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Unit 7: Meaning and purpose

The last of the six themes

Throughout this course you are introduced to some of the ways you can boost your happiness and wellbeing, and that of your children, using six key themes that have been shown to improve wellbeing through the way we think about the past, present and future potential.

The final theme is illustrated in the diagram below.

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A diagram with three boxes across the top saying past, present and potential. Below these boxes are six circles, grouped in pairs. Below the box saying past, the two circles say character srengths and gratitide. Below present, the circles say savouring and kindness. Below potential, the circles say hope ans meaning. All of the boxes and circles are greyed out except for potential and meaning.

For this sixth and final theme, you are shown some practical activities that you can try at home. The benefits of these have all been supported scientifically and can be attempted by yourself during the course. They can also be adapted to work with children of all ages within the home. Being a good role model to our children is also a great way to help enhance their wellbeing.

Mindful minute

To start each unit, it is helpful to try to switch off from what has been happening in your day and greet your learning from a place of relaxation. The following exercise can be a way of doing this, so please feel free to try this. Alternatively, you may have your own way of switching off from the distractions of your day, like making a hot drink or putting on some calming music.

Sit in a comfortable position with your hands resting on your lap. Try to keep your back, neck and head straight and place both of your feet flat on the floor.

Bring your attention to your breath and consciously try to relax your shoulders. Imagine that the muscles in your shoulders are melting into your body and breathe deeply into your belly so that you can feel it expanding.

Press the button below which will set a timer for 1 minute. Close your eyes and continue to focus on your breathing and relaxing your shoulders. It is normal for your mind to wonder, and when this happens try to gently bring it back to your breathing and relaxing.

After a minute you will hear a buzzer. Open your eyes and continue with the course.

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7.1 What is meaning and how can it help you and your family?

Having a sense of meaning and purpose in your life is considered to be a fundamental human need that can enhance wellbeing by bringing a multitude of positive mental and physical benefits.

For many people, especially as you enter adulthood, modern life can be a distraction from your deep-felt values and passions. It can be hard to remember what your purpose in life is when you are too busy trying to cope with getting through each day.

Why having meaning and purpose in life is so important

During times of adversity, having a sense of meaning and purpose about your life has been shown to play an important role in coping with stress and trauma.

Research carried out during the pandemic found that meaning in life buffered against COVID-19-specific stress (Trzebiński et al., 2020), and general levels of boredom, depression, anxiety and stress (Chao et al., 2020).

Research has also shown that as well as having a protecting effect during challenging times, meaning also offers individuals a way to help them to discover what this is and grow during a time of crisis. This was illustrated by a COVID-19 study showing that despite spikes in acute stress, depression and anxiety among front-line healthcare workers, an astonishing 61% of them said they had found increased meaning and purpose in life (Shechter et al., 2020).

In this final unit, you will have the chance to pause and consider meaning and what values that you want to live your life by. As parents, by contemplating these questions, you can also help to guide your children to understand which of their strengths, dreams and passions can be nurtured to help them to find their own meaning in life.

In this video, Michelle discusses why having meaning and purpose in life is so important for you and the wellbeing of your family.

Download this video clip.Video player: unit_7_meaning_and_purpose.mp4

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Transcript

MICHELLE:

At the start of this course, in unit 1, I talked about how, as a parent, what most of us want for our children is for them to be happy and healthy -- in brief, to have positive wellbeing. But what does wellbeing actually mean from the viewpoint of positive psychology?

Current research on wellbeing has come from two different traditions -- first, from the hedonic approach to wellbeing, which focuses on pleasure and positive affect. This is the type of feeling good that we associate with feeling happy.

Second, from the eudaimonic approach. And this regards wellbeing as a concept, including a sense of purpose in life and self-realisation, a type of wellbeing that talks about functioning well.

One of the most well-known theories of wellbeing to come from positive psychology is Seligman's theory of subjective wellbeing or the PERMA model. According to this theory, which combines both the hedonic and eudaimonic approaches, there are five core elements to psychological wellbeing. And these together make up the acronym PERMA.

These include P, Positive emotion, E, Engagement, R, Relationships, M, Meaning, and A, Accomplishment. And in this last unit, the focus will be on meaning and purpose, which, as described in PERMA, has a central role in human functioning.

A sense of wellbeing has been described as the sum of our understandings and interpretations of our experiences. And this is what gives us direction in life. The search for meaning in life is a search for truth and sense. And judging a life as meaningful means that we, as individuals, have experienced a life that has a function or a goal that needs to be accomplished.

A sense of meaning may not only make an individual happier but can also help them cope with suffering. And in research that's been carried out, looking at what makes life meaningful, it's been identified that this is the life where you use your higher strengths or signature strengths in the service of something larger than you are, i.e., for the greater good of others.

The meaningful life is also the type of life where fulfilling and lasting wellbeing can be achieved and where the pursuit of pleasure and positive emotion is just the cherry on the top. As you will hear in this unit, meaning and purpose in life is really important to our health and wellbeing. You will also hear about why this is and the benefits that meaning and purpose can bring, not only to individuals but also to families, and particularly, during the type of challenge that we've experienced like the pandemic.

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Meaning and purpose

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A graphic detailing several quotes. He who has a why to live can bear almost any how. Nietzsche. Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose. Viktor Frankl. Remember that wherever your heart is, there you will find your treasure. Paulo Coelho. The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for. Fyodor Dostoyevsky. When you were born, you cried and the world rejoiced; live your life so that when you die, the world cries and you rejoice. Indian Proverb. There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you. Maya Angelou. Good luck is another name for tenacity of purpose. Ralph Waldo Emerson.

What do you think about these quotes? Do you agree with them?

Note your thoughts in the text box below.

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7.2 The benefits for people who report higher levels of meaning

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A diagram with a centre circle saying meaning. Around this are six satellite circles. Express more positive emotions. Use their character strengths more. ave more satisfying relationships. Better physical health. Live longer. Better at coping with trauma.

Being able to identify the meaning and purpose in your life and understand your ‘why’ serves as a point of reference for your future actions. It can help to provide clarity as you will be more focused on your goals and less likely to waste your time on futile endeavours.

The meaning of life

The following video gives a 60-second overview of what things can make life meaningful.

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The video suggested four elements that make life meaningful:
1.	Helping others
2.	Making something better
3.	Finding out how things work
4.	Authentic connections with others.

Can you think of any meaningful examples in your own life where you address these four elements?

Note your thoughts in the text box below.

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Finding meaning in the pandemic

Whilst facing the pandemic and its effects on the world, your life, your relationships and your future, it can be easy to view it as a purely negative set of events.

Positive psychology would encourage us, where possible and with support, to look out for any signs of growth and try to facilitate this. This is known as posttraumatic growth, and may involve recognition of personal strengths, improved relationships and a greater appreciation of life.

Perhaps you are able to recognise some signs of personal growth in your life when you compare your life now to before the pandemic?

7.3 How to use meaning with your family to enhance wellbeing

The following activities may offer some strategies to help you and your family to find meaning and purpose in your lives.

Questions to help you find your ‘why’

By signing in and enrolling on this course you can view and complete all activities within the course, track your progress in My OpenLearn Create. and when you have completed a course, you can download and print a free Statement of Participation - which you can use to demonstrate your learning.

7.4 Creating a meaningful ritual for your family

Many families have traditions and ways of doing things that are meaningful to them.

You may follow particular traditions on birthdays and holidays as well as daily rituals, such as waking up your partner with a drink or reading a story to your children before bed.

These traditions can help to build connections between family members and enhance relationships.

Traditions and daily rituals

7.5 Finding your flow as a family

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A hand drawn illustarion of a simple two axis bar chart. The heading is how long time feels when doing different things. The vertical axis is titled length of time felt and is divided into a scale of two seconds, ten minutes, five hours, one hundred years and twelve million years. The horizontal axis is titled activity. There are six bars rising up vertically from the horizontal axis. The first one says thirty seconds of burpees and reaches to between five hours and one hundred years on the vertical scale. The second bar says microwaving food for three minutes and reaches to just above one hundred years on the scale. The third bar says one minute of doing the plank and reaches twelve million years on the scale. The fourth says waiting for an important email and reaches just below twelve million years on the scale. The fifth is having fun and is between two seconds and ten minutes on the scale. The final bar is Sunday and reaches about two seconds on the scale.

Times flies when you are having fun!

Identify favourite activities that family members love to participate in where they are totally engrossed and lose track of time – experiencing ‘flow’.

This might be exercising, baking, reading, playing a game, making crafts, playing an instrument, performing a dance, listening to music, creating art, etc.

Try to find regular times in your week when you can all participate in these activities. By increasing the frequency and intensity of your flow experiences, you will feel more connected to your life and what you value, increasing your wellbeing.

Finding your ‘ikigai’

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A graphic diagram depicting four overlapping circles. The first circle says what you love, the second says what the world needs, the third says what you can be paid for, and the fourth says what you are good at. Where the four circles overlap it says your reason for being.

The Japanese use the term ‘ikigai’, which can be translated to mean your ‘reason for being’. This covers anything that makes your life feel worthwhile.

In the Western definition of ikigai, the term can be broken down into four spheres: what you love, what you’re good at, what the world needs and what you can be paid for. Where all four spheres overlap, you find your ikigai.

The Japanese have a number of 'rules' to uncover your ikigai. These include living for the moment, doing gentle daily exercise, staying in touch with friends and family, and connecting with nature.

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An infographic that details the concept of ikigai. It asks five questions to uncover your ikigai. What are your core values? What are you passionate about? What is your mission? What is your profession? What is your vacation? It also lists the ten rules of ikigai. 1. Stay active and don't retire. 2. Leave urgency behind and adopt a slower pace of life. 3. Only eat until you are 50 per cent full. 4. Surround yourself with good friends. 5. Get in shape through daily gentle exercise. 6. Smile and acknowledge people around you. 7. Reconnect with nature. 8. Give thanks to anything that brightens your day and makes you feel alive. 9. live in the moment. 10. Follow your ikigai.

7.6 Best possible self-exercise

The next activity has been shown to have positive effects on mood and outlook on life, and the effect may last as long as a week (Meevissen, 2011).

You can try different versions of the exercise, visualising your best possible self in different aspects of your life.

Positive effects on mood and outlook on life

7.7 Summary

In this unit you learned that having a sense of meaning and purpose can offer many benefits to help to boost your wellbeing.

You have attempted to identify the meaning and purpose in your life and explored how you can encourage your family to be able to recognise their own meaning and purpose.

Further resources

Reading
Frankl, V. E. (1963). Man’s Search for Meaning. New York: Washington Square Press.
Stager, M. (2007). The untethered soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself. Oakland, CA: New Harbinger.

Videos
The Time You Have
Hugo - Purpose

Websites
Templeton
Mind and Life

Now go to Unit 8: Conclusion, where we review the course.

References

Cohen, R., Bavishi, C. & Rozanski, A. (2016) 'Purpose in life and its relationship to all-cause mortality and cardiovascular events: A meta-analysis', Psychosomatic Medicine, 78(2), 122–133.

Meevissen, Y.M., Peters, M.L. & Alberts, H.J. (2011) 'Become more optimistic by imagining a best possible self: Effects of a two week intervention', Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry, 42(3), 371-378.

Park, C.L. (2010) 'Making sense of the meaning literature: An integrative review of meaning making and its effects on adjustment to stressful life events', Psychological Bulletin, 136(2), 257–301. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0018301.

Roepke, A.M., Jayawickreme, E. & Riffle, O.M. (2014) 'Meaning and health: A systematic review', Applied Research in Quality of Life, 9(4), 1055–1079.

Steger, M.F. (2012) 'Experiencing meaning in life: Optimal functioning at the nexus of spirituality, psychopathology, and well-being', In P.T.P. Wong (Ed.), The human quest for meaning, 2nd ed., pp. 165–184, Routledge.

Unit 7: Meaning and purpose