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. 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.
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.
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.
For many people, belonging is the most essential source of meaning, those bonds to 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. 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.
The third pillar of meaning is also about stepping beyond yourself, but in a completely different way: transcendence. 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.
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.
Happiness comes and goes. But when life is really good and when things are really bad, having meaning gives you something to hold on to.