 1: to make here. I think that, yeah, yeah, yeah, do
Speaker 1: you see I'm saying it's almost like a definitional thing
Speaker 1: as opposed to you know, it's like a conceptual like
Speaker 1: how are we conceptualizing purpose? You know? When I think
Speaker 1: of purpose again, I don't quit it just with That's
Speaker 1: why I defined it as I did, because it's not
Speaker 1: just having higher level goals that you strive for. It's
Speaker 1: having goals that you strive for that give you a
Speaker 1: sense of significance. So in a sense, I'm saying, there's
Speaker 1: a unique thing called purpose that maybe combines some multiple
Speaker 1: aspects of meaning. Yeah. I mean, it's really hard because
Speaker 1: I think that is definitely consistent with that's definite cost
Speaker 1: with Yeah, yeah, I mean, that's definitely consistent with what
Speaker 1: purpose kind of feels like when you hear it. It
Speaker 1: just happens to not be It happens not to be
Speaker 1: very clean empirically to could mix too many ingredients together, right,
Speaker 1: So if we mix, you know, let's say we define
Speaker 1: purpose as a strongly self concordant goal that fits who
Speaker 1: you think you are and how you view the world
Speaker 1: around you, that delivers to you a sense of mattering
Speaker 1: and significance in life. That would feel like purpose, but
Speaker 1: that also mixes together pretty much any other part of
Speaker 1: meaning as well. Part of the job as I see
Speaker 1: my role as a meaning researcher that I think probably
Speaker 1: annoys a lot of people who just are regular humans
Speaker 1: and living life and understanding life as it happens instead
Speaker 1: of trying to cut in little pieces. Is I really
Speaker 1: am curious about whether each of these things that we
Speaker 1: fold into very complex terms like meaning and purpose, whether
Speaker 1: they're really different from each other or not, or whether
Speaker 1: they can be separated out. So part of the big
Speaker 1: problem with meaning as a researchable topic was that the
Speaker 1: definitions of it tended to be pretty fuzzy around the boundaries.
Speaker 1: And so I think part of one of the reasons
Speaker 1: why meaning research has taken off the way it has
Speaker 1: over the last eight to ten years is because folks
Speaker 1: like me have worked hard to try to define it
Speaker 1: according to the conventions of empirical psychological signe hands, which
Speaker 1: you draw your circle around around something and you call
Speaker 1: it that. I mean. It's a little bit like going
Speaker 1: to the beach and saying, Okay, there's the water. That's
Speaker 1: definitely the sea, and now here's super wet sand where
Speaker 1: if I dig a little bit, water pools up. But
Speaker 1: that's kind of different. That's not the sea. And then
Speaker 1: here's super dry sand and somewhere there's just moist sand.
Speaker 1: Or we're going to draw a circle around what we
Speaker 1: think is the driest of the dry sand, a circle
Speaker 1: around the moist is of the moist sand, but that
Speaker 1: doesn't pool water when you dig it, and then the
Speaker 1: water and we're going to say those are three separate
Speaker 1: things to help us understand beach. Do you know what
Speaker 1: I mean? So I do I think that. I mean,
Speaker 1: I love what you do, and I have immense respect
Speaker 1: for your project, and inherent in a definition that has
Speaker 1: multiple components that automatically assumes that those are separate, Like
Speaker 1: if if a definition has multiple components, that is you're
Speaker 1: actually saying those things are separable things. So yeah, I
Speaker 1: guess what I'm saying is what my umbrella term purpose
Speaker 1: is one that encompasses things that you can still empirically
Speaker 1: show are separate, but that purpose is an integration of them.
Speaker 1: And so from my perspective, I see a reason why
Speaker 1: we can't have a term that is a higher level
Speaker 1: integration of what does your life look like when you
Speaker 1: have coherence, you have a sense of self worth, and
Speaker 1: you have a matt you feel like you matter. Then
Speaker 1: I feel like you get what Frankel was kind of
Speaker 1: talking about. You get what like some other people meant
Speaker 1: by the term purpose, and you know that actually is
Speaker 1: compatible with your program though, and it just becomes a
Speaker 1: matter of semantics, you know what we want to another
Speaker 1: someone else could say that the high order construct is
Speaker 1: just meaning, and that's what Probably what you would say
Speaker 1: is that you know, from a factor analysis, I assume
Speaker 1: that those three things psychometrically or correlated with each other
Speaker 1: are zero point three four, right, Like, what does the
Speaker 1: correlation matrix look like among those three things, I'm sure
Speaker 1: it's all there's a positive manifold, right, Yeah, Well, I
Speaker 1: guess I would say I sort of we share similar
Speaker 1: ideas that there's a superordinate umbrella term. And to me,
Speaker 1: and in my read of the field, the literature was
Speaker 1: blending a lot of these different ideas together, going all
Speaker 1: the way back to the original writings by Franco. But
Speaker 1: you can even go further back than that and look
Speaker 1: at Oddler was talking about meaning as well. You can
Speaker 1: sort of see that meaning has a bit more of
Speaker 1: a voracious So even if you take a look at
Speaker 1: the etymology of a word like meaning in a couple
Speaker 1: of different languages, it starts to embrace different perspectives. Whereas
Speaker 1: the word purpose, typically speaking, has been highly functional and motivational.
Speaker 1: It has referred to gold type constructs, it has referred
Speaker 1: to achievement type orientations, and as a word within philosophical
Speaker 1: and psychological writings, it has had a more defined it
Speaker 1: has more constrained definition, whereas meaning is to me, and
Speaker 1: I'm not necessarily right, and I'm certainly you're not alone
Speaker 1: in thinking that purpose is a better fit for a
Speaker 1: higher order umbrella term, it just seems that in the field,
Speaker 1: in what had been done before I started even understanding
Speaker 1: that this was a thing people could study, was that
Speaker 1: the meaning was the more richly populated term and purpose.
Speaker 1: You take a look at the items of Carol Riff's
Speaker 1: purpose subscale from restychological well being scales, and it's very
Speaker 1: much about kind of like finding interesting things to do,
Speaker 1: developing goals, you know, kind of like this very active
Speaker 1: goal pursuit thing. Whereas you take a look at the
Speaker 1: way people had been trying to measure meaning, it was
Speaker 1: things like having a mental framework for understanding life experiences.
Speaker 1: So it just to me it made more sense than
Speaker 1: to have meaning be the bigger term, and then within
Speaker 1: that it folds together that a kind of common cast
Speaker 1: to characters at this point. But for a while I
Speaker 1: would say that, you know, if you take a look
Speaker 1: at some of my early stuff that I was writing,
Speaker 1: I was kind of just rolling everything together, you know,
Speaker 1: like a significant purpose and you know, a sense of coherence. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I think that if you, I mean, wherever you stand,
Speaker 1: to me, it's it's really vital that there's some continuity
Speaker 1: between the sorts of things that I say or the
Speaker 1: positions that I take and and what's been done before me.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's that's just really important to preserve I
Speaker 1: don't know, the preserve the providence I guess of how
Speaker 1: we try to advance in understanding an idea. And you know,
Speaker 1: I've got no objection to someone reading that differently or
Speaker 1: even deciding that that's not for them, like they don't
Speaker 1: want to. You know, they've got their idea, and there's
Speaker 1: certainly ways to martial arguments in favor of that. I've
Speaker 1: got nothing against that, which is the path I chose.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like, you know, just marching one step
Speaker 1: at a time through the way that people approach this issue.
Speaker 1: For instance, I'll throw this out there because it's a
Speaker 1: little bit cleaner than the Gilgamesh example, which otherwise I can.
Speaker 1: I tend to go off on a little bit. But
Speaker 1: in Ecclesiastes, so one of the other oldest, oldest references
Speaker 1: to something that we understand as meaning, now there's a
Speaker 1: meditation on essentially the nature of death, you know, so
Speaker 1: taking a look around and saying things like, you know, animals,
Speaker 1: animals perish. We share the same breath as animals. Man
Speaker 1: is just like any other animal. As the animal dies,
Speaker 1: so too dies man, everything is meaningless. Does that mean
Speaker 1: that you can never have a purpose? Does that mean
Speaker 1: that life doesn't make sense? Probably not. If you're able
Speaker 1: to say we die just like the animal and therefore
Speaker 1: life has no meaning, you've made some sort of sense.
Speaker 1: So I think there's just lots of different ways to or.
Speaker 1: And you know the job of someone like means is
Speaker 1: to make it as confusing as possible for I also understand.
Speaker 1: So I feel it, you know what I mean. I
Speaker 1: like the through a distinction. I just can't find the
Speaker 1: way I think of way I think of purpose is
Speaker 1: that it it's very hard to have, Like a function
Speaker 1: of purpose is self organizing in a way that suddenly
Speaker 1: your life is infused with meaning, significant and significance. Now
Speaker 1: I realize why it's saying that drives you crazy, because
Speaker 1: I've just compleated meaning and significance and your model has
Speaker 1: you know, meaning is a higher order umbrella, and significance
Speaker 1: is one of three. So I understand semantically why that
Speaker 1: must irk you, and it would irk me too if
Speaker 1: ires you, but from it every day, like if I'm
Speaker 1: talking to someone on the street, you know, I think
Speaker 1: they understand what it means to have something that you know, like,
Speaker 1: it's amazing. There's an amazing self organizing function with purpose
Speaker 1: that someone interjects something, even if like a sports team,
Speaker 1: you know, and suddenly you feel like, wow, my life,
Speaker 1: there's a reason for being alive. Yeah, I would say
Speaker 1: anything irks me. I just think that there's a lot
Speaker 1: of open questions that we don't know. We don't know
Speaker 1: purpose self organizes anything. Actually, you know, we don't also
Speaker 1: know other than by defining it and saying it is.
Speaker 1: So we don't know these things. So in the case
Speaker 1: of a of a sports team, so let's say you're
Speaker 1: on a sports team and you know the team that
Speaker 1: I that I back is Liverpool for this year, having
Speaker 1: a thing exciting a year. Okay, So the purpose of
Speaker 1: that job, you could say, is to win games, and
Speaker 1: so everyone's trying to do that. Let's say though, that
Speaker 1: you know, the new coach comes along, you're going to
Speaker 1: clop and instills in them the sense of you know,
Speaker 1: a spree of corps and camaraderie and you know, submission
Speaker 1: of the individual ego to the group effort, and you know,
Speaker 1: a way of playing the game. So is that a
Speaker 1: purpose that we're going to play the game in a
Speaker 1: particular way. The purpose is still the same to some degree,
Speaker 1: Like why would you even be a part of a
Speaker 1: sports team if not to try to achieve greatness to
Speaker 1: some degree, I suppose if it's in views with purpose,
Speaker 1: what then does it self organize in that case that
Speaker 1: wouldn't already be part of do you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: Like yourself becomes the you know, suddenly there's something on
Speaker 1: the line that's outside of your prior concerns and things
Speaker 1: seem trivial, you know, like get when we get a purpose,
Speaker 1: we suddenly it does reorganize our character, our structure of
Speaker 1: concerns in life. It changes our priority structure. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think that's what it does. It changes priorities and it
Speaker 1: helps That's what I know by self organizing. Yeah, yeah, so,
Speaker 1: but in a sense it doesn't necessarily you still have
Speaker 1: to make the decision to do all those things. So
Speaker 1: when you have priorities, priority is one way of think
Speaker 1: our priorities is that I think is very consistent with purpose.
Speaker 1: Is is kind of like motivational weights. So something with
Speaker 1: a higher priority you're more motivated to take the time
Speaker 1: to do, and you're more motivated to protect in your schedule.
Speaker 1: So to me, it's purpose as a motivational force is
Speaker 1: self organizing to the degree. And I'm a little fuzzy
Speaker 1: on what people mean when they say self organizing. I'll
Speaker 1: admit that, but that's why, Yeah, I wanted to clarify
Speaker 1: what I meant by it. Yeah, makes you might mean
Speaker 1: different things by it, for sure. Yeah. So it helps
Speaker 1: people either helps people consciously and rapidly assort their priorities,
Speaker 1: or somehow at a non explicit level, it gives people
Speaker 1: some orientation to a set of priorities. So it gets tricky, right,
Speaker 1: because priorities motivation. We tend to view as identifying things
Speaker 1: that are important to us. And if it's important, then
Speaker 1: we can say it's significant, and we get trapped in
Speaker 1: that and that circle all over again. To me, what
Speaker 1: the primary driving force behind purpose ends up being to
Speaker 1: me is is that motivation towards continuing to push into
Speaker 1: the future, striving aspect of it is I think, I
Speaker 1: think so. Yeah, in part, I think that because that
Speaker 1: helps distinguish it gives it the best shot of being
Speaker 1: distinguishable from some of these other ideas out there. But
Speaker 1: I agree, yeah, but it does. I don't really claim
Speaker 1: to know that much about about meaning and meaning in life.
Speaker 1: I just claim to be pretty interested in trying to
Speaker 1: find out. And you know, one of the things that's
Speaker 1: that's difficult is it's such a part of the appeal
Speaker 1: is it's such a familiar word. And part of the
Speaker 1: problem is such a familiar word. You know, we're dealing
Speaker 1: with words that we by the time we get to
Speaker 1: be thinking independent adults, we we have a relationship with
Speaker 1: words like meaning, with words like purpose, with the phrase
Speaker 1: life is worth living with you know, what's it all about?
Speaker 1: The reason I'm here? We have a relationship with these ideas.
Speaker 1: And you know, the job of folks like me is
Speaker 1: trying to plumb the degree to which people, you know,
Speaker 1: really do make those ask those types of questions of
Speaker 1: themselves and whether they whether it matters how they answer them.
Speaker 1: It's a pretty low bar to say, does it matter
Speaker 1: if someone feels like their life is worth living or not?
Speaker 1: But we had to start somewhere, and as we go on,
Speaker 1: the further we get, the more we get into what
Speaker 1: sometimes feels, like I said, like drawing drawing arbitrary circles
Speaker 1: on a continuum, right, I you know, the continue between
Speaker 1: the dry sand and the water on a sandy beach
Speaker 1: is impossible to delineate, so we when we try to
Speaker 1: device to find something, we miss a lot. We draw
Speaker 1: around the most characteristic parts of it. But there's all
Speaker 1: that intermediary, liminal stuff that that is also there, also important,
Speaker 1: and just kind of too messy through MEDSI to figure
Speaker 1: out how to how to do research on. You know,
Speaker 1: it's like, uh, when people try to differentiate for me
Speaker 1: between a sociopath and the psychopath. Okay, you're saying some
Speaker 1: words that are yeah, and you're right, I don't know
Speaker 1: what you're talking about so well in that spirit though,
Speaker 1: because I get what you're saying, and I like doing
Speaker 1: that too. I like operationalizing constructs. It's fun. Couldn't one
Speaker 1: say that, like there's value in delineating the parameters of
Speaker 1: personal strivings versus purpose, because I think a lot of
Speaker 1: it comes down to I'm saying they're different things. I'm
Speaker 1: trying to say that like you can have I can
Speaker 1: imagine many situations where people have personal strivings, don't feel
Speaker 1: like it's a purpose, they would identify it as a purpose.
Speaker 1: Even do you see what I'm saying in that regard, Yeah,
Speaker 1: So when you take a look at all those goal constructs,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of them ultimate concerns, there's a
Speaker 1: lot life ask personal thoughts. Actually we said jinks. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So there's a certain point where you're pretty sure something
Speaker 1: like an implementation intention is different from a life task, right,
Speaker 1: and you're pretty sure that you know a self concordate
Speaker 1: goal is different from a life purpose. But again, they're
Speaker 1: they're kind of like a rampentation attemps as are tiny,
Speaker 1: like the first part of the ramp. At some point
Speaker 1: you're really high up and you're not sure where your
Speaker 1: life task turned into a purpose. And when I try
Speaker 1: to figure out how they differentiate, you know, the distinctions
Speaker 1: even within all of those are tough to parse out
Speaker 1: for someone like me who doesn't always understand what's going
Speaker 1: on anyways. But for me, I think there's two there's
Speaker 1: two dynamics that help that help make purpose different than
Speaker 1: other goal constructs, and it feeds off of the other
Speaker 1: two dimensions of meaning. I mean, part of of the
Speaker 1: thing that's great about purpose is it, or that's distinct
Speaker 1: about purpose is it is part of a meaningful life.
Speaker 1: So it's going to have a relationship with the other pieces.
Speaker 1: So I tend to think of like sort of self centrality, right,
Speaker 1: the centrality of a purpose. There's gonna be tons of
Speaker 1: overlap between the content in that purpose and the content
Speaker 1: we see in ourselves. Right, So you can have goals
Speaker 1: that have nothing to do with you. You can even
Speaker 1: have life tasks that have nothing to do with who
Speaker 1: you are, right, just the stage in life that you
Speaker 1: tend to occupy. But it would be really unfortunate if
Speaker 1: you felt maybe it could happen. But by definition we might,
Speaker 1: we might argue against this. But to just feel like
Speaker 1: you have a purpose for your life that you're not
Speaker 1: involved with, it's not central to you, and it really is.
Speaker 1: It could be fulfilled by anybody. I mean, frankl would
Speaker 1: go crazy with that characterization, because Francle felt that there
Speaker 1: was something extremely unique, idiosyncratic, special, and yeah yeah self actualization.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, so self actualization is part of that. And
Speaker 1: then you know, I guess circling back to some of
Speaker 1: the thoughts we were exploring about the relationship between meaning
Speaker 1: and the world around us and other people. You know. So,
Speaker 1: so Maslow is really pushing at the at the end
Speaker 1: of his refinement of the higher kid needs towards self transcendence.
Speaker 1: That's right. So in part, there's something about the scope
Speaker 1: of a purpose that outstrips a lot of other types
Speaker 1: of goal constructs. And I tend to think about it
Speaker 1: as line segments with definable beginnings and ends versus rays. Right,
Speaker 1: So there's not only is purpose supposed to be very
Speaker 1: closely nestled within who who we think we are and
Speaker 1: what we think is vital to us, but it's also
Speaker 1: maybe unattainable, like it just it just it's something that
Speaker 1: you're pursuing, not necessarily for the checking of the box
Speaker 1: that says I accomplished this, but because the pursuit, the
Speaker 1: marshaling of effort, the prioritizing, if you will, is in
Speaker 1: and of itself what it's all about. So you just
Speaker 1: keep pushing, you keep striving for it. You don't know
Speaker 1: if you accomplish it. And maybe some of the best
Speaker 1: purposes that are available for us to think about will
Speaker 1: never be accomplished, you know for sure, you know with
Speaker 1: no ambivalence or ambiguity. Are you really, like, if your
Speaker 1: purpose is to be a good parent, are you done
Speaker 1: with that? Did you do it? Are you really a
Speaker 1: good parent? Can you say that on your deathbed. If
Speaker 1: your purpose is to shape people up about, you know,
Speaker 1: the death of the planet around us, when are you
Speaker 1: done with that? It seems like, you know, even if
Speaker 1: Rachel Carson, the author of Silent Spring, who got us
Speaker 1: all fired up about DDT and you know, was part
Speaker 1: of establishing the Invironmental Protection Agency and Cleaner Acts in
Speaker 1: the United States, is reincarnated today, we're resurrected today, which
Speaker 1: you feel like there's more to do. I think so
Speaker 1: and so to me, there's something about that. You don't
Speaker 1: have to check it off on the list because it is.
Speaker 1: It is how you're living in a sense, more than
Speaker 1: what you're trying to accomplish. But I'd have to admit
Speaker 1: that a lot of that comes from just my personal impression.
Speaker 1: And it's hard to define purpose in a way that
Speaker 1: that feels special and meaningful without combining it with other ideas,
Speaker 1: because there's there's another definition of purpose out there that
Speaker 1: I think is the pro social, like Bill Damon's. Is
Speaker 1: that what you're going to say, Yeah, see, I think
Speaker 1: I'm with you that I if you noted in my
Speaker 1: definition of purpose, I didn't go that far. I explicitly
Speaker 1: and intentionally left out the must have a pro social
Speaker 1: I left that out. I left that out because I
Speaker 1: think that I'm with you that that does blend, that
Speaker 1: doesn't from a construct perspective. That makes it extraordinarily messy
Speaker 1: because now, you know, anything that don't involve some sort
Speaker 1: of explicit, some sort of obvious, you know, big grandiose
Speaker 1: thing no longer is considered a purpose. And then we
Speaker 1: that that eliminates so many important sources of purpose, like
Speaker 1: you know, just trying to personal growth something that's mastery.
Speaker 1: I didn't mean to like put words in your mouth
Speaker 1: that I felt like we're in sync on that. So yeah, totally.
Speaker 1: It's not that I don't love the idea of trying
Speaker 1: to accomplish trooth social things. I actually do very much
Speaker 1: love that. It's just that that's also a lot of
Speaker 1: other things. Yeah, that's begnificence, that's all torurism, you know,
Speaker 1: pro social motivations. So it makes it sticky for us,
Speaker 1: and you know, this is the this is the big divide.
Speaker 1: You know, if I'm if I'm doing a keynote, if
Speaker 1: I'm writing research articles, I am emphasizing these distinctions that
Speaker 1: I think me as a person living my life, I
Speaker 1: probably don't care about that much. I don't think about
Speaker 1: this that much, like, oh, well, it's my purpose in life,
Speaker 1: and I would have you know, I also would agree
Speaker 1: with folks who say that you can have more than
Speaker 1: one purpose, and that purpose to shift and you allocate
Speaker 1: attention to purposes as you can and as necessity demands.
Speaker 1: So I think I just live life trying to orient
Speaker 1: around meaning and being a good person, making a pro
Speaker 1: social difference, trying to be better all the time, trying
Speaker 1: to be authentic and honest with myself about my limitations
Speaker 1: and where things need to get better, and trying to
Speaker 1: remember that I live in a world populated by so
Speaker 1: many other people, so much other life, and that my
Speaker 1: actions have consequences all across the board. So how would
Speaker 1: you throw that into the mix? I mean, I could,
Speaker 1: I could put circles around some of those ideas and
Speaker 1: say that's a coherence, that's a significant So when I
Speaker 1: do workshops or when I'm trying to be more helpful,
Speaker 1: I guess you know what I mean. Yeah, I just
Speaker 1: use those as springboards and say, well, look, here's what
Speaker 1: are you trying to do is meeting? Here's one way
Speaker 1: of looking at it. Here's another way of looking at it,
Speaker 1: but at it's heard, what is it to you? Let's
Speaker 1: try to let's try to work with that, so I
Speaker 1: don't make the same you know. I think that's part
Speaker 1: of the trickiness of all of this is that it's
Speaker 1: it's very easy for me to get to go down
Speaker 1: into the details of the sort of artificial way of
Speaker 1: trying to put boundaries and definitions on something that's just huge,
Speaker 1: you know, and encompassing. And that's the job of one hat.
Speaker 1: The other hat though, when I'm trying to help people,
Speaker 1: or working on workshops or even in my positive psychology classes,
Speaker 1: trying to you know, get people engaged in activities that
Speaker 1: can help them find some stickiness and some grip on
Speaker 1: the big fuzzy meaning stuff. I find I don't hate
Speaker 1: quite as much attention to these sort of you know,
Speaker 1: you could call it semantic details, you could call operationalization details,
Speaker 1: you can call it artificial boundary setting. All those sorts
Speaker 1: of things that make the science be able to proceed
Speaker 1: don't necessarily help, and I think sort of kill the
Speaker 1: magic sometimes of this deeply vital, wacky stuff we're really
Speaker 1: trying to just live out every day. But I appreciate it.
Speaker 1: I appreciate that level because it really stimulates my thinking
Speaker 1: about this stuff at a level that I may not
Speaker 1: have before. So, I mean, thanks to this research, I'm
Speaker 1: really trying to contemplate what significance really the root of
Speaker 1: it is. And I've been thinking that a lot of
Speaker 1: it ties to self esteem, it ties to me. I'm
Speaker 1: thinking it's kind of a lower order thing, like purposes
Speaker 1: is something that you really get to once you like
Speaker 1: can move beyond the question of does my life have
Speaker 1: significance or not? Like people who are suicidal, you know,
Speaker 1: or people who are depressed, those are like depriving. It's
Speaker 1: a sign of deprivation if you're even asking yourself that question,
Speaker 1: and then like, if you can just get past that,
Speaker 1: then like people have a purpose, don't even ask themselves
Speaker 1: that question, I guess is one way I'm thinking about it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was just gonna say, I can see what you're
Speaker 1: thinking about it in that way that having a purpose,
Speaker 1: or maybe I should say having the right kind of
Speaker 1: purpose answers a lot of questions. Yeah, yeah, it provides
Speaker 1: a lot of nourishment for the other areas that we need, right, So,
Speaker 1: and I can totally see that, and I think that's
Speaker 1: an awesome ideal in a life as it's lived sort
Speaker 1: of way, you know, because yeah, I can probably come
Speaker 1: up with counterexamples of someone who has a strong sense
Speaker 1: of purpose and then committed suicide. Yeah, I think we
Speaker 1: can think of that. Yeah, So so then what do
Speaker 1: we do with that? Anyway? So, and it's because you know,
Speaker 1: when you take a look at the intellectual heritage of
Speaker 1: this research area, it involves French dudes like Camu and
Speaker 1: Sartra right talking about the death of meaning in the
Speaker 1: universe and our loneliness and ultimate futility as thinking beings
Speaker 1: to even attempt to grapple with life, and so therefore
Speaker 1: just come up with anything. It's as good as anything else.
Speaker 1: Camu arguing that the huge pressing problem of philosophy is
Speaker 1: why people just don't kill themselves all the time? Why
Speaker 1: don't we? Yeah, yeah, why bother to stay alive? And
Speaker 1: some of that stuff really gets that what feels to
Speaker 1: me like subtly different flavors of experience than the type
Speaker 1: of thing that Franco was talking about, saying there's a
Speaker 1: purpose waiting for each of us out there, or or
Speaker 1: you know, rephrasing Nietzsche's maxim that if you have a
Speaker 1: why in your life, you can get through anything that's
Speaker 1: slightly different to me. And then there's just the plain
Speaker 1: old You know, if life is just unending chaos and
Speaker 1: you just can't pull together any sort of sense of
Speaker 1: consistency predictability, wouldn't that end of itself also undermind some
Speaker 1: of these other areas. So oh yeah, for sure, I
Speaker 1: think that's a foundation, the coherence part. See, I view
Speaker 1: it as like a I guess, like a pyramid. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: well yeah, that's I mean, that's like a developmental model, right,
Speaker 1: And I think I don't want to be inconsistent with
Speaker 1: stuff I've written or interviews. Thanks for listening to me,
Speaker 1: first of all, thanks for even like considering that what
Speaker 1: I'm saying might be interesting, Like that's I guess I
Speaker 1: appreciate it. Well, I appreciate you because obviously you have
Speaker 1: a lot of knowledge and a lot of perspective and
Speaker 1: great intelligence in this area. And I also want to
Speaker 1: maybe express what I really do think my project is.
Speaker 1: My project is trying to just figure this stuff out.
Speaker 1: And I don't I don't think that there is I mean,
Speaker 1: there's probably maybe one or two experts on the topic
Speaker 1: of living the most meaningful life possible. And if you have,
Speaker 1: you know, a couple of months to hang out with
Speaker 1: the Dali line, where you have a couple months to
Speaker 1: hang out with the archbishop to To or some of
Speaker 1: these other extraordinary people who seem like more than human,
Speaker 1: then by all means do that. But I think the
Speaker 1: rest of us are just trying to capture, capture perspectives
Speaker 1: that we can we can try on and grow from.
Speaker 1: And for me, when it comes to the science side
Speaker 1: and the data side, there's there's what's been published, there's
Speaker 1: what's been found, and there's how it's been defined, and
Speaker 1: you don't get to mess with that. That just is
Speaker 1: the historical record of the science. But in terms of
Speaker 1: what are we really after, I'm not an expert at
Speaker 1: all in anybody's I'm barely I'm barely competent in my
Speaker 1: own meaning in life. I would say, in anyone else's
Speaker 1: idea of what are we really doing here in this
Speaker 1: totally unlikely spectacle that is our lives? Why would I
Speaker 1: ever think that I know more about that than anyone else?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, and I've sure don't claim to know more
Speaker 1: than But I'm trying to think through this stuff with
Speaker 1: you and with stuff too. I mean, that's that's interesting
Speaker 1: as well. I mean it's fun to hear someone who
Speaker 1: feels like she or he really really just knows, like, wow,
Speaker 1: it's amazing how that fits. You try to figure it out,
Speaker 1: and then I'm always back to, oh, what what about this?
Speaker 1: What about that? What about this? What about that? That's
Speaker 1: my obnoxious No, no, no, no no, always questions. No, I
Speaker 1: would say it's your thoughtfulness, you know. I think something
Speaker 1: we can agree on is we can shift and kind
Speaker 1: of end on this. As you know, there are different
Speaker 1: sources of meaning in life. I actually would almost prefer
Speaker 1: to think of it at that level. Then different meanings
Speaker 1: of the word meaning, but there's different ways you can
Speaker 1: fill up your bucket of meaning in a sense. And
Speaker 1: real big fan of Tajana Shells Schnell's work. I don't
Speaker 1: know if you've come across it. She has a questionnaire
Speaker 1: that measures those courses of meaning. Yeah. Yeah, it's like
Speaker 1: the most comprehensive thing. I'm going to start collaborating with her,
Speaker 1: So I'm really excited about that. On linkages between self
Speaker 1: actualization and different sources of meaning in life, we're putting
Speaker 1: up a study on that. But I think, like the
Speaker 1: interesting thing of her research is that not all sources
Speaker 1: of meaning are equally predictive of the sense of meaning
Speaker 1: in your life. And I think that's maybe what I'm
Speaker 1: really trying to get it here and maybe end on
Speaker 1: something that we agree on completely, you know, because we
Speaker 1: can both look at the correlation matrix and you know,
Speaker 1: we can agree that that number is higher than that number.
Speaker 1: So when I'm looking at this table right now, I'm
Speaker 1: seeing I'm going to read the top four things. I'm
Speaker 1: just there's arbitrary top four. I could have been top ten.
Speaker 1: But number one is generativity by far, you know, is
Speaker 1: generativity zero point sixty seven. And then harmony is very
Speaker 1: high attentiveness, which I guess I include mindfulness kind of
Speaker 1: being in the mindful and spirituality seems to for a
Speaker 1: lot of people. And then I'm going more than four
Speaker 1: and look at me and development develop. But the things
Speaker 1: that are really low are things like tradition, things like
Speaker 1: just freedom. Interesting. Freedom was really well. I was surprised
Speaker 1: by that. Achievement is low, practicality is low. Fun fun
Speaker 1: is actually one of the lower ones. So at least
Speaker 1: that data is starting to tell us something interesting, I think, right, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: And I know about your interest in Maslow and the
Speaker 1: higher communities. It maps on so nicely that research. And
Speaker 1: if I remember her paper, that paper correctly she characterized
Speaker 1: at least that top batch as being kind of related
Speaker 1: to self transcendent sources. That's exactly right. And I suspect
Speaker 1: that most people who do this kind of research and
Speaker 1: want of research meaning in life expect to see that
Speaker 1: kind of result. That the people who are pushing meaning
Speaker 1: are working towards meeting the most strongly, are also thinking
Speaker 1: about what comes next, what's beyond what I see and
Speaker 1: feel right now. And I think being trapped in what
Speaker 1: I should live according to what I see and feel
Speaker 1: right now is a very anti meaning sort of stance.
Speaker 1: It's not consolidating, it's not growing, it's not expanding your
Speaker 1: capacity or perspective. So I think we all, I won't
Speaker 1: say we all, but I know a lot of meaning researchers,
Speaker 1: and every single one of them that I know of
Speaker 1: wants to make the world a better place and thinks
Speaker 1: that that's sort of that's the apex of where we
Speaker 1: end up if things don't mess us up along the way.
Speaker 1: So you know, the earliest articulation that I can think
Speaker 1: of about that. I mean, you can see it in
Speaker 1: Franco's work. You know, at some point the way that
Speaker 1: he talks about one of the roads to suffering, one
Speaker 1: of the roads to meaning, leads through suffering. And when
Speaker 1: everything else has been taken away from you, you still
Speaker 1: get to choose how you will endure suffering. And part
Speaker 1: of the reason why that's important is because you become
Speaker 1: a role model, or you become an example for other people.
Speaker 1: So even in your suffering, even when everything's been stripped
Speaker 1: away from you, Franco's reason to suffer nobly has a
Speaker 1: nod to how that how your suffering can serve to
Speaker 1: strengthen other people. Right, So in Franco's work, there's numerous
Speaker 1: times where as an intervention he works to help people
Speaker 1: see that they're on display. In some sense, our lives
Speaker 1: stand for something and significance. Yeah, we'll say, sure, but yeah, right,
Speaker 1: So it's because we're able to be seen by other people.
Speaker 1: So even in our suffering, we can serve the needs
Speaker 1: of other people. By the time the eighties roll around,
Speaker 1: Gary Rieker I mentioned him before Paul Long start talking
Speaker 1: about this idea of depth of meaning, that there's shallow
Speaker 1: meaning and there's deep meanings. The deep meanings are the
Speaker 1: ones that the humanists have talked about for years, you know, God, sports, maturing, personality,
Speaker 1: Maslow's higher give needs that was to be topped with
Speaker 1: self transcendent. So all these trends. You can even take
Speaker 1: a look at ericson right as we'll call him a
Speaker 1: meaning research number twelve and then integration right at the end.
Speaker 1: And you know, so you see a lot of people,
Speaker 1: a lot of threads that go into this idea that
Speaker 1: as we grow into the best and richest and you know,
Speaker 1: deepest that we can be, we're spreading ourselves out to
Speaker 1: embrace large and larger concerns that have less and less
Speaker 1: to do with how I feel right now in this skin.
Speaker 1: So it's beautiful to see that those data that Tatiana
Speaker 1: developed or published because they come from within a good
Speaker 1: long traditional meaning research of trying to get beyond just
Speaker 1: is your life meaning from one to seven and get
Speaker 1: into the sources like what's the richness, what's the fabric,
Speaker 1: what's the texture of people's lives as it pertains to meaning,
Speaker 1: Because there's a lot of stuff out there that says
Speaker 1: people who are more altruistic, people more spiritual and other
Speaker 1: scales look more meaning filled, and people who are materialistic
Speaker 1: and oriented towards beauty and wealth and you know, they
Speaker 1: look like their lives are less meaningful. But it was
Speaker 1: really cool to see that when you even when you
Speaker 1: frame it so pointedly in terms of meaning, these people
Speaker 1: I'm getting meaning from this, they still we still see
Speaker 1: the same thing. And actually saw something kind of similar
Speaker 1: in some research I've done over the years as well,
Speaker 1: where people who are oriented and you know, say they
Speaker 1: want to invest in certain types of ways of trying
Speaker 1: to find meaning and trying to find well being. You know,
Speaker 1: it's a little bit of an old saw at this point,
Speaker 1: like if you're just constantly chasing the thing that makes
Speaker 1: you feel good, next, you're just constantly chasing, right, And
Speaker 1: that's not purpose. It's not purpose, That's what I would say, Right,
Speaker 1: The purpose is something different. Cool. Hey, I should stop
Speaker 1: you from yourself because or else, you know, you're I'm
Speaker 1: sure you have a life outside of the psychology podcast.
Speaker 1: I know you do, so thank you so much for
Speaker 1: spending I can't thank you enough for being so generous
Speaker 1: with your time This might be one of the longest
Speaker 1: psychology podcast chats I've ever had, but i found it
Speaker 1: immensely stimulating and I'm deeply appreciative of the work you
Speaker 1: do so for our field. Thank you well, Thanks Scott.
Speaker 1: I think it's a testament to you and you're curiosity
Speaker 1: or ravenous intellect, so I appreciate being here and having
Speaker 1: a chance to talk about this topic. I definitely have
Speaker 1: a ravenous curiosity. I don't know what's o. Thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you, thanks for listening to the Psychology Podcast. I
Speaker 1: hope you enjoyed this episode. If you'd like to react
Speaker 1: in some way to something you heard, I encourage you
Speaker 1: to join in the discussion at Thespsychology podcast dot com.
Speaker 1: That's the Psychology Podcast dot com. Also, please add a
Speaker 1: rating and review of the Psychology Podcast on iTunes. Thanks
Speaker 1: for being such a great supporter of the podcast, and
Speaker 1: tune in next time or more on the mind, brain, behavior,
Speaker 1: and creativity.