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Why do you do what you do?
What creates a sense of purpose for you?
Is it working?
Volunteering?
Being with your family?
These are not trivial questions.
Research shows that having a strong sense of purpose creates more meaning in life,
improves health and leads to greater satisfaction from work.
Purpose needs intention.
Having a stable far reaching goal.
When we're pursuing our purpose, we feel our lives are more meaningful.
Now meaning is an abstract concept.
But recently, behavioral scientists have made progress toward
understanding it better and even measuring it.
I recently conducted a study with my colleagues,
Roy Baumeister, Kathleen Vohs and Emily Garbinsky, where we
asked adults to rate on a seven-point scale whether their lives were meaningful.
[SOUND] We also asked about their beliefs, behaviors, and choices.
Those who deem their lives most meaningful were those who gave the most to others.
These same people also felt the most strongly connected to the past and
future, not just the here and now.
They had a strong sense of where they came from, and
an equally strong sense of where they are going, a purpose.
So the feeling of meaning increases when we feel connected to others and
something bigger than ourselves.
When we feel we're part of a story that started in the past and
concludes well into the future.
What's more, meaning is not something you just have or don't have.
It's more about your mindset.
When individuals adopt a meaning mindset they behave in very different ways.
In one study two researchers, Veronika Huta and
Richard Ryan, had half of their subjects adopt a meaning mind set by
asking them to do one thing each day to create meaning.
These activities, like strengthening a social connection, pursuing excellence, or
helping others often required effort.
Yet three months later, these subjects reported less negative moods and
more positive feelings about their social connections.
Suggesting that meaning can decrease stress and
boost well-being in the long run.
As people find more meaning in their lives, they also tend to get healthier.
Psychologist Carol Ryff and her colleagues demonstrated this
in a study that tracked thousands of people over time.
The people living more meaningful lives, by their own account, were
healthier than those who, while happy, did not have the same sense of meaning.
The high meaning people had higher levels of good cholesterol, healthier weight,
they even slept better.
They had lower levels of cortisol, the stress hormone in their saliva.
And were lower risk for cardiovascular disease and Alzheimer's disease.
They also live longer.
To figure out why, researchers had subjects report their levels of meaning,
and then put the subjects into an fMRI machine.
Then they show them images of negative things like crying babies or
car accidents.
The participants then rated whether the images were neutral or unpleasant.
The brain scans show that the high meaning people had less activity in the amygdala,
the part of the brain that processes fear.
They also reacted more slowly to the negative images,
taking longer to decide whether the pictures were unpleasant.
In other words, people with high meaning in life are better able,
with the help of their prefrontal cortex,to control their negative emotions.
They're better able at putting things in perspective.
These findings have implications for work too.
People who feel their work lacks meaning are more likely to slack off or
feel dissatisfied with their employers.
The problem is, most people feel this way about their work.
At least, that was the case in one large-scale study,
which tracked over 12,000 employees across a broad range of categories and
showed 50 percent lacked a sense of meaning at work.
The employees who did derive meaning from their work were more than 3 times as
likely to stay with their companies They also reported 1.7 times higher job
satisfaction, and were 1.4 times more engaged at work.
Which brings us back to the original question: why do you do what you do?
If you work only for the money, chances are you're less effective than you can be.
But if your answer entails meaning,
your work help should become part of a bigger story and feel connected to others,
then it will help you be stronger, healthier and more resilient.
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