A detailed guide to the meaning of life: how to find it and why you need it

What is a sense of life? Surely you have also asked yourself this question. Sooner or later he stands before every person on our planet. And this is not surprising, because we have the ability to think, analyze, evaluate our actions and achievements. At some point, we realize that life is not turning out exactly the way we would like, and this causes us to experience a lot of unpleasant feelings, ranging from emptiness to complete disappointment and hopelessness. This is where the question arises: how to find meaning in life and is it worth looking for?

Why do we need meaning in life?

We are accustomed to thinking that the meaning of life is a philosophical question that can be addressed after all pressing problems have been resolved. But in fact, this is a prerequisite for the successful solution of many pressing problems. There is now ample evidence of the connection between a sense of meaning and quality of life. Here are some important correlations.

• Physical health. Having a purpose in life reduces the risk of stroke and death from cardiovascular disease in old age. In general, people over 50 who have a clear purpose in life have lower mortality rates.
• Standard of living. If you have a purpose in life, you are likely to be above average in wealth. If only because you try to invest in long-term projects and are not prone to spontaneous spending.
• Mental health. In one study, researchers studied 1,400 older adults for 18 years and found that subjects who had a purpose in life were more independent, less likely to be depressed, and scored higher on working memory tests. The influence of a sense of meaningfulness in life on cognitive functions is also recorded at the level of neuroanatomy of the brain.
• Psychological stability. Believing that life has meaning makes a person psychologically more resilient to what is called allostatic load—that is, the “physical wear and tear” of repeated or chronic stress. And it helps to recover faster from negative experiences.

Maslow's pyramid in work and business

People go to work to satisfy physical needs and provide security, in other words, in search of stability. When you can already meet your daily needs, it is time to strive for career growth, success and recognition.

And entrepreneurs, in turn, can analyze the desires of employees and help satisfy them: promote them, increase wages, hold corporate events in the Maldives, open a soup kitchen, provide training. This also includes improving the workflow: connecting automated systems that take over the routine.

Automation of email newsletters

Send chains of trigger messages: welcome, abandoned cart, reactivation, combining email, SMS and web push within one chain.

But in reality, everything is meaningless?

You don’t need to read pessimistic philosophers like Sartre or Camus to think at least once about why this world exists and we are in it if everything will end sooner or later. We will die, the Earth will burn, the Sun will go out, and even the Universe will finally scatter into darkness or collapse back into one point.

One of the founders of existential psychology, Irvin Yalom, includes the meaninglessness of existence among the four main existential problems that we have to face in life. The other three are death, isolation and freedom. Isolation means that, despite all the emotional closeness between people, there is always one last insurmountable gap: each of us comes into the world alone and must leave it alone. Under freedom is the total uncertainty of the external world, in which we ourselves have to create a coordinate system for ourselves. As Morty says in the famous cartoon: “No one’s life has any meaning, no one is connected to anyone, everyone is going to die one day - let’s go watch TV!”

Who is right, atheists or believers?

Religions dictate the distance between the Creator and his creations, outlining the need to ask, depend, fear, trust. Of course, in the current reality, with a vector towards awareness and love, they will gradually lose their positions, or undergo dramatic internal changes in their foundations.

Personally, I have little faith in the second option, but you never know... And this will happen precisely because they have already fully fulfilled their role - not to lose grains of light in dark times.

An atheist believes in humanity, and as a result, in himself as the crown. And in this sense, it is much closer to the Primary Source, which, as is known, declared with its first postulate that we are the image and likeness of God.

It is very important now to separate the grains of true knowledge from the chaff that has been carried over in the dark, dark times.

Why is the absence of meaning a good thing?

Because it means that you have the opportunity to invent it. A world without meaning is a free space for our creativity, like a blank sheet on which we can depict anything. As renowned screenwriter Dan Harmon (author of that Morty quote) explains, “Realizing that nothing makes sense can actually save you. Once you overcome the initial horror and accept this fact, any point around you can become the center of the Universe for you, and any moment in life can become the most important.”

Another nuance of this idea is well illustrated by a story from Mark Manson’s book “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck.” After the death of an old friend, he fell into depression and spent days lying on the sofa, thinking about the meaninglessness of life. And then one day he had a revelation: “If in fact there is no point in doing something, then there is no point in doing nothing.” After that, he got up from the sofa.

That is, everyone has their own meaning of life?

Yes, research on the connection between a sense of meaning in life and mental/physical health and well-being shows that it doesn’t matter how you imagine meaning in life, as long as you have it in your life.

As philosopher Simon Blackburn writes in his book Being Good, to answer the question of whether life has meaning, you must first decide for whom: an electron in an atom, a stone on a riverbank, a black hole in the center of the Galaxy, or for you. From a psychological point of view, it is you who are important. Therefore, typical wording in questionnaires on this topic sounds like this: “I understand what the meaning of my life is,” “I have a clear sense of purpose in life,” “I am looking for something that gives me a sense of meaningfulness in life.”

Each item is rated on a scale from “absolutely true” to “absolutely false.” That is, the meaning of life is not only a subjective concept, but also a measurable quantity, essentially an indicator of the meaning that we attach to different areas of our lives and our position in the world. The value can fluctuate and sometimes drops to zero or goes negative, and then a feeling of meaninglessness arises. But the stock price of your life on this exchange depends only on you.

Will psychotherapy help in finding the meaning of life?

Yes - it's usually easier and faster. A long, unsuccessful search for purpose and meaning in life, as we know, can be psychologically draining and make you even more unhappy. In this situation, psychotherapy is a real chance to break out of the vicious circle.

Although it is believed that psychotherapeutic assistance is needed to solve mental problems such as depression, in fact, this tool, when used skillfully, is also suitable for problems at the existential level. Moreover, as psychology professor Clara Hill says, almost all the problems with which people turn to psychotherapists are indirectly related to the meaning of life. “Of course, no psychotherapist will tell you what the meaning of life is, but what he can do is help you to see that life has meaning - always, in any conditions and under any circumstances,” as the famous psychologist wrote Viktor Frankl, who studied the possibilities of psychotherapy in solving existential problems.

For those searching for meaning in life, a good psychotherapist can be a reliable guide to help them discover the feelings and ideas within themselves that lead to purpose and a sense of meaning. And then identify needs, prioritize and build a meaningful life around them.

Finding meaning in life is an individual task with many variables, so there is no best technique or universal method. For some, psychodrama or psychoanalysis is suitable, for others, cognitive behavioral or gestalt therapy.

Finding competent specialists, especially in one place, is not always easy - there are many pseudo-psychologists in this area who practice alternative methods not confirmed by science. Therefore, it is safest to look for a psychotherapist through proven services, for example, Zigmund.Online. They select specialists who practice approaches approved by the scientific community, check their experience, level of education and professional training. Another advantage of the service is a special algorithm that helps select a specialist based on your personal request, so that working with him is as simple and effective as possible. This increases the likelihood of finding “your” psychotherapist on the first visit. To make the decision easier, the service offers the first two sessions with a psychotherapist for the price of one - for 2,490 rubles.

How to find the meaning of life on your own?

There is one typical problem with the independent search for the meaning of life. Unconsciously, we are sure that it should be present by default in those areas of life that are considered “important”: work, love, friendship, relationships, family. By this logic, if you have all this, then your life should be filled with meaning. If you still don’t feel the meaning, then you urgently need to look for it in something else. There is actually no external force that is supposed to generate meaning for you. The source of meaning is not outside, but inside. Therefore, you need to look for it within yourself. And three components can serve as a guideline, from which, according to modern psychology, the meaning of life is formed: goal - consistency - significance.

Goal: how to define it?

Purpose is the main motivating factor in our lives. At first glance, identifying it is not so difficult. But there are two cognitive pitfalls along this path. The first is the confusion surrounding the double meaning of the word “goal.” In everyday life, we call the result of actions a goal: we brush our teeth so that they are clean; we eat to satisfy hunger. This logic gives meaning to our routine actions, but breaks down when we try to evaluate larger processes.

Psychologist Jill Stoddard illustrates the difference this way. Imagine that instead of playing football, you immediately get the end result: you see the winning score on the scoreboard. If the goal of a game (or life) is the end, then it really loses its meaning. But in the game, as in life, the process is important to us. We want to run around the field, miss goals and win back. A goal is a concept that includes two questions: not only “why”, but also “how”. When you perform a task in a way that aligns with your values, your actions become meaningful.

Hence the question: how to understand your values? Here we are faced with a second cognitive trap. Philosopher Iddo Landau writes about it in the book “The Search for Meaning in an Imperfect World.” We often focus on what we lack rather than what is important to us. For example, life seems meaningless to you due to career failure or lack of relationships. But if you only value what you don't currently have, life will never make sense to you. Because in this case, you will always ignore many things that you already have. To avoid this pitfall, Landau recommends using “the right questions” to determine your values. For example:

1. What could add more value to your life?
2. Why do you think other people find life meaningful?
3. Imagine that you are dying, but with a clear mind and sober memory: what will you remember with pleasure or regret?
4. What will you do if you have 10 days to live?

Three additional questions are suggested by Susan Cain, author of the bestselling book Introverts.

1. Remember what you wanted to become as a child. What is important is not the profession itself (say, firefighter), but what attracted you to it: the desire to save people, the courage that reaches the point of recklessness, or the desire to drive a beautiful car. “Perhaps you knew more about yourself as a child than you do now,” Kane writes.
2. Have you ever wanted to take your work home? Or, as the already mentioned Mark Manson puts this question: what can make you forget about food and toilet? Whether it's a computer game where you fight monsters, or a website project for a client, the main thing is that it shows your true passion.
3. Remember which of your acquaintances (school friends, former colleagues) you were really jealous of? Envy does not deceive. Kane says that at a class reunion, she always wanted to be in the shoes of those who became psychologists or writers. She ended up becoming both, and it brought a sense of purpose to her life.

Coherence: How to feel like your life has a plan?

The essence of consistency is best expressed by the formula from the movie Waking Life: “To live is to understand that you are living.”
Coherence is the cognitive component of meaning in life. It doesn't motivate you to take action, but it creates a meaningful background for it. When you see hidden logic in a chain of chance or call your decision to move to another city or another country destiny, you give external events internal consistency. In psychological questionnaires, this parameter is usually assessed as follows: “I can understand what is happening in my life,” “When I imagine my life as a whole, I clearly see the interconnection of events.” Like a word in a sentence, your experience makes sense when you can fit it into a larger context: “reconcile” your experience with other observations, perceptions, ideas, and principles.

• Keep a journal to organize the events of your life into a coherent story. After all, the plot always makes sense. Nietzsche also advised to perceive your life as a novel that you are composing here and now. As the experiment showed, even on an ordinary tourist trip, new meanings and connections are discovered when you keep travel notes.
• Research your genealogy. Knowing your family history is the simplest yet most effective way to bring a sense of coherence to your life. Finding a connection with the past is like becoming the protagonist of a series with a twisted plot. When you realize that you are in this world thanks to the victories in the struggle for existence of many generations of people who passed on their genes to you, it becomes difficult for you to perceive this result as meaningless. Research confirms that learning about your ancestry strengthens identity, provides a sense of connection, and enhances psychological resilience.
• Play sports. Harmony with the body is an important component of coherence. As Schopenhauer said, 90% of the perception of the outside world is related to well-being. If you feel discord between yourself and your own body, everything around you also seems out of balance. Physical activity not only helps you feel better, but also helps you regain a sense of control over your life.

Significance: how to feel part of something bigger?

This is a concept with the help of which many spiritual practices and religions solve the problem of the meaning of life. Essentially it is the belief that your existence is important to the world at large. Or, if it comes down to earth, it matters to other people. How important we are to others is what we usually mean when we talk about our role in the Universe. Scientific evidence confirms this: when a person feels that he has been forgotten, his sense of significance weakens. The same thing happens when a person is forced to be alone for a long time.

But it does not follow from this that the only available tool for maintaining a sense of personal significance is sociality. Even with a lack of communication and interest from other people, we can do a lot ourselves. It is enough to turn to the experience of people who managed to maintain a sense of significance in extreme circumstances.

The most striking example is Viktor Frankl. Before becoming a world-famous psychotherapist and creator of existential psychology, he experienced a tragedy that could have broken his psyche forever. During World War II, he lost his family and spent many years in a concentration camp, waiting every day to die in a gas chamber. But, he says, even then he never doubted for a minute that his life mattered. Here are a few principles that supported him in difficult moments.

Focus on those aspects of life in which you feel most significant.

The dereflection technique developed by Frankl is based on this principle: switching attention from an unsolvable problem to those questions that you can solve. Frankl gives the example of a man who lost his wife and believed that his life was now meaningless. As soon as he imagined how his wife would have suffered if he had died first, he immediately felt relieved and felt that there was meaning in his suffering.

Look for meaning in immediate experiences, not in abstract thoughts.

Because most often a feeling of significance arises as a “side effect” of immersion in the process. “There are no completely meaningless situations in life. Any situation gives us the opportunity to find the meaning of life. Every day, every hour has a special meaning, and for each person it has its own meaning. By revealing this meaning, a person reveals himself,” explains Frankl.

According to him, people have an innate desire for transcendence, that is, we automatically attach greater meaning to what we do. This was clearly demonstrated by Woody Allen, again using the example of football. As long as you are immersed in a world where people are divided into those who run around the field for the ball and those who watch them from the stands or on TV, it seems meaningful to you to count yellow cards and the ratio of shots on goal. But once you step back, all the points, goals, transfer windows and even Messi's farewell tears lose their meaning. With everything else it works the same way as with football. Let's take the Universe for example. In theory, she doesn't care about you. But when you look at a scattering of galaxies on a cloudless night through the Grand Canary Telescope from the top of an extinct volcano and feel like a cell of this huge sparkling organism, it begins to seem so familiar.

Make plans for the future.

When you awaken your interest in tomorrow, you are already filling your life with meaning. Research shows that just 15 minutes of planning a day is enough to make your life feel like it has purpose and meaning. Moreover, plans do not have to be detailed and specific. It is enough just to know that some important thing awaits you ahead. As the famous American psychiatrist Percival Bailey said: “To survive, you must constantly set yourself new tasks.”

What is Maslow's pyramid

Maslow's pyramid is a description of human needs: from base desires to sublime ones.

Abraham Maslow formulated the theory in 1954 in Motivation and Personality. He structured human desires and needs and created a hierarchy of needs.

Maslow's hierarchy of needs theory

Below is a table describing the levels of the theory of needs from lowest to highest.

The classic pyramid looks like this:

Maslow's pyramid. Source

We've loosened up the strict emoji hierarchy a bit so you can easily remember the key points:

Maslow's pyramid - human needs

The essence of the theory

The psychologist examined incentives and motivators, as well as the degree of their satisfaction, which act as a driving force and call to action. He suggested that every person has certain needs for a comfortable life that he strives for.

Maslow formulated several principles characterizing human nature:

Requests can be primary and secondary, and in the latter some steps may be skipped. Therefore, the theory is shown in the form of a pyramid rather than a diagram.

A person's primary or physiological needs This is what helps him exist - food, water and movement.

Secondary or psychological motivators come with a person's experience and development: success, respect, power, belonging and the desire for well-being.

It is important to note that until an individual satisfies basic desires: physiological needs according to Maslow and ensuring security, it will be difficult for him to think about higher aspirations.

For example: if you work extremely hard, take care of sick parents and do all the household chores, you have no time to think about self-development and self-knowledge.

Higher needs characterize a person's personality and show a wide range of cultural individual differences, but they are extremely difficult to measure. According to the author of the theory, only 2% of the Earth's population achieves the highest satisfaction - self-actualization. At the same time, Maslow does not idealize such a person - they also have shortcomings, irritability, stubbornness and inattention to others.

Abraham conducted a study and formulated 15 traits that are inherent in a self-actualizing personality: