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Learn the ways to find meaning in life.
When I played college basketball, I struggled for months in the weight room to gain muscle. I was relentless, lifting five days a week and doing at-home workouts on the other days. The protein powder containers began to pile up in the corners of my room as I dreamed of being more successful on the court.
At the end of six months, I had put on eight pounds – a sizable amount for my thin stature.
My teammates were also trying to get stronger for our upcoming season.
Teammate A hit the weight room during that time, but she half-assed her sets and used lighter weights. She didn’t want to gain too much muscle, afraid for her appearance (don’t even get me started on the female athlete’s tendency to belittle ourselves for the male gaze).
Teammate B, on the other hand, knew that more muscle would help her. But every time she was in the weight room, she’d skip the warmup, forget her lifting sheet, and haphazardly lift weights of varying sizes. (Picture the franticness of a hamster… But like, a strong hamster).
Neither Teammate A or Teammate B gained much muscle, even though we all went to the weight room together.
Wondering what weight lifting has to do with the ways to find meaning in life? Put your dumbbells down and read on.
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The ways to find meaning in life
I can’t imagine anybody saying, “No, thank you, I’d rather not find meaning in life.” (I mean, who wouldn’t want to sit in a pile of insignificant, depressing goop?). Everyone wants to feel like their life has meaning and purpose. It’s an innate human driver.
But we don’t all find meaning and purpose. So what’s the holdup?
Two reasons, actually.
First, distractions are hurting our initial motivation.
Let’s look back to my weightlifting example. I knew that adding eight pounds of muscle would significantly improve my game (which it did). Teammate A, on the other hand, was less concerned about performance and more concerned with other distractions.
Society does a great job of throwing distractions at us to pull our attention away from our goals. Whether they come in the form of complex emotions, misguided defense mechanisms, or cultural myths, they distract us from finding meaning. These obstacles kill our motivation.
The second reason we struggle to find meaning in life is that we’re going about it the wrong way.
Teammate B really wanted to gain muscle, but she was doing the wrong things to achieve it. Lifting improper weights in sparse intervals didn’t help her.
We need to make sure we’re undertaking the proper ways to find meaning in life. There’s a lot (and I’m talking, a lot) of garbage on the internet telling you what you need to do to be happy. True meaning gets convoluted with advertisements, self-help coaches, and fear-based strategies.
To reference our metaphor, many of us are lifting the wrong weights in the wrong order. While finding meaning isn’t always easy, there’s an easy way to get closer: educate ourselves on the best ways to go about it.
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Four Elements for a Meaningful Life
Before we can tackle the ways to find meaning in life, we first need to question our motivation to do so. Meaning is not just a new color we can paint our walls to give our lives a “new look.” (If that were the case, my kitten-papered bedroom really would’ve set me down a different path.)
A life of meaning is linked to greater happiness, stronger relationships, and even lower mortality rates. Not to mention it helps keep at bay depression, anxiety, and the overbearing feeling of insignificance that our modern world can create.
Despite false cultural narratives, the ways to find meaning in life must contain four universal elements:
- Belonging: the connections we have with others.
- Purpose: the opportunity to help others and make a difference.
- Storytelling: the narrative we create for ourselves about our lives.
- Transcendence: the feeling when we are disconnected from the self and feel like we are a part of something bigger.
As you learn the ways to find meaning in life, make sure you tap into these four elements for motivation. They should be your guideposts in everything that you do.
9 Ways to Find Meaning in Life
1. Make meaningful relationships
There’s a reason belonging is the number one element for a meaningful life (and I have an entire series dedicated to it). We derive meaning from our connections to others.
I’m sure not many people would disagree with this notion. However, society does an excellent job making us neglect our relationships for other things.
For example, I’ve been meaning to call my younger cousin Anna for a while now. In our clarity boat life question, she’s someone in my boat. Yet I haven’t talked to her in weeks. How can I neglect someone so important to me?
Pretty easily, actually. I go about my daily routine, filling all of my free time with countless other activities that seem more urgent. I assure myself that Anna’s not going anywhere, and our relationship won’t be affected by the long periods of silence. When I do have a spare moment to call, I usually feel too exhausted from all the other things going on to summon the energy to talk.
Sound familiar?
Work, chores, dreams, technology, shows; all of these things fill our time and pull our energy away from our relationships. However, we need to realize that it’s our relationships that give us energy back.
Of all the ways to find meaning in life, this one might be the most crucial. The more attention you put toward building meaningful relationships, the more meaningful life you’ll have.
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2. Understand your values and their role in your life
Our culture doesn’t just make us neglect our relationships. It also gives us false metrics to judge our actions. We define success by things like money, possessions, and status. In doing so, we lose any chance of meaning in our own lives.
To fight these false metrics, we must understand our own values and their role in our lives. Then, we can begin to take actions that align with our values and give us purpose.
I spent the better part of my last decade trying to be the best at anything I did. Whether it was working four internships in college, signing up for every professional development opportunity, or applying for any open leadership position (no matter how unqualified), I went for it.
Turns out, ambitions without values are not really ambitions. The endless pursuit no longer gave me meaning. Instead, I had to step back and consider, What do I really want out of life?
Discovering your values is an excellent step in answering this question. It allows you to define what meaning is for you and find meaning in life.
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3. Pursue purposeful goals
Once you know your meaningful values, you can structure your life around them. Your values will give you direction in life.
In particular, your values will help you find meaning in life by establishing purposeful goals.
For the sake of meaning, remember that purpose is defined as the opportunity to help others and make a difference. Purposeful goals, therefore, requires us to be aware of our impact on others.
I used to say, “I want to make a difference!” with the rehearsed manner of a math timetable (“8 times 7 is 56!”). While I wasn’t necessarily wrong, I certainly wasn’t thinking critically about what that answer entailed. If one of our ways to find meaning in life is to pursue purposeful goals, we need to take the time to understand what those goals are.
And this understanding is not a group activity. Pursuing purposeful goals will look different for everyone.
For example, Dana feels a great deal of purpose in her job as a teacher. She might want to pursue an administrative position so he can have an even more significant positive impact on a school. Conversely, Terry might feel purpose in the book club meetings he arranges. He might want to improve the meeting structure so that members get even more out of the sessions.
In these examples, both people are pursuing goals that are clear and purposeful to them. As a result, both people will find meaning.
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4. Practice gratitude
The third universal element for a meaningful life is storytelling, which is the narratives we tell ourselves about our experiences. Our own “narrator” voice has a significant impact on our perspective and well-being. (Unfortunately for us, we can’t all have Morgan Freeman narrating our lives).
Practicing gratitude will help you tell a more positive, meaningful story.
In fact, studies have linked gratitude with more positive emotions, higher satisfaction with life, and increased well-being. This isn’t surprising, considering how much perspective can paint the way we look at things.
One of my students is super negative. Every day she comes in with a list of complaints. Whether it’s overwhelming homework, annoying people, or frustrating teachers, she makes her life sound awful. And the more she says these things and believes them, the more she will feel like her life is awful.
If she turned her attention to the good things – the things she’s grateful for – she would begin to shape her story in a much happier way.
To practice gratitude, you simply need to take moments to reflect on what you’re thankful for and celebrate them.
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5. Appreciate the present
The world we live in is fast-paced and overstimulated. A million distractions are pulling our attention in all different directions. Technology is a huge culprit, but not the only one. On top of these distractions, we’re wired to focus on the past (can’t let that memory go) or the future (needing to plan what’s next).
For these reasons, one of the ways to find meaning in life is to appreciate the present.
Some people might use meditation or mindfulness to develop their present-attention. However, it doesn’t need to be a crazy new practice or change in your lifestyle. It can be enough to take a pause during an activity and make sure your mind is fully focused on the present.
I’m a big-time planner (you should see my itineraries). Generally, this future-looking mindset is helpful. But there are times when I’m so fixated on making plans that I fail to actually enjoy the one I’m in. I’m already thinking about what I want to do next before finishing the task at hand.
Meaning is not found in the past or the future; it comes from the present.
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6. Find joy and prioritize it
Living in the present is crucial, but you also need the present to be joyful. Psychologists have asserted that negative emotions aren’t bad. Still, we can’t have negative emotions all the time.
One of the ways to find meaning in life is to find joy in your life and prioritize it.
Do you enjoy reading? How about going for walks? Or maybe you feel a lot of joy when you make clothing out of human hair (hey, no judging)? It’s not enough to feel joy in fleeting moments. Meaning comes from when we’re feeling positive emotions and connected with our experiences.
I love to read good books. When I get sucked into a story, I tap into that transcendent feeling of being connected to creativity and ideas. It’s so much easier, though, to focus on work, turn on Netflix, or lounge around. The thing is, I don’t derive meaning from all of these things.
We need to make time for the tasks that give us joy and positive well-being.
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7. Focus on the journey
Every day, we’re exposed to extraordinary stories about successful people. Given our natural inclination to compare ourselves to others, we view these sensational stories as the standard, rather than the exception. Doing this can make us feel like we’ve failed.
Focusing on your personal journey, rather than the end result, is one of the necessary ways to find meaning in life.
Philosophies have dedicated themselves to the notion that humans need personal growth to be fulfilled. That means that real satisfaction will come from striving for satisfaction, not achieving it.
Often, we hear “not good enough” rhetoric like, “Once I achieve XYZ, my life will be complete.” I hate to break it to you, but XYZ is not a magical completion formula. Usually it leads to X2Y2Z2. Also, who do you know who’s achieved their goals and then sat back, content to give up on doing anything more?
We need purposeful goals in life, but we must focus on the journey in achieving them rather than their actual completion. This will allow us to be more compassionate to ourselves, more open-minded to change, and more open to finding meaning.
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8. Recognize what you have control over
Humans hate uncertainty. It taps into our fears and attention for survival; we can’t control what we don’t know. Back in the days with vicious predators and deadly environment threats, this made a lot of sense. Today, however, it’s created control issues that are taking away meaning.
Meaning doesn’t come from controlling every aspect of your life. Quite the opposite: meaning comes from recognizing what you have control over, and letting go of what you don’t.
I’m someone who likes to have a good handle of control over my life. (I’m talking, knowing the exact time breakdown of my morning control). I’ve done a lot in my life to create situations that I believe will give me meaning. This isn’t necessarily wrong.
However, it’s when I fail to recognize what I can’t control but try fruitlessly anyway, that I negate much of the positive meaning that I’ve created.
This manifests itself in different ways. In my relationships, I can struggle with the other person’s differences or reactions because I’m not 100% prepared for it. In the day to day, circumstances sometimes get in the way of my plans. I ruminate over things that our out of my control, taking precious energy and brainpower away from what I can.
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9. Be curious
If we solely focus on what we can control, what do we do with all of the things we can’t control? The more I read and listen to interesting people, the more I’m convinced of one insurmountable fact:
The most important quality for a meaningful life is curiosity.
Curiosity allows us to step away from negative emotions (here’s looking at you, stress and anxiety) and see things in a much more positive light. We can look at something with wonder (“I wonder what this means?”) rather than hopelessness (“Why did this have to happen?”)
This way to find meaning in life relates to our universal element of storytelling. By possessing curiosity, we can be the eager reader, rather than the pessimistic critic.
For example, I have a tendency to get stuck in my fears and negative emotions. The more I practice curiosity and mindfulness, the more I can embrace the emotions as a question. What causes these feelings? What would make it better?
By looking at problems with an open mind, I can “un-stick” myself.
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Conclusion
It can be difficult to find meaning in life, but it doesn’t have to be.
Two of the overarching obstacles holding us back are motivation and approach. First, society throws many distractions at us that pull our attention away from what is meaningful. Second, we don’t always go about finding meaning in the correct way.
To combat these obstacles, we need to tap into why we want to find meaning. Then, we need to follow these nine ways to find meaning in life:
- Make meaningful relationships
- Understand values and connection to actions
- Reflect on positive/ practice gratitude
- Appreciate the present
- Find joy and fit it in
- Pursue purposeful goals
- Focus on the journey/growth
- Recognize what you have control over
- Be curious
Curious about yourself? Choose a question below and post a comment. Curious how society tricks us about what is meaningful? Check out my next post in the series.
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FOLLOW-UP QUESTIONS
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Comment below with answers, ideas, and more questions, or contact me to collaborate on a future post!
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EXPLORING YOURSELF
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Which of these ways to find meaning will be most difficult for you?
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Which of nine ways to find meaning will be most easiest for you?
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How motivated are you to bring more meaning into your life? Why?
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EXPANDING YOUR WORLD
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Why do people who feel a strong sense of purpose live longer?
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How has the practice of gratitude evolved over history?
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What role do negative emotions play in our overall well-being?
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