Meaning, Purpose and Psychological Wellbeing

Why a meaningful life is about more than happiness and how we begin to discover what truly matters

There are times in life when nothing is obviously wrong, and yet something doesn't feel quite right.

We may be functioning well on the outside. We go to work, answer emails, meet our responsibilities, care for the people we love and continue with the familiar rhythm of everyday life.

And yet, somewhere beneath the activity, a quieter question begins to emerge:

What is all this for?

Sometimes the question arrives after a significant life event such as a bereavement, relationship ending, career change, becoming a parent, leaving home or reaching a milestone we once believed would make us happy.

Sometimes it arrives without any obvious trigger.

We may simply notice that the life we have constructed no longer feels entirely like our own.

Perhaps we are successful but unfulfilled.  Busy but directionless. Needed by everyone but disconnected from ourselves. Or perhaps the things that once gave us a sense of purpose no longer seem to carry the same meaning.

These experiences are not necessarily signs that something is wrong with us.

They may be invitations to ask a deeper question:

What makes a life meaningful?

And perhaps even more importantly:

What makes a life meaningful to me?

We don't only need to feel good

Psychological wellbeing is sometimes spoken about as though it were largely a matter of feeling good.

We understandably value happiness, pleasure, positive emotion and satisfaction with life. These are important aspects of human wellbeing.

But they are not the whole story.

Psychologists have also distinguished between forms of wellbeing concerned primarily with positive feelings and those concerned with living well; with purpose, personal growth, meaningful relationships, autonomy and a sense of becoming more fully oneself.

Carol Ryff's influential model of psychological wellbeing, for example, includes purpose in life alongside dimensions such as personal growth, positive relationships, self-acceptance, autonomy and the ability to engage effectively with one's environment.

This suggests a broader understanding of wellbeing.

A meaningful life is not necessarily a life in which we feel happy all the time.

There will be grief, disappointment, uncertainty and loss.

There will be days when we question ourselves and periods when we don't know what comes next.

A meaningful life can contain suffering.

Perhaps wellbeing is therefore not the art of arranging life so that we never suffer, but developing a way of living in which our lives remain connected to what matters even when suffering is unavoidable.

This distinction is important because it changes the question.

Instead of asking only:

"How can I feel better?"

we might sometimes ask:

"What kind of life do I want to be living?"

So, what do we mean by meaning?

"Meaning" is an enormous word.

It can refer to philosophical questions about existence, religious beliefs about transcendence, the significance we attach to our experiences, or the simple feeling that our lives matter.

Psychological research tends to approach meaning in life more modestly.

Contemporary researchers commonly describe three related dimensions.

The first is coherence.

Does my life make some sense to me?

Can I understand how different experiences fit together? Can I locate the present within some larger story of who I am and where I have come from?

The second is purpose.

Do I have some sense of direction? Are there goals, commitments or values that orient me towards something beyond the immediate moment?

The third is significance, sometimes described as mattering.

Do I experience my existence as having value? Does my life feel as though it matters?

These dimensions are distinct, but they overlap. Together they help explain why meaning is more than simply having something to do.

We can be extremely busy without experiencing purpose.

We can understand our past without feeling that our life matters.

And we can have ambitious goals while remaining profoundly disconnected from ourselves.

Meaning, then, seems to involve something deeper:

a sense that our lives make sense, are going somewhere, and matter.

Purpose is not the same as having a five-year plan

The language of purpose has become increasingly prominent in contemporary culture.

We are encouraged to discover our passion, find our purpose, maximise our potential and make an impact.

For some people, this language is inspiring.

For others, it creates another form of pressure.

What if I don't know my purpose?

What if I don't have a calling?

What if I am not changing the world?

What if I simply want a quieter life?

Purpose does not necessarily mean having an extraordinary mission.

It may be found in raising a child, caring for another person, creating something, teaching, learning, practising a craft, contributing to a community, nurturing a friendship or doing ordinary work with care.

It may be expressed through the values we bring to our lives rather than through the status attached to what we do.

The question may therefore be less:

"What extraordinary thing am I meant to accomplish?"

and more:

"What do I want my life to stand for?"

That is a different question.

It is less concerned with achievement and more concerned with orientation.

The difference between a chosen life and an inherited life

This brings us back to a theme explored earlier in this series: the stories we inherit.

Long before we consciously decide what matters to us, we absorb messages about what a good life is supposed to look like.

Perhaps we learn that success means achievement.

That being needed means being valuable.

That productivity means worth.

That being agreeable means being good.

That independence means strength.

That security matters more than curiosity.

That certain careers, relationships or lifestyles are respectable, while others are not.

These beliefs can provide a remarkably clear direction.

But clarity is not necessarily meaning.

We can spend years pursuing a life that makes perfect sense according to the expectations around us while quietly losing contact with what matters to us personally.

We may achieve the things we were told would make us happy and discover that the promised feeling never quite arrives.

This does not necessarily mean that our achievements were meaningless.

It may mean that something else is asking for our attention.

Purpose without self-knowledge can become another form of disconnection.

This is one reason that the work of reconnecting with ourselves matters.

Before we can live from our values, we may need to discover what those values actually are.

Before we can choose a direction, we may need to distinguish our own voice from the voices we have internalised.

When the old meaning falls apart

Sometimes our sense of meaning changes because life changes.

A relationship ends. Someone we love dies. Our children leave home.

We become parents. We change careers. We retire. Our health changes.

A belief we once relied upon no longer makes sense.

Or we finally achieve something we have spent years pursuing and discover that it doesn't feel the way we imagined.

These moments can be disorientating because they don't only change our circumstances.

They can change the story through which we understand ourselves.

Psychologist Crystal Park has described meaning-making in terms of the relationship between our broader sense of meaning - our beliefs, goals and assumptions about life - and the meaning we make of particular events. When significant experiences conflict with our existing understanding of life, a period of meaning-making may follow.

This helps explain why some experiences feel psychologically destabilising even when we can describe exactly what happened.

The difficulty may not simply be the event itself.

It may be that the event no longer fits the story.

A person who has always believed, for example, that hard work guarantees security may find redundancy psychologically shattering in ways that extend beyond financial concern.

Someone whose identity has been built around being needed may experience an empty nest as something deeper than a change in household routine.

Someone who has believed that love means permanence may experience the ending of a relationship as a challenge to their understanding of themselves and the world.

When the old framework no longer fits, we may need time to construct a new one.

Meaning-making is not the same as pretending everything happens for a reason

There is an important distinction here.

We should be cautious about telling people that everything happens for a reason.

Some things happen that we would never have chosen. Some losses are simply tragic.

Some suffering cannot be turned into a lesson.

Meaning-making does not require us to decide that an experience was secretly good for us.

It may be much more humble than that. It might mean being able to say:

"This happened. I did not choose it. I cannot make it good. But I am trying to understand how I want to live now."

Research into meaning-making suggests that the quality and nature of the process matter, rather than simply how intensely or how often someone searches for an explanation.

This is important because searching for meaning can itself become exhausting.

We do not always need an answer immediately.

Sometimes we need to grieve before we interpret.

Sometimes we need to feel before we understand.

Sometimes the most psychologically honest position is simply:

"I don't know yet."

What does the science tell us?

Research gives us useful information here, but it also requires humility.

A substantial body of psychological research has found relationships between experiencing meaning in life and aspects of psychological wellbeing. A major review identifies coherence, purpose and existential significance as central dimensions of the construct and describes meaning as a common aspect of human experience.

More recent research has also examined the relationship between meaning and psychological distress.

A 2023 meta-analysis of 108 studies involving almost 77,000 participants found that a stronger presence of meaning was associated with lower psychological distress. Interestingly, searching for meaning showed a different pattern and was, overall, associated with greater distress. The researchers also found that these relationships varied according to factors such as culture, region and the type of distress being measured.

This is a useful reminder that meaning is not a simple psychological formula.

We cannot conclude that finding purpose will automatically make someone mentally healthy.

Nor should we assume that searching for meaning is inherently therapeutic.

Someone who is searching may be going through a healthy period of growth and questioning.

Or they may be desperately trying to resolve an experience that currently feels unbearable.

The distinction matters. Science can show us patterns and associations.

It can help us understand what tends to accompany wellbeing.

But it cannot finally answer the philosophical question:

What makes a life worth living?

That remains a human question.

The existential question

This is where psychology meets philosophy.

Psychology can investigate how meaning relates to wellbeing.

Philosophy asks a different kind of question:

How should we live?

Existential thinkers have long been concerned with questions of meaning, freedom, responsibility, mortality, isolation and choice.

Viktor Frankl placed meaning at the centre of his therapeutic work. Irvin Yalom later described existential concerns as fundamental dimensions of human psychological life.

We don't have to accept every proposition of existential philosophy as scientific fact to recognise the value of its questions.

In fact, one of the strengths of an integrated approach is knowing when we have crossed from evidence into reflection.

Science can investigate whether people who experience greater meaning tend to report greater wellbeing.

It cannot tell us whether the universe itself possesses an objective meaning.

That is a different question.

For some people, meaning is ultimately connected to religious faith.

For others, it may arise through relationships, creativity, nature, service, contemplation or a sense of belonging to something larger than the individual self.

For others still, meaning may remain an open question.

Psychotherapy does not need to resolve that question.

It can make space for it.

Meaning and psychotherapy

Perhaps this is where psychotherapy has a particularly important role.

The therapist's task is not to give another person a purpose.

It is not to decide what their life should mean.

Instead, therapy can provide a space in which someone can begin to hear their own questions more clearly.

We might explore:

What matters to you now?

Whose definition of success are you living by?

What have you been taught to value?

What parts of your life feel alive?

What parts feel like obligation?

What have you stopped valuing because it seemed impractical?

What kind of person do you want to become?

What relationships do you want your life to be organised around?

If nobody were watching, what would still matter to you?

These are not questions with standard answers. They are invitations to reflection.

And sometimes discovering meaning involves recovering something we already knew, but had gradually lost contact with.

A person may realise that what matters most is not another promotion but being available to their children.

Someone else may discover that creativity, long neglected, has always been an important source of vitality.

Another person may realise that their deepest values involve service, friendship or connection rather than achievement.

None of these discoveries is objectively "the right answer."

They are personal recognitions.

Meaning is often relational

There is another important dimension to this conversation.

Meaning can easily become framed as an individual achievement:

My purpose. My goals. My fulfilment. My potential.

But human beings do not live in isolation. Much of what gives life significance is relational.

We matter to other people. Other people matter to us. We care for one another.

We belong to families, friendships, communities and cultures. We contribute.

We create. We witness one another's lives.

Sometimes meaning is found not in becoming more important, but in becoming more connected.

A meaningful life may therefore be less about asking:

"How can I make my life significant?"

and more about asking:

"What do I care about enough to give myself to?"

That might be a person. A community. A body of work. A value. A form of service.

A creative practice. A way of being.

Meaning does not always make us the centre of the story.

Sometimes it helps us discover what we are willing to place at the centre.

Meaning does not have to be grand

Perhaps one of the gentlest ways to think about meaning is to take it out of the realm of grand ambition.

Meaning can be ordinary. It can be found in a conversation that matters.

In making something carefully. In listening to someone who needs to be heard.

In caring for a child. In tending a garden. In showing up for a friend.

In doing work with integrity. In learning something simply because we are curious.

In sitting beside someone who is grieving. In choosing not to betray ourselves.

A meaningful life does not have to look impressive from the outside.

And sometimes the pursuit of an impressive life can actually distract us from the quieter forms of meaning that are already present.

The question is not necessarily whether our lives look significant.

It is whether they feel connected to what we genuinely value.

Perhaps meaning is something we continually rediscover

We may wish for meaning to be something we find once and then possess.

But human beings change.

What mattered to us at twenty may not matter in the same way at forty.

A purpose that once sustained us may eventually become too small.

A role that once defined us may fall away.

A loss may force us to reconsider what we assumed about life.

A new relationship may reveal values we had forgotten.

A period of uncertainty may eventually lead us towards a different understanding of ourselves.

Meaning, then, may not be a destination.

It may be an ongoing relationship between who we are, what we experience and what we choose to value.

Sometimes we discover it. Sometimes we create it. Sometimes we inherit it.

And sometimes we have to question what we inherited before we can decide what we want to carry forward.

Perhaps this is one of the quieter forms of psychological growth:

not discovering one perfect purpose hidden somewhere inside us, but becoming increasingly capable of recognising what matters, and allowing our lives to reflect it.

Towards wholeness

The journey towards psychological wellbeing is therefore not necessarily a journey towards constant happiness.

It may be a movement towards greater coherence between our inner and outer lives.

Between what we believe and how we live.

Between what we value and what we give our time to.

Between the person we have been and the person we are becoming.

Meaning can help us ask these questions.

Purpose can give us a direction in which to move.

Relationships can remind us that our lives are not lived alone.

And self-awareness can help us distinguish what genuinely matters from what we have simply learned to pursue.

Perhaps the deepest question is not:

"What is my purpose?"

but:

"What matters enough that I want my life to be shaped by it?"

We may not always know the answer.

And perhaps we don't need to.

Sometimes the beginning of a meaningful life is simply becoming willing to ask the question.

Because once we begin to recognise what matters, another question appears:

Are we willing to live in accordance with it?

That brings us to the next stage of The Psychology of Meaning:

Living Towards Wholeness.