Speaker 1
Hi, everybody. Welcome to today’s Zebra webinar with myself, Kristen, and my colleague, Lorraine. We are two well-being specialists here to have a conversation about meaning and purpose in our lives.
This is a relevant topic now because many of us are in a period of pandemic flux, which is basically that prolonged lack of planning that’s led a lot of us to question the meaning and purpose in our lives. And many of us can start to feel a bit anxious about making changes and wanting to do something new with purpose as we’re able to start to do these things a little bit more now.
So to start this conversation, from a really foundational point, I want to ask you, Lorraine, how would you define meaning and purpose?
Speaker 2
Thank you, Krista. Great question. So, meaning in life refers to the personal perception that one’s life is significant, purposeful, valuable within the world. So, note this is not related to finding the meaning of life, but more a focus on how to find meaning within your own life.
So, as we explore this topic today of meaning in life, we might tend to focus all our attention on the bigger perspective, such as maybe discovering a meaningful career. However, Victor Frankel, a psychiatrist and a Holocaust survivor, he was a leading voice on meaning, maintains it’s more important to experience situational meaning.
So, from moment to moment, day to day, then to discover a clear answer to the abstract question about the ultimate meaning of one’s human existence. So, essentially, meaning can be found in any moment. So, learning to find meaning in everyday experiences and interaction with people. And then purpose is similar, but slightly different to meaning.
Purpose is the development or developed from an individual’s unique strengths, their values, interests and passion that guide their life energy. Discovering your individual purpose can involve a little digging to uncover the truth. So, we’ll guide you through some of that today.
And for some people, purpose comes in the form of certain career or a vocation, while others it might be a way of being, expression or connection with others, such as family, friends or people important to you. It’s an individual process involving clear, core goals, aims and a direction in life. So, to benefit something other than ourselves. Purpose acts like a compass, then.
So, providing a direction in life. So, if we’re feeling lost or have a lack of direction in our life at the moment, this might suggest that we could benefit from engaging in a work to strengthen our sense of purpose. And as you might have noticed, purpose and meaning actually linked. They both have a bi-directional relationship, in the sense that meaning in life can lead to development of purpose.
And so, just like that, purpose in life can lead to development of meaning. And there’s a lot of research that suggests purpose in our life can enhance one’s sense of meaning, so it can deepen it. So, in short, meaning is the story you create about your life, and purpose is the driving force you experience through your life.
Research then highlights a wide variety of benefits from having purpose and meaning on our well-being, indicating that those who have a strong sense of both purpose and meaning experience greater life satisfaction, self-esteem, positive emotion and optimism. While those who lack a feeling of purpose in life are more likely to experience psychological distress. I’ll give it back to you now, Kristen.
Speaker 1
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, Lorraine. Thank you for sharing that. And there’s actually a psychological lens that helps us to understand these benefits a little bit more. Positive psychology is a branch of psychology a lot of people have heard about, and it’s become a widely used approach to building and maintaining happiness and optimal well-being in our lives.
And it’s specifically popularized by the PERMA model, and this is created by the positive psychologist pioneer Martin Seligman. So he suggests that there’s five key areas in our life that when we put a deliberate focus into, it’s going to yield some more happiness in our lives, not just in the short term, but continuing to help us thrive through the long term.
And so he says these five key areas are positive emotion. So finding ways to increase the positive emotion in our lives. Engagement, which is all about finding flow, participating in activities that really consume our time in a positive way. The R is relationships, so investing time and energy into the relationships that are really meaningful to us.
M is actually meaning, so focusing on the things that bring value in our life and, you know, whether this is in our community, our spirituality, the strengths, or our sense of purpose. And then lastly, the A stands for accomplishment. It’s making time to really tune into the big accomplishments, and even the small wins that we accumulate throughout our lives is really important.
So now, while all of these different PERMA domains can have so many good benefits, it’s worth expanding on the M of PERMA because that’s specifically meaning. And when he talks about meaning, he suggests that there’s four kind of key pillars in this area. The first one is belonging positively. So appreciation for who you are, feeling like you’re appreciated by your community.
Two would be that purpose piece that we’re going to talk about a little bit more. So recognizing what you’re good at and what the world needs from you. The third, he would suggest is transcendence. So finding a way to transcend our lives and our anxieties of the moment through flow, through inspiration, through creativity. This is all really meaningful engagement.
And then the fourth pillar, he would say, is the story of our life. So how we talk about our lives. And this breakdown of meaning uses the PERMA method. It’s very similar to the popular Japanese concept of ikigai, which is essentially our purpose of why we get up in the morning. And the four pillars of that are our mission.
So a crossroad of what we love and what the world needs, our vocation, which is crossroads of what the world needs and what we can be paid for. The third is profession. So crossroads of what we can be paid for and what we’re good at. And then the fourth is passion. So what we’re good at and what we love. And so achieving this ikigai is about balancing these four pillars.
Speaker 1
And we can start to cultivate some of these pillars in our lives by engaging in activities that bring our focus more to mission, vocation, profession, and passion. And to this end, maybe a little exercise that you can try is to create your own personal mission statement. So if we had all of the time in the world, we might come up with these huge, big mission statements.
But I would like you just to start to think about something really simple. Start reflecting on what your own mission statement might be with a few simple questions. So the first one, who am I? Second one, what am I doing? Third, why am I doing it? And then fourth, what do I want to contribute to the world?
And so you can maybe start by writing some of these ponderings down and really just spend time pairing back until you get something that’s really concise. And that can really be highlighting your purpose and your meaning there. And it might sound complicated, but do it, you’ll be grand. And it’ll start to bring a little bit more clarity into your life around meaning.
And so I’m wondering, Lorraine, do you feel like there might be another pathway for us to start to cultivate some of this meaning and purpose in our lives?
Speaker 2
Absolutely, I love that exercise and great reflective piece. So there’s another pathway in positive psychology that helps us to develop meaning and purpose in our lives. So positive psychology can now identify our own character strengths that define who we are at our best. So these are qualities when nurtured can improve all areas of our life and provide pathways towards a more meaningful life.
So they are called values and action character strengths. They are positive parts of our personality that impact how we feel, how we behave and they define what is best for us. So as well you can identify your value and action character strengths by a short free server that we have. We have the link as well. You’re free so you can do that.
And once you have discovered your unique character strengths, you’re empowered to utilize them, your natural character strengths, to connect with what’s important to you, to build a stronger sense of meaning and purpose in your relationship, your personal activities and your career at work. Then a useful strategy is to identify your top three or four values and actions character strengths.
Then ask yourself the following reflection question. How might this strength help me to take action towards developing greater meaning in my life? For example, if a top character strength was creativity, that was important to you. This might aid you to discover new ways of expressing yourself.
Or if your top character strength was honesty, then treating people with honesty and integrity can strengthen your relationships and create meaning from that. So now we’re going to explore character strengths in the workplace. After all, work is where we spend the majority of our time and energy.
Therefore, utilizing value and action character strengths to build meaning and purpose in your role can benefit your work and your overall well-being.
Implementing the values and action character strengths at work is strongly linked to higher scores and positive work outcomes, such as positive effects, work engagement, sense of meaning, job satisfaction, and lower levels of stress, which of course is great. So finding meaning in your job is one of the best ways to feel satisfied at work.
Okay, so let’s look at some practical tips that you can use to consider when trying to implement your top character strength into your current workplace to build that sense of meaning and purpose. First of all, consider how you can keep a daily awareness, to build that awareness of the strength that you’re using.
So perhaps keep in a diary or, you know, the note section on your phone, whatever works for you, then gradually introduce one strength at a time. So one of your top strengths at a time to not overwhelm and to gradually build mastery on that task.
So for example, if you scored high in justice, virtue, and fairness, this is a strong value, then focusing on treating people fair at work and in your personal life might bring meaning.
Speaker 2
Or perhaps you scored high in creativity, then you could use this to your advantage in your career at work. So thinking about new and innovative ways and productive ways of working. Or another trait that you might have scored early on or character strength would be or could be leadership.
Then you could use this natural, strong character strength at work to work as a leader for your team and foster meaning and value and positive experience from that.
And then if you’ve reflected on this and you notice that you’re, you know, you’re already using your top three or four character strengths at work at the moment, then you can also think of ways, different ways that you could express these strengths.
And research has highlighted for using our top three or four values and actions character strengths, then that’s correlated with higher levels of positive experience at work. Okay, then we can continue to turn inwards a little more and look at our inner world to create meaning in our lives. So building awareness of how we talk to ourselves. In psychology, we call these the narratives we create.
The enormous ways our self-taught characters can be really underestimated. In reality, our self-talk has the ability to influence and create our perspective on ourselves and the world around us. The way we talk to ourselves can help foster a minimum purpose, but also on the other side, if our self-talk is negative and unhelpful, it can lead us to see ourselves and the world through a negative lens.
So this makes it very such as work or a personal life relationship. But there is something we can do. We can take proactive steps. So we can change our destructive self-talk by adapting kinder, more compassionate ways to treat ourselves. Self-compassion is an act of being kind to ourselves, understanding ourselves and what we’ve navigated through so far.
Self-compassion involves forgiveness and empathy towards ourselves because of what we are for human beings after all. And we all have shortcomings, of course. So being self-compassionate has individuals learn from failure in an objective way and take steps towards self-improvement and positive experience instead of wallowing and self-pity.
And also higher levels of self-compassion have been associated with increased presence of meaning and purpose in our life. Then we have self-affirmations have been found to improve feelings of self-compassion by helping promote kinder ways of treating ourselves, so a kinder way to talking to ourselves.
So practice the self-affirmations that I’m going to guide you through in everyday life, especially when you might be facing a challenge for something difficult. And that can foster self-help and care towards yourself when you do need it most. So I have six self-affirmations here that I’m going to read out to you. The first one is, I am doing the best that I can.
The second one, today I will treat myself with kindness. Three, I accept myself for who I am.
Speaker 2
The next one, really important one, I am enough. Then we have, I allow myself to make mistakes and learn from their mistakes. And the final one, then we have, is just like every human being, I have strengths and weaknesses and that’s okay. So there are some self-affirmations that you can take away and adapt into your daily routines to foster more self-compassion for yourself.
Speaker 1
Thank you for that, Lorraine. I love all of those. I love how they really connect us to something that’s greater than ourselves when we talk about those loving kindness and formations. And I think this is a good place maybe for us to visit one final way, one branch of knowledge that we can talk about today in relation to meaning and purpose, which is the philosophical worldview of existentialism.
So existentialism asserts that there isn’t any inherent meaning to be found in the world, and actually the goal of our life is to find our own meaning, to create it for ourselves. And so in this way, existentialism can give us great value and to have that freedom of choice.
However, it can feel sometimes hard to find meaning in our lives or that life is meaningful if we’re not making choices that are aligned with our values in life. Like for instance, if we really value family, yet we’re spending most of our free time thinking about work or working on projects that take us away from home, we might feel a lack of meaning in our lives in that way.
And similarly, if we value curiosity and exploration, yet we find ourselves engaging in the same conversations or routines day after day, we don’t leave the couch, this might lead us to feeling pretty purposeless and dull in life.
And so I think we have to identify our values and what gives us that spark so that we can be sure to commit to engaging in those values that will bring us a little bit more meaning in our lives. So it’s okay if you don’t know what your values are, because this is something that requires exploration. And as you’re saying, coming inward into ourselves.
So there’s a few things that you can try right now. The first is to make a list of things that spark joy in your life. So these can be super small things like a yummy cup of coffee, or maybe bigger things like taking a trip abroad. And really just let yourself brainstorm here, there’s no right or wrong. But when you’re done, see if there’s any trends that you notice. Are any of the items similar?
Or could they be grouped in some way? Maybe some of these activities make you feel more free. Or maybe some of these activities that you write down make you feel like you are learning more in life. Or maybe you notice a lot of them are community based or social based, they involve other people.
So the groups that you identify here, these are going to be some of your core values, because they keep coming up in life for the things that are meaningful to you. The second activity that I’m going to leave you with is a really personal favorite of mine, because it’s really powerful. This exercise is to try to write your own obituary.
So in other words, write a brief biography about yourself that summarizes your life once you’ve passed on. And although this might sound sad or morbid to reflect upon, it’s a powerful experience and exercise that forces you to reckon with life, and maybe the life that you wish you would have lived, or the legacy you wish you would leave behind.
Speaker 1
So what were your main priorities in this life? Was it career, your achievements, your hobbies, your loved ones? What story do you want to tell from your life? Who was the real you? Who got to see that real you? How do you want other people to remember you? And especially whose lives have you impacted? Who will bring on a little piece of you as they continue their life?
So take some time to craft your own obituary and try to make it as real as possible for the greatest impact on your sense of meaning and purpose. Trying it for yourself can really help you discover just how powerful it can be to accept your death, but also highlight what you wish to live for.
So I think we’ve spoken a lot today on meaning and purpose in our lives, and there’s a lot to take away here. So we really just want to thank you for joining in this conversation on meaning and purpose, and hopefully there are a few takeaways that can maybe help you to navigate this pandemic flux and start to bring more meaning and purpose in your life right now.
So maybe some final reflective prompts is just simply, you know, what meaningful activities would I like to engage in a little bit more now, or what would I like to start? And ultimately, what does make my life feel purposeful? How can I put more energy into that? So best of luck discovering all of that. And this has been Kristin and Lorraine with Zevo Health today. Take care, and we’ll see you soon.
Thank you so much. Bye, guys.
Speaker 2
Bye, now.
