-
I used to think
-
the whole purpose of life
-
was pursuing happiness.
-
Everyone said the path
to happiness was success,
-
so I searched for that ideal job,
-
that perfect boyfriend,
that beautiful apartment.
-
But instead of ever feeling fulfilled,
-
I felt anxious and adrift,
-
and I wasn't alone.
-
My friends, they struggled with this too.
-
Eventually I decided to go
to graduate school
-
for positive psychology to learn
what truly makes people happy,
-
but what I discovered there
changed my life.
-
The data showed that chasing happiness
-
can make people unhappy,
-
and what really struck me was this:
-
the suicide rate has been rising
around the world,
-
and it recently reached
a 30-year high in America.
-
Even though life is getting
objectively better
-
by nearly every conceivable standard,
-
more people feel hopeless,
-
depressed and alone.
-
There's an emptiness
gnawing away at people,
-
and you don't have to be
clinically depressed to feel it.
-
Sooner or later, I think we all wonder,
-
is this all there is?
-
And according to the research,
what predicts this despair
-
is not a lack of happiness.
-
It's a lack of something else,
-
a lack of having meaning in life.
-
But that raised some questions for me.
-
Is there more to life than being happy?
-
And what's the difference
between being happy
-
and having meaning in life?
-
Many psychologists define happiness
-
as a state of comfort and ease,
-
feeling good in the moment.
-
Meaning, though, is deeper.
-
The renowned psychologist
Martin Seligman
-
says meaning comes from belonging to
and serving something beyond yourself,
-
and from developing the best within you.
-
Our culture is obsessed with happiness,
-
but I came to see that seeking meaning
is the more fulfilling path,
-
and the studies show that people
who have meaning in life,
-
they're more resilient,
-
they do better in school and at work,
-
and they even live longer.
-
So this all made me wonder,
-
how can we each live more meaningfully?
-
To find out, I spent five years
interviewing hundreds of people
-
and reading through thousands
of pages of psychology,
-
neuroscience and philosophy.
-
Bringing it all together,
-
I found that there are what I call
-
four pillars of a meaningful life,
-
and we can each create lives of meaning
-
by building some or all
of these pillars in our lives.
-
The first pillar is belonging.
-
Belonging comes
from being in relationships
-
where you're valued
for who you are intrinsically
-
and where you value others as well,
-
but some groups and relationships
deliver a cheap form of belonging.
-
You're valued for what you believe,
-
for who you hate,
-
not for who you are.
-
True belonging springs from love.
-
It lives in moments among individuals,
-
and it's a choice.
-
You can choose to cultivate
belonging with others.
-
Here's an example.
-
Each morning, my friend Jonathan
buys a newspaper
-
from the same street vendor in New York.
-
They don't just conduct
a transaction, though.
-
They take a moment to slow down,
-
talk, and treat each other like humans.
-
But one time, Jonathan
didn't have the right change,
-
and the vendor said,
-
"Don't worry about it."
-
But Jonathan insisted on paying,
-
so he went to the store
-
and bought something he didn't need
-
to make change.
-
But when he gave the money to the vendor,
-
the vendor drew back.
-
He was hurt.
-
He was trying to do something kind,
-
but Jonathan had rejected him.
-
I think we all reject people in small ways
like this without realizing it.
-
I do.
-
I'll walk by someone I know
and barely acknowledge them.
-
I'll check my phone
when someone's talking to me.
-
These acts devalue others.
-
They make them feel
invisible and unworthy.
-
But when you lead with love,
you create a bond
-
that lifts each of you up.
-
For many people, belonging
is the most essential source of meaning,
-
those bonds of family and friends.
-
For others, the key to meaning
is the second pillar: purpose.
-
Now, finding your purpose
is not the same thing
-
as finding that job that makes you happy.
-
Purpose is less about what you want
than about what you give.
-
A hospital custodian told me
her purpose is healing sick people.
-
Many parents tell me,
-
"My purpose is raising my children."
-
The key to purpose is using your strengths
-
to serve others.
-
Of course, for many of us,
that happens through work.
-
That's how we contribute and feel needed.
-
But that also means that issues
like disengagement at work,
-
unemployment,
-
low labor force participation,
-
these aren't just economic problems,
they're existential ones too.
-
Without something worthwhile to do,
-
people flounder.
-
Of course, you don't have
to find purpose at work,
-
but purpose gives you
something to live for,
-
some why that drives you forward.
-
The third pillar of meaning
is also about stepping beyond yourself,
-
but in a completely different way:
-
transcendance.
-
Transcendent states are those rare moments
when you're lifted above
-
the hustle and bustle of daily life,
-
your sense of self fades away,
-
and you feel connected
to a higher reality.
-
For one person I talked to,
transcendence came from seeing art.
-
For another person, it was at church.
-
For me, I'm a writer,
-
and it happens through writing.
-
Sometimes I get so in the zone
-
that I lose all sense of time and place.
-
And these transcendent
experiences can change you.
-
One study had students look up
at 200-feet tall eucalyptus trees
-
for one minute,
-
but afterwards they felt
less self-centered
-
and they even behaved more generously
when given the chance to help someone.
-
Belonging, purpose, transcendence.
-
Now, the fourth pillar of meaning,
-
I've found, tends to surprise people.
-
The fourth pillar is storytelling,
-
the story you tell yourself
about yourself.
-
Creating a narrative from the events
of your life brings clarity.
-
It helps you understand
how you became you.
-
But we don't always realize
that we're the authors of our stories
-
and can change the way we're telling them.
-
Your life isn't just a list of events.
-
You can edit, interpret,
and retell your story
-
even as you're constrained by the facts.
-
I met a young man named Emeka
-
who'd been paralyzed playing football.
-
After his injury, Emeka told himself,
-
"My life was great playing football,
-
but now look at me."
-
People who tell stories like this --
-
"My life was good. Now it's bad." --
-
they tend to be more
anxious and depressed.
-
And that was Emeka for a while.
-
But with time, he started
to weave a different story.
-
His new story was,
-
"Before my injury,
my life was purposeless.
-
I partied a lot and was
a pretty selfish guy.
-
But my injury made me realize
I could be a better man."
-
That edit to his story
changed Emeka's life.
-
After telling the new story to himself,
-
Emeka started mentoring kids,
-
and he discovered what his purpose was:
-
serving others.
-
The psychologist Dan McAdams
calls this a redemptIve story,
-
where the bad is redeemed by the good.
-
People leading meaningful
lives, he's found,
-
they tend to tell stories
about their lives
-
defined by redemption, growth and love.
-
But what makes people
change their stories?
-
Some people get help from a therapist,
-
but you can do it on your own too
-
just by reflecting
on your life thoughtfully,
-
how your defining experiences shaped you,
-
what you lost, what you gained.
-
That's what Emeka did.
-
You won't change your story overnight.
-
It could take years and be painful.
-
After all, we've all suffered,
and we all struggle.
-
But embracing those painful memories
can lead to new insights and wisdom,
-
to finding that good that sustains you.
-
Belonging, purpose,
transcendence, storytelling:
-
those are the four pillars of meaning.
-
When I was younger,
-
I was lucky enough to be surrounded
by all of the pillars.
-
My parents ran a Sufi meeting house
-
from our home in Montreal.
-
Sufism is a spiritual practice
associated with the Whirling Dervishes
-
and the poet Rumi.
-
Twice a week, Sufis would come to our home
-
to meditate, drink Persian tea,
and share stories.
-
Their practice also involved serving
all of creation through small acts of love,
-
which meant being kind
even when people wronged you.
-
But it gave them a purpose,
-
to reign in the ego.
-
Eventually, I left home for college
-
and without the daily grounding
of Sufism in my life,
-
I felt unmoored
-
and I started searching for those things
that make life worth living.
-
That's what set me on this journey.
-
Looking back, I now recognize
that the Sufi house
-
had a real culture of meaning.
-
The pillars were part of the architecture,
-
and the presence of the pillars
helped us all live more deeply.
-
Of course, the same principle applies
-
in other strong communities as well,
-
good ones and bad ones.
-
Gangs, cults:
-
these are cultures of meaning
that use the pillars and give people
-
something to live and die for,
-
but that's exactly why we as a society
-
must offer better alternatives.
-
We need to build these pillars
within our families
-
and our institutions to help people
become their best selves.
-
But living a meaningful life takes work.
-
It's an ongoing process.
-
As each day goes by,
we're constantly creating our lives,
-
adding to our story,
-
and sometimes we can get off track.
-
Whenever that happens to me,
-
I remember a powerful experience
I had with my father.
-
Several months after
I graduated from college,
-
my dad had a massive heart attack
that should have killed him.
-
He survived, and when I asked him
what was going through his mind
-
as he faced death,
-
he said all he could think about
was needing to live
-
so he could be there
for my brother and me,
-
and this gave him the will
to fight for life.
-
When he went under anesthesia
for emergency surgery,
-
instead of counting backwards from 10,
-
he repeated our names like a mantra.
-
He wanted our names to be
the last words he spoke on Earth
-
if he died.
-
My dad is a carpenter and a Sufi.
-
It's a humble life but a good life.
-
Lying there facing death,
he had a reason to live:
-
love.
-
His sense of belonging within his family,
-
his purpose as a dad,
-
his transcendent meditation,
repeating our names,
-
these, he says, are the reasons
why he survived.
-
That's the story he tells himself.
-
That's the power of meaning.
-
Happiness comes and goes,
-
but when life is really good
-
and when things are really bad,
-
having meaning gives you
something to hold onto.
-
Thank you.
-
(Applause)