Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to the Psychology Podcast with Doctor Scott
Speaker 1: Barry Kaufman, where we give you insights into the mind, brain, behavior,
Speaker 1: and creativity. Each episode will feature a new guest who
Speaker 1: will stimulate your mind and give you a greater understanding
Speaker 1: of yourself, others, and the world we live in. Hopefully
Speaker 1: we'll also provide a glimpse into human possibility. Thanks for
Speaker 1: listening and enjoy the podcast today. I'm really excited to
Speaker 1: have Emily Esmehani Smith on the show. Emily writes about psychology, culture,
Speaker 1: and relationships. Herating has appeared in The Wall Street Journal,
Speaker 1: New York Times, Time, The Atlantic, and other publications. Emily
Speaker 1: is also a columnist for The New Criterion, as well
Speaker 1: as an editor at the Stanford University's Hoover Institution, where
Speaker 1: she manages the Ben Franklin Circles Project collaboration with the
Speaker 1: ninety second Street Why and Citizen University to build meaning
Speaker 1: in local communities. Her latest book, just out is The
Speaker 1: Power of Meaning, Crafting a Life that Matters. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much for chatting with me today, Emily Scott. It's
Speaker 1: great to be here with you. It's great to be
Speaker 1: here with you as well. Wow, what a delightful, beautiful, touching,
Speaker 1: existentially meaningful book. Thank thank you so much that you
Speaker 1: have written. I was trying to think of all the
Speaker 1: adjectives that come to mind when I think holistically about it.
Speaker 1: Really enjoyed the book. I know I'm going to enjoy
Speaker 1: chatting with you today. I want to ask you a question.
Speaker 1: What is so fit a cave and pronounce it? What
Speaker 1: is Sufisism supism? Sure? And what is your personal experience
Speaker 1: with it? Yeah? Of course. So I grew up in
Speaker 1: Montreal in a cup meeting house that my parents administered.
Speaker 1: So basically the main floor of the house was a
Speaker 1: place where seekers came twice a week in the evenings
Speaker 1: and meditated for several hours. And they were Sufi's And
Speaker 1: Supism is a mystical It's a school of mysticism that's
Speaker 1: associated with Islam, and it involves the practice of meditation,
Speaker 1: the practice of loving kindness. And basically, what seekers are
Speaker 1: doing on the path is trying to break down the
Speaker 1: south the ego so that they can grow as close
Speaker 1: as possible to God or the ultimate reality. And the
Speaker 1: way that they do this is through practices like meditation
Speaker 1: and loving kindness and service and so this is the
Speaker 1: environment that I was surrounded by as a child. I
Speaker 1: grew up with people coming over to our house and
Speaker 1: meditating and being examplars of love and service, and I
Speaker 1: think it made me think from an early age about
Speaker 1: what it meant to lead a meaningful life. What does
Speaker 1: a meaningful life look like? And do you have to
Speaker 1: have some sort of spiritual or religious affiliation in order
Speaker 1: to lead a meaningful life? Right? So you started thinking
Speaker 1: about these questions at a very early age, Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right. Did you have any existential angst as a kid?
Speaker 1: Did it? Did it give you any profound sadness as
Speaker 1: well as joy? I think maybe not so much as
Speaker 1: a child. I think maybe as I as I grew
Speaker 1: older and came into adolescence and later in college and
Speaker 1: started really reflecting more deeply on religion and whether you
Speaker 1: could know for sure if there was some sort of
Speaker 1: higher being out there and what that meant for or
Speaker 1: whether life has meaning. I think at that point in
Speaker 1: my life I started maybe asking questions and feeling a
Speaker 1: little bit more uncertain about the meaning of life and
Speaker 1: what makes our lives meaningful in general. And I think
Speaker 1: struggling with that uh is ultimately what you know? What
Speaker 1: led me to write this book because I wanted to
Speaker 1: understand can you you know, what are the building blocks
Speaker 1: of a meaningful life? Can you lead a meaningful life
Speaker 1: regardless of what your metaphysical beliefs are, regardless of whether
Speaker 1: you have faith and something beyond? And I was inspired
Speaker 1: by the many people I interviewed, by the research that
Speaker 1: I came across in psychology, by the philosophy and literature
Speaker 1: that I read and write about in this book, I
Speaker 1: was very inspired to see that yes, indeed, you don't
Speaker 1: have to be a person of faith to leading meaningful life,
Speaker 1: though of course you can. You can have religion and
Speaker 1: be person and have meaning as well. But they are
Speaker 1: untapped sources of meaning all around us that we all
Speaker 1: can drop on, no matter who we are and what
Speaker 1: we believe and what we do. Absolutely, and I think
Speaker 1: that you know that your book is very has a
Speaker 1: lot of religious undertones, but it's a very spiritual book
Speaker 1: as well. And I think that you do talk about
Speaker 1: these non secular forms of meaning that exist. So I
Speaker 1: really want to get at this distinction you make that
Speaker 1: kind of lies at the heart of a lot of
Speaker 1: your book, and that's between happiness and meaning. And I
Speaker 1: know you wrote that delightful article for the Atlantic that
Speaker 1: went viral about the difference between happiness and meaning, and
Speaker 1: you impact that a bit more in your inner introduction.
Speaker 1: So yeah, maybe we could talk a little about that.
Speaker 1: How does a philosophy experience like notesis experiment illustrate a
Speaker 1: little bit of this difference? So so Robert knows it
Speaker 1: was a philosopher a Harvard and he was kind of
Speaker 1: one of, you know, one of the happiness skeptics who
Speaker 1: I write about in my book. And basically he wanted
Speaker 1: to take aim at this idea that happiness is the
Speaker 1: be all, end all of life, which is an idea
Speaker 1: that a lot of us live by. You know, if
Speaker 1: you ask people what their top value is, that they'll
Speaker 1: say happiness. You know, the host self help industry, the
Speaker 1: multi billion dollar industry. There are coaches who are you
Speaker 1: intended to help us all lead more red, happier lives.
Speaker 1: And as a Nosick was question this idea that happiness
Speaker 1: should be our end goal. And the way that he
Speaker 1: illustrated it to us was through a thought experiment where
Speaker 1: he said, you know, imagine that you can plug into
Speaker 1: a machine that gives you that can give you any
Speaker 1: experience that you want. And so if happiness is our
Speaker 1: end goal, then we would plug into the machine and
Speaker 1: constantly be asking for experiences of happiness and pleasure and
Speaker 1: good feelings. And you know, you can plug out of
Speaker 1: the machine whenever you want and figure out what next,
Speaker 1: what further experiences that you want to have, and but
Speaker 1: ultimately you could be in the machine and you could
Speaker 1: lead a happy life. And he asks us, is that
Speaker 1: would that be a good life? Is that the kind
Speaker 1: of like you would want to lead or you'd want
Speaker 1: your children to lead? And I think the answer for
Speaker 1: most of us is no. And the reason is that,
Speaker 1: you know, we don't just want to feel a certain way,
Speaker 1: We don't just want to feel happy. We want our
Speaker 1: lives to amount to something. We want to do things
Speaker 1: in the world that are significant and that make a
Speaker 1: difference in the lives of others, and so so you know,
Speaker 1: we want to lead active lives, lives that contribute in
Speaker 1: some way and that and I think that's right, and
Speaker 1: I think that that really that that gets at this
Speaker 1: distinction between meaning and happiness, and happiness is really a
Speaker 1: positive mental and emotional state, which is how psychologists define it,
Speaker 1: then me is bigger. It's about connecting and contributing to
Speaker 1: something beyond the self. When psychologists ask people whether their
Speaker 1: lives have meaning and people say that they do, it's
Speaker 1: usually because, you know, there are three conditions that have
Speaker 1: been satisfied. The first is that these individuals feel that
Speaker 1: their lives are driven by a sense of purpose or
Speaker 1: a goal that in some way contributes to the world
Speaker 1: or to other people. The second is that they think
Speaker 1: that their lives matter, so that their lives are significant
Speaker 1: and have worth in some way. And the final one
Speaker 1: is that they believe that their lives are coherent, so
Speaker 1: they don't conceive of their experiences as random occurrences, but
Speaker 1: rather as part of a larger narrative that explains who
Speaker 1: they are and where they come from. So you can
Speaker 1: see that, you know, we may use meaning and happiness,
Speaker 1: you know, changeably, but actually they're quite different. And when
Speaker 1: I'm trying to argue in my book is that what
Speaker 1: we really want is to lead a meaningful life, that
Speaker 1: humans are meaning seeking creatures. Wow, there's so much in
Speaker 1: what you just said, So I'll try to my brains
Speaker 1: start to compute which part to pick out and focus on.
Speaker 1: But let me, let me, let me, let's get into
Speaker 1: the science a little bit. You know, the research does
Speaker 1: show that meaning and happiness are strongly correlated with each other.
Speaker 1: But correlation, it's not perfect correlation, of course, and correlation
Speaker 1: doesn't mean causation. So this is the interesting thing is,
Speaker 1: you know, it seems like happiness doesn't really predict meaning,
Speaker 1: but meaning actually does predict happiness, right, So you know,
Speaker 1: you don't get happiness by striving for happiness, but you
Speaker 1: kind of get happiness as an epiphenomena of meaning. I
Speaker 1: get that. That's right. That that's what the research that
Speaker 1: I cover in my book shows as well. That you know,
Speaker 1: pursuing happiness can actually backfire. It can actually kind of
Speaker 1: make you feel unhappy, make you feel anxious about the
Speaker 1: fact that you're not feeling as happy as you want to.
Speaker 1: But when you set your sights on leading a meaningful
Speaker 1: life instead and pursuing meaningful endeavors like you know, practicing
Speaker 1: a musical instrument, studying, volunteering, that you actually experience a
Speaker 1: deeper form of well being down the road. Yeah, so,
Speaker 1: you know, there seems to be like it seems to
Speaker 1: be like hot right in hell to like have a
Speaker 1: backlash against happiness. Have you noticed that, Like, I mean,
Speaker 1: your book is important in singling out the importance of meaning,
Speaker 1: But if you notice there's a lot of books that
Speaker 1: the books are just about like why happiness is like
Speaker 1: the happiness trap I just bought, you know, there's like, yes,
Speaker 1: the happiness anxiety Nation or whatever it's called. So there
Speaker 1: seems to be a big backlash. Do you think, like, like,
Speaker 1: if enough people like start hopping on your bandwagon that
Speaker 1: you you know, like you're you did such a beautiful book.
Speaker 1: Are you ever worried that people are gonna like people love,
Speaker 1: like there's gonna be a backlash against meaning, I'm sure
Speaker 1: or its meaning full proof? Is meaningful proof? Yeah? I
Speaker 1: don't know. So I don't think that meaning is full proof.
Speaker 1: And I think that there are definitely there, you know,
Speaker 1: if you think of happiness and meaning as goods that
Speaker 1: a human life can have, I don't think that meaning
Speaker 1: is the highest good. I think that it's higher than happiness,
Speaker 1: but I think that, you know, the highest good might
Speaker 1: be something like you know, being a good person or
Speaker 1: being a person of character. And and if if your
Speaker 1: kind of desire to lead a meaningful life conflicts with
Speaker 1: being a good person. Uh, then I think that I
Speaker 1: would not advise meaning in that case. I would advise
Speaker 1: kind of referring to your conscience and to your sense
Speaker 1: of morality. And I say this because there are a
Speaker 1: lot of examples of people who in the name of
Speaker 1: meaning have done horrific acts, you know, whether it's you know,
Speaker 1: the obvious example of you know, the Nazis during World
Speaker 1: War two, or the members of ices today, to you know,
Speaker 1: more local examples. So I think that meaning is important,
Speaker 1: but it's not the high is good. That said, I
Speaker 1: do think that if you do lead a good life,
Speaker 1: a life that is a life of character, that you
Speaker 1: will feel like your life is meaningful at the end
Speaker 1: of the day. Cool. And also, you're not saying that
Speaker 1: that there's anything wrong with happiness. I mean, do I
Speaker 1: need to feel guilty if I'm happy? I like? Like?
Speaker 1: Am I like? I just I got recently got the
Speaker 1: PlayStation four VR and it's like so much fun to play,
Speaker 1: like because I get no meaning from that, but it's
Speaker 1: really just fun. Can I enjoy it? Am I allowed
Speaker 1: to enjoy that? Of course? I say, I think that
Speaker 1: there's nothing wrong with with happiness. I think obviously, you know,
Speaker 1: we want to be happy, and we want the people
Speaker 1: we love and care for to be happy. But I
Speaker 1: just think that when we're prioritizing our own lives and
Speaker 1: our goals and our hobbies and the things that we do,
Speaker 1: that you know, meaning is probably a better you know,
Speaker 1: signposts and happiness to guide us good. And yeah, let's
Speaker 1: get really really serious here for a second. You know
Speaker 1: your book, you talk about the meaning crisis, which is real,
Speaker 1: and you highlight some just concerning trends in society that
Speaker 1: I think people should become aware of. So can you
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about this meeting crisis? Yes, So
Speaker 1: in one of the chapters in my book, I try
Speaker 1: to highlight the fact that there are millions of people
Speaker 1: today who don't know why their lives are meaningful, who
Speaker 1: don't have who don't believe that their lives are meaningful,
Speaker 1: don't have a strong sense of purpose, and the result
Speaker 1: is that it is suffering basically they you know more,
Speaker 1: the rates of depression have been rising, rates of anxiety
Speaker 1: and loneliness have been rising. At the suicide rate has
Speaker 1: been rising. In fact, last spring it reached a thirty
Speaker 1: year high. And I would argue that part of the
Speaker 1: reason is that people are struggling to understand what makes
Speaker 1: it their own lives worth living. And you know me,
Speaker 1: meaning has been found to kind of be a buffer
Speaker 1: against some of these signs of malaise that we're seeing
Speaker 1: across the culture. And in one of the studies that
Speaker 1: I write about, it was it was found to be
Speaker 1: a predictor of the suicide rights, so explaining in part
Speaker 1: why people were committing suicide. And I think that's obviously
Speaker 1: it's obviously very tragic, and I think part of the
Speaker 1: reason that people feel so adrift and like their lives
Speaker 1: don't have meaning is that we've placed meaning on such
Speaker 1: a pedestal. We've kind of, you know, turned it into
Speaker 1: this really grand pursuit as something that you can only
Speaker 1: have or do if you're a sage, a religious master,
Speaker 1: or you know, curing cancer or writing the Great American novel.
Speaker 1: But what I want to argue, and what I found
Speaker 1: by turning to the research and interviewing people, is that actually,
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter who you are or what you do,
Speaker 1: you can lead a meaningful of life. And and it
Speaker 1: comes by kind of relying on these little sources of
Speaker 1: meaning that are all around us. And that we all
Speaker 1: can tap into everyone who feels like there's a loss
Speaker 1: of hope. Your book, like is page after page of
Speaker 1: just it's like filling up my meaning tank just reading
Speaker 1: the book. Let me give one example something I found
Speaker 1: really profound. You talked about a story of the Greek
Speaker 1: hero Sisyphus. No idea if I pronounced that correctly, But
Speaker 1: you know, so one could tell a little bit about
Speaker 1: that story, because I think it's a really nice illustration
Speaker 1: of how you know, even if you feel like you
Speaker 1: think yourself well, for the rest of my life, I
Speaker 1: will have to I will have hopeless. You can actually
Speaker 1: reframe the situation, right right, So the mydth of Sisipis
Speaker 1: is that Sisyphus was this ancient Greek hero who did
Speaker 1: something to upset the gods, and so the gods punished
Speaker 1: him by wrapping kind of a large boulder around his
Speaker 1: angle with and condemning him to forever have to climb
Speaker 1: up the mountain with this boulder wrapped around him. And
Speaker 1: but but right as he gets to the top of
Speaker 1: the mountain, he falls back down. And so hour after hour,
Speaker 1: day after day, and month after month, he's climbing the
Speaker 1: mountain and right before it gets to the top, he
Speaker 1: falls back down. And so this, I mean, you can
Speaker 1: just imagine a life that's like this. You feel like
Speaker 1: nothing you do matters, that you are, you are shackle
Speaker 1: to some faith that is not in your control, that
Speaker 1: your life is futile. And yet Albert Camu, the French
Speaker 1: philosopher who I write about in that section of the book,
Speaker 1: he kind of he invites us to reinterpret the Sisyphis
Speaker 1: myth as actually a wonderful example of a meaningful life
Speaker 1: because Sissyphis kind of embraces his task. He doesn't let
Speaker 1: the gods kind of ruin his own sense of himself.
Speaker 1: He embraces the task with defiance and with freedom. And
Speaker 1: every time he falls back down the mountain, he facees
Speaker 1: a choice whether to lay down there in despair or
Speaker 1: to get back up and try again. And every time
Speaker 1: he gets back up and he tries again, and and
Speaker 1: so Camu says, so we have to kind of imagine
Speaker 1: that Sissiphis is satisfied with this faith. And I, you know,
Speaker 1: it sounds like you took comfort from that story, Scott,
Speaker 1: and I do too, because I think we've all been there.
Speaker 1: I think we've all kind of been on some path
Speaker 1: that we just feel like isn't going anywhere, or we
Speaker 1: keep trying to do something and we keep putting ourselves
Speaker 1: out there and it goes nowhere, We get rejected, our
Speaker 1: sense of worth and a steam starts falling apart. And
Speaker 1: yet at the end of the day, we each have
Speaker 1: a choice to kind of get up and seize the
Speaker 1: day again and to embrace those things that make life
Speaker 1: meaningful totally. And you know, I think that I struggle,
Speaker 1: and you and we all struggle when the struggles with this,
Speaker 1: with the feeling of like nothing I do is enough,
Speaker 1: you know, thing I do is and and the story
Speaker 1: is just his point because like if one person can
Speaker 1: you know, if it can be enough, just if the
Speaker 1: process can just be enough. Right, What a beautiful way
Speaker 1: of framing your life, Like there's so much pressure for
Speaker 1: the for the for you not to be enough until
Speaker 1: you achieve a public a recognized success right now, I
Speaker 1: think I think that's right, and I think it reminds
Speaker 1: me of this, uh, this effect in psychology that's called
Speaker 1: the Ikea effect, and it's it's based on social science
Speaker 1: that they in the lab, that researchers have done and
Speaker 1: the idea is that you know, when you put together
Speaker 1: a piece of Ikea furniture, even though Ikea makes it
Speaker 1: more complicated than it has to be, so that you
Speaker 1: put more work into it, that at the end of
Speaker 1: the day, you actually like the furniture more and you
Speaker 1: value it more because you put that work into it.
Speaker 1: And I think it's the same thing with our lives.
Speaker 1: If you put the work into it, if you if
Speaker 1: you devote yourself to it, to the processes that kind
Speaker 1: of take up day to day life, then ultimately you'll
Speaker 1: value your life more, uh than you would if it
Speaker 1: was just kind of if you were just coasting by
Speaker 1: and getting everything that you wanted to. I like that phrase,
Speaker 1: valuing your life. It's not very poetic, that phrase. Just
Speaker 1: like think about the publication. It's like like you unfold
Speaker 1: in your values that are poort into you your life,
Speaker 1: right right exactly exactly? I don't know anyway. Okay, So
Speaker 1: let's talk about some of these pillars of meaning that
Speaker 1: you have found across various sources. You've kind of aggregated
Speaker 1: these kept reoccurring these themes. One is belonging the importance
Speaker 1: of belonging. So tell me about what is what is
Speaker 1: the heart of this of this need and this pillar
Speaker 1: of meaning, and what are its benefits. I think a
Speaker 1: lot of people when they think about what are the
Speaker 1: building blocks of the good life, they think, oh, relationships everyone.
Speaker 1: You know, if you have valuable relationships, then you're you'll
Speaker 1: be living a good life. But I'm arguing that it's
Speaker 1: actually a specific type of relationship that matters to meaning,
Speaker 1: and it's a relationship defined by belonging. And so we
Speaker 1: were just talking about about value and valuing your own life. Well,
Speaker 1: belonging is all about whether another person values you, whether
Speaker 1: they think that you matter, and they treat you like
Speaker 1: you matter, in other words, with respect and with care.
Speaker 1: They don't they're not trying to harm you emotionally or physically.
Speaker 1: They're not rejecting and ostracizing you. And if you think
Speaker 1: about it, it makes sense that this would be a
Speaker 1: pillar of belonging because when other people think that your
Speaker 1: life matters, you think you'll think that it matters as well.
Speaker 1: So it is it's a sense of I matter to others,
Speaker 1: I'm valued by others. And the benefits, there are so
Speaker 1: many benefits to belonging. It's you know, it's associated with
Speaker 1: better health, with better physical health and emotional health and
Speaker 1: with having more meaning in life, and so it's a
Speaker 1: very important pillar of meaning. It's probably it's probably for
Speaker 1: most people, the most important pillar of meaning because when
Speaker 1: you ask people, you know, what are your top sources
Speaker 1: of meaning, they end up saying my close relationships, you know,
Speaker 1: time and again and surveys. Yeah. And then there's a
Speaker 1: flip side of that which you talk about, you know,
Speaker 1: extreme loneliness is it's really important predictor as well of
Speaker 1: a lot of negative outcomes in life, right exactly. So,
Speaker 1: so extreme loneliness is associated with all kinds of you know,
Speaker 1: physical and mental health problems. And when researchers kind of
Speaker 1: induce feelings of social isolation in the lab setting by,
Speaker 1: for example, having you feel like you're rejected by a group,
Speaker 1: then you actually end up feeling both like your life
Speaker 1: is less meaningful and like life in general is less meaningful.
Speaker 1: So there's something really vital about this sense of belonging
Speaker 1: and feeling like like other people care about you. It's
Speaker 1: i mean, brought about my stern Mark. Larry Leary wrote
Speaker 1: a famous paper years ago called the Need to Belong,
Speaker 1: and it really is in need. It's it's it's as
Speaker 1: important to our physical and emotional health as as you know,
Speaker 1: as water and food are, because without it we suffer
Speaker 1: and we can we even die prematurely. I absolutely agree
Speaker 1: and uh and Maslow put that as one of his
Speaker 1: assessor I have to mention Ma's name at least once
Speaker 1: podcast episode pardon me, let's talk about your your next pillar. Purpose?
Speaker 1: Can you tell me a little bit about Bill Damon's
Speaker 1: research on this? And yeah, just a little bit about
Speaker 1: that some of the most important things he's found that
Speaker 1: that drive purpose Bill Bill Damon is a researcher at
Speaker 1: Stanford and he is a leading expert on on youth
Speaker 1: purpose and on purpose in general. But he has his
Speaker 1: research focus is on how young people develop or fail
Speaker 1: to develop purpose, and so he defines purpose as a
Speaker 1: long term goal that organizes our lives and that involves
Speaker 1: making a contribution in some way to others. And you know, purpose,
Speaker 1: I think sounds can sound really big, like my purpose
Speaker 1: is cure and cancer, or my purpose is reducing the
Speaker 1: achievement gap in education. But actually purpose can come in
Speaker 1: all shapes and sizes. So while certainly you might have
Speaker 1: a grand purpose like you know, care and cancer or
Speaker 1: writing the Great American novel. You can also have a
Speaker 1: purpose that's more immediate and local, like being a good
Speaker 1: friend or being a good parent to your child. There's
Speaker 1: one study actually that shows that when teenagers do chores
Speaker 1: around the house, like you know, babysitting or doing the dishes,
Speaker 1: that they actually feel a greater sense of purpose. And
Speaker 1: it's because you know they're contributing. They're making a contribution
Speaker 1: to something that lies beyond themselves, and so that's purpose
Speaker 1: is now Builds research has found that young people are
Speaker 1: more and more growing up without a sense of purpose,
Speaker 1: which is troubling because purpose. Being purposeless basically amounts to
Speaker 1: being adrift in other aspects of life as well. So
Speaker 1: if you don't have a strong sense of purpose, you
Speaker 1: don't end up doing quite as well in school. You're
Speaker 1: not as motivated, you're more likely to fall prey to
Speaker 1: distractions like like drug and alcohol. So and on the
Speaker 1: flip side, if you have a sense of purpose throughout
Speaker 1: those young adult years, you end up being more motivated,
Speaker 1: You do better in school, your emotional and mental health
Speaker 1: are better, You're more resilient in the face of adversity.
Speaker 1: So and what build has found with young people I
Speaker 1: think has been replicated with adults as well, the critical
Speaker 1: importance of purpose and in a meaningful life and in
Speaker 1: a healthy, full life. And I like how you link
Speaker 1: purpose to another topic. I love authenticity. You know, we
Speaker 1: had I actually had you know, Breune Brown on this
Speaker 1: podcast recently, and she has done a lot of work
Speaker 1: on authenticity. Really convinced me of the power of it.
Speaker 1: And you talk about how being reminded of your authentic
Speaker 1: self can kind of renew your purpose in a sense.
Speaker 1: Is that right? So sometimes just being yourself can be
Speaker 1: a purpose. Does that make sense? It does? And I
Speaker 1: think so. I think one way to think about purpose,
Speaker 1: if it's a purpose, is about contributing to the world.
Speaker 1: What you're basically, what you're contributing is you is the
Speaker 1: best that's inside of you to the world. And so
Speaker 1: it's important to know what the best parts of yourself are.
Speaker 1: But what are your talents and strength and interest, and
Speaker 1: how can you cultivate them to contribute to the world
Speaker 1: and to give to others the best version of yourself? Cool?
Speaker 1: And yeah, you talk about a purpose driven life and
Speaker 1: you say, look, it's not all about smiling the happiness
Speaker 1: and PlayStation fours vrs. But but it's you know, but
Speaker 1: it's it's still it's good on its own right exactly.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you think about so many of the
Speaker 1: things that we do, like like you with your research, Scott,
Speaker 1: me with my writing. I know you have a background
Speaker 1: in music as well, you probably spend a lot of
Speaker 1: time as a kid practicing. I have my brothers a
Speaker 1: play sports. He spends a lot of time practicing. So
Speaker 1: if you think of so many of the things that
Speaker 1: we do, they don't necessarily make a happy moment to moment.
Speaker 1: They're hard work, they're stressful, they're effortful, and yet we
Speaker 1: do them anyways because they give our lives a sense
Speaker 1: of purpose and they are about kind of connecting with
Speaker 1: something that's beyond ourselves. So tell me a little bit
Speaker 1: about how Adam's Adam Grant's research on meaning relates to purpose.
Speaker 1: I love Grant's research. Adam has has shown that one
Speaker 1: of the ways that you can find meaning in a
Speaker 1: workplace setting is by contributing to others. So he points
Speaker 1: out that the jobs that have the most meaning, where
Speaker 1: the people working those jobs right their jobs is the
Speaker 1: most meaningful, tend to be service jobs, like you know,
Speaker 1: being a surgeon, being a clergyman, being an educator, and
Speaker 1: and it makes sense. These are the jobs that you
Speaker 1: would think of if you when you think of meaningful careers.
Speaker 1: But of course most of us don't necessarily work in
Speaker 1: jobs like that. You know, there are lots of corporate
Speaker 1: lawyers out there, lots of administrators, retail clerks, and so
Speaker 1: the question arises of how, you know, how can you
Speaker 1: find well, can you find meaning in those careers as well?
Speaker 1: And Adam Adam's work suggests that you can. And the
Speaker 1: way that you can is by adopting what I call
Speaker 1: in my book a service mindset. So even if your
Speaker 1: job isn't directly tied to saving someone else's life or
Speaker 1: educating someone or giving to them in some way, you
Speaker 1: can still think about the way that what you do
Speaker 1: you makes a contribution to others or to your office culture.
Speaker 1: So an example that I love is comes from John F. Kennedy,
Speaker 1: President John Kennedy when he was visiting NASA in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty two, and the story goes that he was walking
Speaker 1: through the hallways and he encountered a janitor there, and
Speaker 1: he asked the janitor, what are you doing here? And
Speaker 1: the janitor said to him, mister President, and helping to
Speaker 1: put a man on the moon, And I just I
Speaker 1: love that that's one of you know, it's one of
Speaker 1: my favorite kind of little anecdotes that I came across
Speaker 1: while researching the book. And the point is that, you know,
Speaker 1: we're all contributing to something bigger, and so much of
Speaker 1: how much meaning we feel an experience has to do
Speaker 1: with how we understand that contribution and to remember that
Speaker 1: we're contributing to something bigger. Oh Man, I absolutely love that.
Speaker 1: That's a big theme of the book, right, is just
Speaker 1: something outside yourself, you know exactly, whether another person or
Speaker 1: or a task you know. Anyway, So the next pillar
Speaker 1: you talk about is storytelling. Can you tell me a
Speaker 1: little bit about why? What was that to do with
Speaker 1: wanting to make sense of the world. Storytelling was actually
Speaker 1: the pillar that I guess, in a lot of ways
Speaker 1: was the most unexpected for me to include in the book,
Speaker 1: and that was the hardest chapter to write as well.
Speaker 1: So if you remember back, if you think back to
Speaker 1: the definition of meaning that I gave earlier in our conversation,
Speaker 1: I said that it involved three things, purpose, mattering, and coherence,
Speaker 1: And so storytelling really taps into the coherence leg of
Speaker 1: the definition. And what do I mean when I say storytelling.
Speaker 1: Storytelling is how we make sense of our experiences and
Speaker 1: our place in the world. So we don't conceive of
Speaker 1: our experiences it's just random and disconnected occurrences. We tend
Speaker 1: to craft a narrative about them. So, you know, you
Speaker 1: you know your book and Gifted, Scott, you you created
Speaker 1: a beautiful narrative about Gifted, Yeah, I did. So that
Speaker 1: how you got to where you are today because of
Speaker 1: experiences that you had when you were younger. And I
Speaker 1: think that all of us, whether writers or not, we're
Speaker 1: constantly doing that. We're constantly thinking about what our experiences
Speaker 1: mean for us and how they define who we are.
Speaker 1: And so and that's what I call storytelling. That's what
Speaker 1: I mean by it. Yeah, totally. I mean I was
Speaker 1: thinking about the narrative I presented on a Gift when
Speaker 1: I was reading your book, because I was thinking about
Speaker 1: how my gosh there. I mean, there's so much that
Speaker 1: we omit, you know, when we tell our stories, you know,
Speaker 1: and we kind of like create something that's coherent. You've
Speaker 1: said that you know earlier about the importance of coherence,
Speaker 1: but it seems to be particularly important with our story
Speaker 1: or narrative, or as Dan McAdams called our narrative identity. Right,
Speaker 1: my narrative identity as a kid wasn't gifted. And then
Speaker 1: I decided an adult to change my narrative identity not
Speaker 1: just a competent human being. Well, I know, I love that,
Speaker 1: and I think that it shows that what you just
Speaker 1: said shows the power of storytelling because we all have
Speaker 1: the power. We're the authors of our own stories, which
Speaker 1: means we have the power to change them. And if
Speaker 1: we change our stories, that we can sometimes change the
Speaker 1: way we lead our lives. Because our identities kind of
Speaker 1: affect how we interact with the world. The identities that
Speaker 1: we cast on to ourselves that we have the power
Speaker 1: of changing affect how we interact in the world. Yeah, no, absolutely,
Speaker 1: I think that's right there, the you know, changing our narratives.
Speaker 1: So you you mentioned something that I thought I was
Speaker 1: so intrigued by this, this phrase future nostalgia? Did you
Speaker 1: try nostalgia just as contexts for listeners? Basically what this
Speaker 1: this particular individual, his name was Carlos Air, was telling
Speaker 1: me about a future that was that that was cut
Speaker 1: off to him because he grew up in Cuba and
Speaker 1: had to leave after the Cuban Revolution, and so he
Speaker 1: ended up coming to the United States. But he constantly
Speaker 1: thought about the future that he could have had in
Speaker 1: Cuba had the revolution not occurred, and he felt nostalgic
Speaker 1: for that future. And the point that I'm making in
Speaker 1: that part of the book is that, you know, sometimes
Speaker 1: reflecting on our stories can be painful because we have
Speaker 1: to think about the things that we lost, Like Carlows said,
Speaker 1: you know, losing his childhood in Cuba. Sometimes reflecting on
Speaker 1: our stories can be painful because we have to think
Speaker 1: about what we lost, and we can feel nostalgic about it.
Speaker 1: And that's what future nostalgia is. I just love that expression. Okay,
Speaker 1: so let's talk about the next pillar. Transcendence. You know,
Speaker 1: this is a word that has different meanings. How do
Speaker 1: you use this term and how does that relate to meaning?
Speaker 1: Transcendence is about connecting to something that is just far
Speaker 1: beyond the ordinary waking experience that we are living in
Speaker 1: day to day. So it's kind of it's what some
Speaker 1: people call them mountain top experiences. It's those moments when
Speaker 1: you just feel lifted out of yourself so you know,
Speaker 1: I've had those experiences in nature before, I've had them
Speaker 1: occasionally in meditation, small versions of them, and these are
Speaker 1: and the reason these experiences are so powerful is because
Speaker 1: they force you to shift how you think about yourself
Speaker 1: and the world, and they bring you a greater sense
Speaker 1: of clarity and wisdom about your place in the world.
Speaker 1: So William James is one of the greatest writers about
Speaker 1: these types of mystical experiences, and he says that they're ineffable,
Speaker 1: in other words, they're difficult to describe, and also that
Speaker 1: they're no dit which they leave you with some kind
Speaker 1: of deeper knowledge about yourself and your place the world,
Speaker 1: and that knowledge kind of stays with you and can
Speaker 1: just confuse your life with meaning in a really powerful way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I get to work with too modern day William
Speaker 1: James is James Poolski and David Yiden. Yes, So let's
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about David Aiden's research, which is really,
Speaker 1: you know, quite revolutionary, kind of scientifically operationalizing some of
Speaker 1: these ideas, right, yeah, exactly. So David Is his research
Speaker 1: is wonderful and he shows that there's two steps in
Speaker 1: a transcendent experience. Basically, you the first step is your
Speaker 1: sense of self diminishes, and then the second step is
Speaker 1: that as that sense of self diminishes, you connect with
Speaker 1: something that is beyond the self, which and then this
Speaker 1: goes back to the ineffable part that William James talks
Speaker 1: about what that something is that you're connecting to. People
Speaker 1: call it different things, some people don't even have a
Speaker 1: word for it, but usually what they're talking about is
Speaker 1: kind of some higher reality, some alternate reality, some some
Speaker 1: larger truth that they feel that they have understood. Right,
Speaker 1: is that what all is? So awe? The emotion of awe,
Speaker 1: I think, is what that's what you feel. That's the
Speaker 1: emotion you feel during a transcendent experience, and it's you know,
Speaker 1: with all your kind of you're overwhelmed by this whatever
Speaker 1: stimuli is stimulus, it is that you're experiencing, and this
Speaker 1: feeling of overwhelmingness forces you to shift the way that
Speaker 1: you think about the world. So I think transcendence and
Speaker 1: awe are very related. Yeah, I definitely agree. And you
Speaker 1: know there's this line of research as well in all
Speaker 1: by doctor Keltner and his colleagues. And then also, can
Speaker 1: you tell me a little bit about the work of
Speaker 1: Roland Griffiths. Roland Griths is a is a professor at
Speaker 1: John talking To University, and he's kind of he's reviving
Speaker 1: a tradition of research that was very controversial basically, which
Speaker 1: is the research on loucin agenic drugs that begin in
Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties with Timothy Timothy Leary. The drugs were
Speaker 1: then outlawed in large part because people like Leary were
Speaker 1: basically becoming kind of evangelists for them, and we're seen
Speaker 1: as destructive elements of society, fairly or not. But Roland
Speaker 1: has has in a very responsible way revived this body
Speaker 1: of work. And he brings people into the lab and
Speaker 1: he assigns them to either a control condition or an
Speaker 1: experimental condition, and those in the experimental condition receive psilocybin,
Speaker 1: which is the active ingredient in mushrooms. And what Roland
Speaker 1: and his team are trying to do is they're trying
Speaker 1: to understand how does a mystical experience occasion by psilocybin,
Speaker 1: How does it affect to our lives, how does it
Speaker 1: affect our sense of meaning in life? And other outcomes.
Speaker 1: So he studied atticts, cigarette addicts, He studied people facing
Speaker 1: terminal cancer, and he studied just normal way individuals to
Speaker 1: see and what he's found is that among these people
Speaker 1: that the mystical experience does indeed infuse them with a
Speaker 1: profound sense of meaning, and that sense of meaning kind
Speaker 1: of stays with them long after the experiment is over.
Speaker 1: Fascinating Lee, He's also found that giving people this mystical
Speaker 1: experiences helps them overcome their addictions. So one of the
Speaker 1: people I spoke to told me that after he was
Speaker 1: in role and study and after he had the mystical
Speaker 1: experiences with silocybin, his urge to smoke cigarettes just completely vanished,
Speaker 1: and he'd smoked a number of packs a day and
Speaker 1: it just went away. And he said it's because he
Speaker 1: realized how small and insignificant that addiction was in relationship
Speaker 1: and to what he now knew as a result of
Speaker 1: the transcendent experience. Another person I spoke to was suffering
Speaker 1: from terminal cancer, and sadly she died during the process
Speaker 1: of writing this book, but her story appears in my book,
Speaker 1: and the study that she was in was all about
Speaker 1: how and whether a transcendent mystical experience can help alleviate
Speaker 1: the sense of fear and anxiety. We have towards death,
Speaker 1: and in her case it indeed did. It brought her
Speaker 1: a sense of peacefulness as she was approaching the end
Speaker 1: of her own life. That was such a touching story.
Speaker 1: And yeah, you ended the section saying sadly she passed away,
Speaker 1: but you know it was nice to know she passed
Speaker 1: away with peace. Yes. Yes, So let's talk about your
Speaker 1: last pillar of meaning, personal growth, And let me ask
Speaker 1: you a question. Why did you order them the way
Speaker 1: you did? You know, why is personal growth? Is there
Speaker 1: a meaning to personal growth being the last pillar? Well, so,
Speaker 1: I guess I don't know if I would, I would necessarily,
Speaker 1: I don't conceive of personal growth as one of the pillars.
Speaker 1: I think of it as the way all of the pillars,
Speaker 1: the four pillars belonging, purpose, storytelling, and transcendence, how they
Speaker 1: come together to lead us to grow. And thank you
Speaker 1: for that clarification. Thank you. No, of course, I think
Speaker 1: it absolutely growth. So that chapter is about adversity and
Speaker 1: traumatic experiences and how how we can grow in the
Speaker 1: face of them rather than being undone by them. What
Speaker 1: I found. What I found was that the way that
Speaker 1: people cope with and are resilient in the face of
Speaker 1: adversity is by both relying on the pillars of meaning
Speaker 1: that they had already built in their lives prior to
Speaker 1: the trauma, and also by further building those pillars in
Speaker 1: their life after the trauma. So if you want to,
Speaker 1: if you want to kind of weather adversity in a
Speaker 1: resilient and healthy way, it's important to have pillars in
Speaker 1: your life already, And then if you want to grow
Speaker 1: at the trauma, the best way to do so is
Speaker 1: by leaning on those pillars. Yeah, no, that that's great.
Speaker 1: And you talk about some very interesting research by James
Speaker 1: Pennabaker that people who keep their traumas a secret throughout
Speaker 1: their lives don't show as much growth than those who
Speaker 1: expressively write about it. Is that right? That's right. So
Speaker 1: penny Baker had asked his research subjects to come into
Speaker 1: the lab and to write expressively about the darkest moment
Speaker 1: of their lives, and he had he had the research
Speaker 1: subjects do this either three or four days, And what
Speaker 1: he found was that the more people made sense of
Speaker 1: the trauma, the more they tried to understand it, you know,
Speaker 1: tell a story about it, to go back to the
Speaker 1: storytelling pillar, the more they were ultimately able to overcome
Speaker 1: the trauma in a healthy way. And his research specifically
Speaker 1: shows that they visited the doctor, lass that they had
Speaker 1: better health indicators later on, and that they did better
Speaker 1: in school. And I think that he also found that
Speaker 1: their mental and emotional health was better as well. Right,
Speaker 1: So that research is important and it links to this
Speaker 1: emerging field of post traumatic growth that you talk about
Speaker 1: in your book, that we can grow from our adversity,
Speaker 1: and that expressive writing might be one tool that increases
Speaker 1: the probability that will grow exactly. That's right. Very cool. Okay,
Speaker 1: so let's talk about lastly, let's talk about cultures of meaning.
Speaker 1: I was very excited. I almost fell off my bad
Speaker 1: actually when I saw that you mentioned the Future Project. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because this is an organization that I am a big
Speaker 1: proponent and I'm on their advisory board as well. But
Speaker 1: you could talk a little bit about about how their
Speaker 1: work creates a culture of meaning. The Future Project is
Speaker 1: an organization that is working with inner city kids to
Speaker 1: help them figure out what their purpose is, and I
Speaker 1: highlight them in the book along with a number of
Speaker 1: other cultures of meaning because the Future Project is part
Speaker 1: of a broader movement in our culture. That of organizations
Speaker 1: and leaders and institutions trying to create cultures of meaning
Speaker 1: for people that help people lead more meaningful lives. And
Speaker 1: you know, we talked about Bill Damon earlier. I think
Speaker 1: Bill Damon is also involved with the Future Project. And
Speaker 1: as we were discussing, Damon's research shows that a lot
Speaker 1: of young people are struggling to understand what their purpose is.
Speaker 1: And when you don't find a purpose, when you don't
Speaker 1: have a purpose, you kind of drift through life aimlessly.
Speaker 1: And so the Future Project is really trying to combat
Speaker 1: that and to apture young people at the time of
Speaker 1: life when it matters most for them to find a purpose,
Speaker 1: to get them on the right path and to help
Speaker 1: them along it. And what I love about the Future
Speaker 1: Project is that they you know, they want your purpose
Speaker 1: to they want they want to help young people find
Speaker 1: a purpose that really does involve contributing to others in
Speaker 1: some way. So it's not just about all my purpose
Speaker 1: is to become a celebrity. It's about how can I
Speaker 1: make a difference in the world, how can I make
Speaker 1: the world a better place? Yeah, that's so great. And
Speaker 1: then you talk about you know, when you get to
Speaker 1: be seventy eighty ninety years old. You don't have to
Speaker 1: stop meaning then, do you no? And in fact, I
Speaker 1: think it becomes even more important as you get older.
Speaker 1: And the research does show that as people age, their
Speaker 1: sense of purpose declines, and you can understand why, you
Speaker 1: know what, Once once we reach retirement, so many of
Speaker 1: our old identities and roles, like you know, being a mother,
Speaker 1: being a little league code to being a supervisor, they
Speaker 1: kind of weaken or they vanish all together. And so
Speaker 1: we're left wondering, well, how can I contribute now? What
Speaker 1: value does my life have now? And you know you
Speaker 1: don't want to You don't want to answer those questions.
Speaker 1: You don't want to reach that point in your life
Speaker 1: and answer those questions in a negative way. And so
Speaker 1: it's just as important to not just kind of think
Speaker 1: of the last third of your life as the time
Speaker 1: when you know you're retired, you're checked out. It's a
Speaker 1: time really to double down on your engagement with life
Speaker 1: and to really contribute and figure out how how you
Speaker 1: can live a meaningful life. And one of the organizations
Speaker 1: that their profile in this section of the book is
Speaker 1: called Encore, and Encore is trying to help people find
Speaker 1: their purpose in the second half of their lives. And
Speaker 1: I love it. I love the idea that you know,
Speaker 1: sixty five and onward is not about just being on
Speaker 1: vacation full time. It's about using all of the recent
Speaker 1: versus you've developed right your life to give to others. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I love that too. I'm glad that you talked about them.
Speaker 1: You talk about this idea of being at peace when
Speaker 1: the final moment arrives. That also was very poetic to me,
Speaker 1: that that way of phrasing it, you know, and this
Speaker 1: idea that even those you talk about, those who even
Speaker 1: you know two they find out like they might have
Speaker 1: two weeks to live, there's still so much you can
Speaker 1: do in that two weeks of meaning. Yeah, no, absolutely,
Speaker 1: and especially I mean, you know, reflecting on your life
Speaker 1: and trying to make sense of it all too so
Speaker 1: you reach that sense of resolution. Yeah. And you also say,
Speaker 1: meaning in death are two sides of the same coin.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's quite a profound statement. You got you
Speaker 1: gotta agree, that's like that's not like, you know, like,
Speaker 1: oh I like flowers. You know, that's a heavy statement.
Speaker 1: Can you unpack it a little bit? Well, One of
Speaker 1: the people I interviewed for this book. I didn't end
Speaker 1: up ultimately including his story in it, but his wisdom
Speaker 1: remained with me, and he was he's a BuddhismA, and
Speaker 1: he told me that he spends three hours every day
Speaker 1: meditating on death. And it's you know, I thought that
Speaker 1: was pretty profound. And he's a cheery guy, very cheery guy. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: But I think I think it makes sense. I think
Speaker 1: the reason why it's so important to human beings to
Speaker 1: find meaning in life, to understand what everything means, is
Speaker 1: the fact that we are mortal, and so many of
Speaker 1: the ways that we try to try to find meaning
Speaker 1: is by trying to defeat our own own mortality, you know,
Speaker 1: by leaving a legacy behind, by creating something permanent that
Speaker 1: lives on after we die. So I think that, you know,
Speaker 1: meaning and death, it's really they're part of the same.
Speaker 1: They're they're being driven by the same yearning in us
Speaker 1: to show that our lives matter at the end of
Speaker 1: the day. And if you you know, there's some really
Speaker 1: wonderful research on people facing death. They're you know, they're there,
Speaker 1: they have terminal cancer and they're lives are going to
Speaker 1: end soon. And even though their time is so short.
Speaker 1: Just by reflecting on the meaning of their own lives
Speaker 1: on on the on the pillars, they are able to
Speaker 1: face their end with much more peace and resolution because
Speaker 1: they're able to, you know, to find meaning at the
Speaker 1: very end. Emily, I think that's a great, a great
Speaker 1: place to end this podcast. Thank you so much for
Speaker 1: the book you've written. You obviously put your heart, soul,
Speaker 1: and mind into it, and also I honestly can say
Speaker 1: that your book has has created a light in this world.
Speaker 1: So thank you. Thank you, Scott. That's that's so kind.
Speaker 1: It's so great to talk with you about these these topics,
Speaker 1: and I'm so happy that we're able to come together
Speaker 1: for this. Thank you. Thanks for listening to The Psychology
Speaker 1: Podcast with doctor Scott Barry Kaufman. I hope you found
Speaker 1: this episode just as thought for booking and interesting as
Speaker 1: I did. If you'd like to read the show notes
Speaker 1: for this episode or here past episodes, you can visit
Speaker 1: the Psychology Podcast dot com.