Oral Presentation 6th World Congress on Positive Psychology 2019

What Can We Actually Do to Find More Meaning in Our Lives? (#416)

Michael Steger 1
  1. Center for Meaning and Purpose, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, United States

Significant research indicates that meaning in life is a compelling path to flourishing and growing a life worth living. The question of what we can actually do to find more meaning in our lives has been met mainly with a conspicuous science. There does not seem to be an equivalent of the gratitude and strengths interventions that “everyone knows work.” In this talk, the many threads of experiments, clinical trials, pilot studies, and a meta-analysis are woven together with the more general scholarship on meaning to suggest Boosts, Lenses, Commitments, and Disciplines that hold out promise for those of us who wish to cultivate more meaningful, purpose-filled, significant lives. I conclude that perhaps the most important step toward gaining greater meaning and purpose is making peace with embracing the open-ended search for meaning rather than getting caught fixating on a specific answer to the question, “what is the meaning of my life?”