We’ve all experienced being deeply engaged in something meaningful. Time disappears, we disappear, and the activity is rewarding in and of itself. Experiences like this happen all the time but we rarely notice or understand them. Today, we’re going to explore this phenomenon in detail. The questions we’re going to focus on are:
What is meaning?
Where does it come from?
How do we experience it?
What prevents us from living a meaningful life?
What can we do about it?
Let’s dive in.
Meaning as Instinct
During the 1950’s three of the greatest neuropsychologists of the 20th century, Alexander Luria and his students Olga Vinogradova and Evgeny Sokolov studied one of the most important mechanisms in psychophysiology: the orienting reflex. The orienting reflex is an involuntary response to novel stimuli or changes in the environment. It gets activated, for example, when we encounter something we don’t understand about the world. I became acquainted with Luria and his research through clinical psychologist and author Dr. Jordan Peterson. Peterson believes this reflexive instinct carries out at multiple levels of our nervous system and is responsible for our sense of meaning.
The answer to the question, “What is meaning?” is:
The instinct that guides us towards proper action in the world; toward the proper path forward in life.
This is the working definition we’ll use for the remainder of the article.
The Proper Path Forward
You might ask, “Out of all the actions we can take on a given day, which ones are ‘proper’ and what constitutes ‘the proper path forward’?”
Meaning in life comes from doing things that maximize our potential and alleviate the pain/suffering of others. Ideally, we’ll cultivate our strengths, talents, and abilities fully and contribute to the largest span of people at the greatest depth. Another way to think about this is simply: growth and contribution. Life becomes imbued with meaning when we’re growing and/or contributing to others.
This seems like a simple idea and it is, but let’s go slightly higher resolution with a working formula.
The Meaning Formula
Meaning= Optimal Engagement + Valued Contribution
It’s important to agree on definitions early so we’re on the same page throughout the article.
Let’s define the terms:
Optimal Engagement occurs when we do something that slightly exceeds our current level of understanding or skill set. “The Zone of Proximal Development” was a term coined by Lev Vygotsky to describe how children learn language. He understood the best way to teach children language was to speak at a level that slightly exceeds their current understanding and comprehension. If you only speak “baby talk”, they don’t grow. If you speak completely outside their realm of understanding, they don’t grow. “The Zone” is the happy medium between the two; it’s where we want to be if we want life to be imbued with meaning.
Valued Contribution is about doing something other people find objectively meaningful, outside our own subjective experience. Professor of philosophy Susan Wolf argues that meaning comes from “active engagement in projects of [objective] worth”. It’s possible for us to find engagement in activities other people don’t value, but that greatly reduces our sense of meaning. A simple way of saying this might be: “Combine what you love with what other people need and value.”
Meaning is the byproduct of being optimally engaged in something that contributes to the well being of others.
Let’s talk about how our sense of meaning plays out in day to day life…where does it come from?
“The Self” and Circumambulation
To understand this we’ll use Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Carl Jung’s idea of circumambulation. This is another thing I learned from Peterson, who is a great admirer and student of Jung’s work.
Jung believed you have two selves: the self you are today in the present and a future self with unrealized potential.
Peterson explains:
“…Jung had this idea that you have a potential future self which is everything you could be. And that it manifests itself moment to moment, in your present life, by making you interested in things. And the things that you’re interested in are the things that would guide you along the path that would lead you toward maximal development.”
In other words:
Your future self, the self you could be, shows you which path to walk down day to day by infusing it with interest, engagement, and meaning.
Like the definition we started with, this might seem like a mystical or unscientific idea, but it’s actually a deeply biological process that guides our perceptual systems every moment we’re alive. Here’s an example:
Have you ever picked up at book and tried to read it but couldn’t focus? You might even know it’s important and needs to get done for work or school but the more you consciously try to direct your attention, the more your mind wanders. On the other hand, another book grips you and you’re meaningfully engaged for hours. What’s at play here? The process of circumambulation. It shows us that we don’t have a lot of voluntary control over what interests us. If we choose to follow our sense of meaning, we may experience…
Flow
In 1975, Hungarian-American psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi coined the term “flow”. Flow is the state of mind we experience when we’re optimally engaged. It has eight characteristics:
- Complete concentration on the task
- Clarity of goals and reward in mind and immediate feedback
- Transformation of time (speeding up/slowing down)
- The experience is intrinsically rewarding
- Effortlessness and ease
- There is a balance between challenge and skills
- Actions and awareness are merged, losing self-conscious rumination
- There is a feeling of control over the task
Depending on the task and our skill set, our experience falls under one of these main categories:
Low skill level, low challenge level=apathy
Low skill level, high challenge level=anxiety
High skill level, low challenge level=relaxation
High skill level, high challenge level=flow
On average, the more flow we experience, the more meaning life has.
This begs an interesting question, “If we know what flow is and understand where meaning in life comes from, why do so many people feel life is meaningless?” This is a complicated question with many layers and potential answers but three main reasons stand out:
1) We value other things more than meaning
2) We’re ashamed to admit and pursue the things we find meaningful
3) Our sense of meaning can be hijacked
A Hierarchy of Values
The decisions we make in life are a reflection of our values. It’s possible the reason many of us don’t find life meaningful is because we don’t know where meaning comes from. More likely, however, is that living a life of meaning isn’t a priority. We might value it in theory, but when push comes to shove, we chase the approval of others, immediate gratification, money, status, fame, etc. and often push meaning to the side. Sometimes we get so caught up in making a living that we forget to design a life. Part of this is because we’re not taught how to shape ourselves and learn about our own psychology growing up. By the time we’re adults, we often don’t have time to think about what makes things meaningful, we do them because we feel like we have to. We’re not intentional enough about pursuing what is meaningful.
“I Like Art”
For others, their interests are so peculiar that they feel like they can’t explore them without being made fun of or shamed. An example of this is the bodybuilder who finds a keen interest in art or poetry, but is afraid to explore it because of what his friends might think. We often stifle our interests and repress what we find meaningful because we fear we might be rejected by the people we love. Obviously, there are things people find interesting that shouldn’t be explored. A sudden “interest” or fascination with criminal behavior or delinquency is one of them, for example. Most of the time, however, we can discern between that and genuine interest in something meaningful. We should explore the latter more often.
A Hijacked Sense of Meaning
Getting into a state of flow can happen driving down the highway like a maniac with a baby in the backseat. It might be fun for you, but unless your baby is an adrenaline junkie, slow the hell down! Seriously, just because something is engaging doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do. I’ll say that again, just because something is engaging and FEELS meaningful doesn’t mean we should pursue it. Our sense of meaning is an instinct that has to be cultivated. If we’re not careful, it can read out false positives and lead us down the wrong path.
An example of this is people who align themselves with cults or gurus. There is nothing wrong with having a mentor or someone you look up to, but following someone blindly is usually not a good idea. The reason this occurs is often because people lose their connection to their sense of meaning and can’t rely on their own conscience to tell them right from wrong. Aligning themselves with someone who seems to have answers provides a false sense of meaning and certainty.
How can we live a meaningful life?
First, we have to decide pursuing what is meaningful will take precedence over everything else.
Second, we have to have the courage to pursue what is meaningful.
One of the ways to do this is watch ourselves and notice when we are meaningfully engaged in something and try to be in that state more often.
Third, we have to make sure our actions are married to morality. As we described above, it is possible for us to have a hijacked sense of meaning that makes it hard to resists immoral or dangerous activities. According to Peterson, the way to combat that is to stop engaging in acts of self-deception and tell the truth. “Tell the truth, or at least don’t lie”, he says. If we’re going to rely on our sense of meaning as a guide, we have to be able to trust our nervous system and what it reads out about the world and reality. In other words, the reason to tell ourselves and others the truth is so that we can trust our own conscience as a guide to proper action.
One way to conceptualize proper/moral action might be Tony Robbins’s “Classes of Human Experience”. Robbins argues that everything we do falls under one of these classes/categories:
1) Something that feels good, is good for you, is good for others, and serves the greater good
2) Something that doesn’t feel good, but is good for you, good for others, and serves the greater good
3) Something that feels good, but isn’t good for you, isn’t good for others, and doesn’t serve the greater good
4) Something that doesn’t feel good, isn’t good for you, isn’t good for others, and doesn’t serve the greater good
It’s not hard to figure out that a class one experience is better than a class four experience. It’s subjectively better and objectively better for others, therefore more moral.
I’d like to finish on some key points and observations about meaning:
-We get meaningfully engaged when we find something important, significant and worthwhile.
-What we find meaningful is often doing things that help get us to the next state of life..
-Meaning is proportionate to depth. The deeper our relationships, activities and approach to life, the more meaning we have.
-We feel things are meaningful when they’re grounded in truth, not lies or the superficial.
-The more we grow and contribute, the more meaning life has.
-We experience meaning when we can viscerally feel the impact of our effort.
-Activities feel meaningful when they capitalize on our strengths, talents, and abilities.
-The process of attaining something or achieving a goal can be more meaningful than getting the actual outcome
-Meaning occurs when we’re intrinsically motivated, not externally pushed.
-Looking for solutions to problems we have and care about keeps us meaningfully engaged.
With that said, here are…
Ten Action Steps to a Meaningful Life:
1) Decide that a life of meaning is important to you
2) Have the courage to pursue what is meaningful
3) Align your actions with morality
4) “Tell the truth, or at least don’t lie.”
5) Discover your deepest talents, abilities, and strengths
6) Pick a cause/problem you care to solve
7) Find a way to viscerally feel the impact of your efforts
8) Push the boundaries of your knowledge, skills, and abilities
9) Engage in activities deeply, choose depth over breadth.
10) As much as possible, only do things you believe in and care about
I hope you find this article useful and life more meaningful as a result of reading it. This is a topic many of the greatest minds in history have thought and written about so I by no means think this is the end all and be all of “meaning articles.” It’s an ongoing conversation we need to have with ourselves and try to teach people about as much as possible. A meaningful life is not for the select few who are lucky enough to experience it, it’s something we should all aim for and try to cultivate.
…to your success.
Ivaylo