How to lead
A Meaningful Life
What Makes Life Meaningful: Michael Steger at TEDxCSU
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I need to start with a confession I
learned almost everything I know about
life from John Cusack movies for the
1980s and in these movies the hero just
through the sheer force of trying to be
a good guy and speaking from the heart
wins true love in the end and the
widespread admiration of all I tried to
put this plan into effect this John
Cusack plan and most importantly came
when I met this amazing woman in college
and I fell head over heels almost
instantly and nearly is instantly when
John Cusack and declared my undying love
the the John Cusack plan took about four
years to work in my case but you know
John Cusack also teaches us to be
persistent right not not creepy but
persistent and so it got serious pretty
quickly moved from Minnesota out to
Oregon together about three years later
we're on a beach and manzanita Oregon
leaning back against a weathered
driftwood log sitting in the cool dry
sand the you know the Pacific surf had
kicked up a haze around us and in my
pocket I had this this contraption I
built out of some shells I brought back
from a road trip to Baja Mexico and
using tape and glue and the cotton ball
I had don't laugh this is serious right
I I had created this little nestling
thing for this diamond ring I brought
but I realized it's going to be a little
strange if at a beach I pull a shell out
of my pocket so I need a cover story and
I said I'm gonna go spelunking and see
what's going on and so so I got up and I
left and she looked at me like many of
you are like this makes no sense but I
didn't care because I was on a mission
and so I looked at the I tested the
contraption out it was working I had my
crib sheet of this passionate speech
I've written and I said I've got this I
looked around I tried to memorize every
sensation I was experiencing at the time
and I walked back and I said hey honey
look what I got
and she oh that's nice so I said now
look it opens and closes because that's
what you say when you find a shell right
so so she takes it she looks inside and
there's the ring she looks at me
I'm on my knees and I launch into about
92% of my prepared remarks and conclude
with will you marry me and she looks at
me and she says beep I don't know look
at my so this was a surprising answer
and I've thought about this moment many
times in my life since then and I think
it's really an interesting response in a
lot of ways because I was asking
something pretty huge I was saying can
you turn your life into our life and I
was asking for the most precious thing
that she has that any of us have that
week's the years the days that we've
been given life is our moments we have
an unknowable number of moments all we
know is that once we spend them we can
never get them back and we can never get
more and I was asking for dibs on all of
her moments
that's a serious thing and another thing
that was going on on the same time first
of all John Cusack thanks for ruining my
life second around the same time there's
a popular t-shirt and had this spirally
galaxy looking thing and a arrow said
you are here and I love this I love this
image because we are this little speck
of dust in the middle of the abyss we
are ourselves a tiny speck of dust we
live on a speck of dust in the middle of
oblivion of nothingness and it's
actually worse than that right if you
think about it because if you look at
images from space we only live on the
outer crust of a speck of dust like the
shell of a robin's egg that's where life
is for us it's incredibly almost
unfathomable and precious and in that
life we have all these moments that
we've been given and we have to make
those moments matter you're going to
meet a lot of people today who go right
to the edge of oblivion they go to the
fragility of existence and it yawns and
father may be out of a door of an
airplane maybe down the sheer face of a
mountainside the jaws of a shark other
people find that fragility of existence
in the eyes of another person a starving
child a bruised woman a shattered
veteran as people find it in a damaged
and destroyed landscape but these people
are going and embracing the fragility of
existence and finding ways to enhance
what we all have what we all share
they're making their moments matter and
that's all we can ask how can we find
ways to connect and contribute and
consider how to make these moments
matter at the same time there are people
out there who discard those moments like
fast food wrappers out a car window
littering the landscape with toxic
throwaway moments in life casual cruelty
thoughtless destruction mindlessly
squandering this one thing that we've
got the contrast between these two
groups is a psychological study of
meaning in life and in a sense what
psychologists are trying to do with this
question is turn that from you are here
- why are you here and that's we're
trying to figure out now in the
psychological study of meaning we think
that meaning is at least two things
meaning is purpose and significance and
purpose is the need to do the University
of Minnesota psychologist Eric clinger
argued that we didn't evolve from
passive rooted organisms that can stand
around and wait for what we need to come
to them we evolved from creatures that
need to move we must move to find and
seek and obtain what we need in life and
that entails risks but it also entails
doing we can't just stop it's in our
very being to do I think a purpose as an
anchor we throw it out into the future
this aspiration we have this big dream
we throw it into the future and it keeps
the future alive in us and sometimes
when the present is too hard
it serves as asset as a source of Solace
we can transcend what's happening now
because we know that out there is a big
dream that we're pursuing so in our very
being is the need to do but what are we
supposed to do what kind of purpose are
we supposed to pursue the answer comes
from significance the need to make sense
raise your hand if you see a camel right
so there's no camel there obviously it's
just a little squiggly thing and if you
didn't see a camel initially when I said
do you see a camel it became a camel
someone some people think it looks like
a an old person with glasses and a cane
it can be that too it can be almost
anything because our brains are created
and have evolved incredible capacity to
combine and recombine and find
associations and link and relink and
find patterns and maps and meaning
everywhere the question isn't can we
find meaning in life we can't not find
meaning in our lives it's happening all
the time it's happening a hundred times
today for you the question is can we
build powerful meaning if we forge a
powerfull purpose that transforms our
life and helps transform the lives of
our shared future that's really the what
we're trying to understand with
significance and purpose combining it to
the meaningful life meaning tends to
have the sort of intuitive appeal it
sounds good right if I said hey you get
it your choice meaningful life
meaningless nothing meaningless life a
lot of us choose the meaning side right
but we can do better than that we've
been studying this for over 50 years in
Psych
ecology and we can take a look and we
can say this meaning matter
yeah it's associated with a whole
constellation of amazing and cherished
psychological attributes people are full
of vitality and happy and energy they
pursue the future their goal-directed
they care about other people they're
kind they're benevolent they seem better
equipped to cope with the adversity
that's inevitable for all of us but I
want to see if I can even do a little
bit better than that and asked his
meaning matter and maybe put the seed in
your head that maybe meaning is a
life-and-death issue I want to choose
one study here this is by Patricia Boyle
her colleagues at the Rush University
Medical Center in Chicago Illinois their
couple studies like this they're
concerned with longevity among older
adults and it's kind of interesting I
think that the way we study longevity is
by setting who dies and who dies first
so on the left-hand side here we have
cumulative hazard of dying and you can
read those numbers as if they're kind of
like percentages so 5% 10% 15% hazard of
dying on the bottom we have the number
of years this study they followed the
adults for five years and we're
concerned about two groups the first
group of the people in the top 10% of
feeling their lives are rich and
abundant and overflowing with meaning
that's the blue group the red group are
the people who score in the lowest 10%
of meaning in life they're telling us
these older adults my life is
meaningless my life has no purpose and
what we see when we run this study is
that over time one of the truths of life
emerges the longer alive the less life
we have left and so even for the people
who are in the highest 10% of meaning
their hazard rate their hazard of dying
was somewhere around 11% but if you look
at what happens with the people in the
lowest 10% of meeting there's a big gap
here their hazard dying is close to 21
percent over the course of this study
and that gap is significant it
translates to 57 percent less hazard of
dying for those whose lives are abundant
and overflowing with meaning compared to
those whose lives are bereft of meaning
now we all know that a lot of things are
associated with longevity and this study
is great because it controls for these
things over and above depression
disability neurotic personality traits
that tendency to approach life in a
negative fashion
over and above chronic medical
conditions and income 57 percent less
hazard of dying for people whose lives
are rich and meaning compared to those
whose lives are bereft of meaning so
maybe just maybe meaning as a matter of
life and death and that's not where the
story ends right because well hey I'm
saying meaning is this great thing I
can't say and then you can't have it so
how can we try to find meaning and this
has been the question that's really kind
of obsessed me over the last several
years and I think there's a good
news/bad news situation you know of
course you know social scientists always
have a little bit of this a little bit
of that we never commit the bad news is
I can't tell you how to find meaning in
your lives you are going to go out and
find your purpose and you are going to
forge the sense that you make in your
own lives there's no answer from me or
anybody the good news is that you can
all do it anyone can do it and when we
take a look at research we find patterns
emerging and that's what I'd like to
share with you in the last little bit of
mice of my talk today we did a very
simple study we simply gave digital
cameras to college to said take pictures
of what makes your life feel meaningful
come back and tell us what you took a
picture of the number one answer was
people almost 90 percent of these
students mentioned explicitly a form of
relationship brothers sisters parents
grandchildren colleagues lovers
co-workers people relationships are the
ocean in which we find meaning is the
landscape of meaning but beyond that we
find some other interesting and
compelling ways to look for meaning in
our own lives and I'm going to share
with you a few of these these pictures
from the actual study so this is what
one person took a picture and what she
told us about this picture is this
picture represents the beauty of the
world stopping and taking it all in
helps make life meaningful so we see a
20 year old college student
rediscovering thousands of years of
wisdom about the secret of meaning in
life which is there's no secret at all
it's all around us there are invitations
and opportunities to find meaning and
get meaning all around us all the time I
grew up in a rural area so this isn't a
quite unusual picture for me but the
story behind it is deeper
I suspected this person says the main
focus is a tractor I picked it because I
wanted to show how farming was a large
influence in my life it shows that are
still people who work hard just put food
on the table and that those are my roots
we see this person connecting with
family and connecting with heritage and
tradition contributing working hard and
finding a way to make something
important of the way that he spends his
moments the last picture I'll share with
you is a scene that plays out countless
times all around us in malls and
airports restaurants everywhere but are
we missing something are we missing a
chance to find something deep because
what this person says is this is my work
in the Lauria Student Center though I am
a custodian I'm proud to be one this is
the first job that will not get me in
trouble
I am proud because the job pays for my
family again this vital connection the
ability to contribute to other people to
weave our futures together and for this
person to consider ways in which the
moments he's spending at work are
building something powerful important
for himself so we come to this question
what makes life meaningful and maybe
it's the biggest question we can ask why
are you here what are you going to do
with your life what makes your existence
matter and maybe the answer that is a
matter of life and death just may be
right but maybe the answer this hugest
of all questions is very small all
around us opportunities to build
together meaning through connecting
contributing and consuming ways to make
all of our moments matter and this
question is really important to me
because if I can bring you back to
manzanita beach in that moment where I
got a little bit of surprising answer I
think that doesn't happen in the John
Cusack movies for that you know John
Cusack says stay with it and so I kind
of I didn't run away crying like it was
part of my plan at that point but you
know later she asked me questions says
are you sure I want to say I built a
clam thing that's
that's being sure
I said yeah I'm sure and now many years
later we have two kids
and this is this isn't a flee for
sympathy they're great kids I'm lucky
they're going out into this world though
and I can already see it in them they
want to make a difference they want to
make moments matter and they're no
different than the other kids in their
class and the world they're going into
has a lot of people like the people who
are here we're doing the same thing
we're grabbing life and spending their
moments wisely to make a difference and
make things matter but they're also all
those other people right who litter all
of our collective landscapes with these
tragically misspent moments these
destructive ticking time bombs of a life
not considered and the question for me
is what if everyone tried to live a
meaningful life life is short it's easy
to waste and hard to use it's not easy
to say I'm going to go live a meaningful
life I'm sure everyone says that from
time to time but my background is in
clinical and counseling psychology and
we say to clients all the time we can't
do anything about everybody I can do
something about me and you can do
something about you so what if you and I
starting today taking advantage of what
we're given and this opportunity to hear
so many great ideas and share so many
great ideas
what if today you and I tried to live a
meaningful life the concern I have is
what if meaning becomes just another
commodity what if meaning something I
want more of and I want the best kind of
meaning and so meaning becomes like this
bottled water that we have to get from
some South Pacific Island it's made out
of raindrops or something
is there a better way to do this what if
we change this question just a little
bit what if instead I think there's a
great question don't get me wrong what
if you and I tried to live a meaningful
life what if you and I tried to give a
meaningful life what if instead of only
harvesting meaning from life around us
what if we try to help other people find
it too and give some of the meaning that
drives us some of the purpose share the
energy for purpose in the drive share
the sense that we make that the world is
worth investing in that there's a great
future that we can build together out
there
can we give meaning away that's the
question I hope you'll explore for the
rest of today thank you
