Meaning gives us a way to interpret situations in our life. It can give us a reason to carry on when things are tough, and provide direction to help us navigate through hardships to a more balanced and happy future.
People can have vastly different concepts of meaning in life. Some may argue the cosmic meaning of life is to be part of something that is bigger than themselves, a 'grand scheme', and that then gives them purpose and structure to their lives. This may take the form of religion or spiritual beliefs. Other people may find meaning within the relationships they share, or through the number of ‘meaningful’ moments they experience. What's common to these different perspectives, is that we ascribe meaning through what matters to us (be that faith, relationships, or experiences).
Meaning in life can be found by identifying what's important to you. Our values are pivotal in deciding what matters to us, and choosing to live your life through your values can be a key part of what gives life meaning and purpose. This may include many things: the important people in your life; your dreams, aspirations, and the milestones you want to achieve; whether you're aligning your lifestyle with your personal values; and ultimately - what would make you proud of yourself.
What happens if you lose your purpose?
We may lose meaning, purpose or direction during different life stages, when we are grieving, or when something disappointing has happened. At times like this people can feel adrift, sad, distressed, dissatisfied, a lack of motivation or lack of interest in maintaining social connections. The ongoing stress that can come from losing your meaning in life can contribute to physical health symptoms, such as weight gain or hair loss.
Our sense of meaning in life and its ability to affect physical health reflects the close ties between our wairua/spirit and hauora/wellbeing. When our wairua is weakened, this can go on to affect our hinengaro/mind, our whānau/family or social wellbeing, and even our tinana/body. For some people, a continual feeling of hopelessness and lack of purpose can contribute to depression and anxiety. If you feel like this it's important to not only seek treatment for the symptoms (see Mind/ Hinengaro section), but also the underlying issue.
What makes life meaningful
00:09
I need to start with a confession I
00:11
learned almost everything I know about
00:14
life from John Cusack movies for the
00:19
1980s and in these movies the hero just
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through the sheer force of trying to be
00:29
a good guy and speaking from the heart
00:31
wins true love in the end and the
00:34
widespread admiration of all I tried to
00:37
put this plan into effect this John
00:39
Cusack plan and most importantly came
00:42
when I met this amazing woman in college
00:43
and I fell head over heels almost
00:46
instantly and nearly is instantly when
00:49
John Cusack and declared my undying love
00:52
the the John Cusack plan took about four
00:55
years to work in my case but you know
00:58
John Cusack also teaches us to be
00:59
persistent right not not creepy but
01:01
persistent and so it got serious pretty
01:05
quickly moved from Minnesota out to
01:07
Oregon together about three years later
01:09
we're on a beach and manzanita Oregon
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leaning back against a weathered
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driftwood log sitting in the cool dry
01:15
sand the you know the Pacific surf had
01:18
kicked up a haze around us and in my
01:20
pocket I had this this contraption I
01:23
built out of some shells I brought back
01:25
from a road trip to Baja Mexico and
01:27
using tape and glue and the cotton ball
01:29
I had don't laugh this is serious right
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I I had created this little nestling
01:36
thing for this diamond ring I brought
01:38
but I realized it's going to be a little
01:41
strange if at a beach I pull a shell out
01:43
of my pocket so I need a cover story and
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I said I'm gonna go spelunking and see
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what's going on and so so I got up and I
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left and she looked at me like many of
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you are like this makes no sense but I
01:56
didn't care because I was on a mission
01:57
and so I looked at the I tested the
02:00
contraption out it was working I had my
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crib sheet of this passionate speech
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I've written and I said I've got this I
02:06
looked around I tried to memorize every
02:08
sensation I was experiencing at the time
02:10
and I walked back and I said hey honey
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look what I got
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and she oh that's nice so I said now
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look it opens and closes because that's
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what you say when you find a shell right
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so so she takes it she looks inside and
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there's the ring she looks at me
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I'm on my knees and I launch into about
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92% of my prepared remarks and conclude
02:36
with will you marry me and she looks at
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me and she says beep I don't know look
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at my so this was a surprising answer
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and I've thought about this moment many
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times in my life since then and I think
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it's really an interesting response in a
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lot of ways because I was asking
02:57
something pretty huge I was saying can
02:59
you turn your life into our life and I
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was asking for the most precious thing
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that she has that any of us have that
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week's the years the days that we've
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been given life is our moments we have
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an unknowable number of moments all we
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know is that once we spend them we can
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never get them back and we can never get
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more and I was asking for dibs on all of
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her moments
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that's a serious thing and another thing
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that was going on on the same time first
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of all John Cusack thanks for ruining my
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life second around the same time there's
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a popular t-shirt and had this spirally
03:37
galaxy looking thing and a arrow said
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you are here and I love this I love this
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image because we are this little speck
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of dust in the middle of the abyss we
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are ourselves a tiny speck of dust we
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live on a speck of dust in the middle of
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oblivion of nothingness and it's
03:55
actually worse than that right if you
03:57
think about it because if you look at
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images from space we only live on the
04:00
outer crust of a speck of dust like the
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shell of a robin's egg that's where life
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is for us it's incredibly almost
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unfathomable and precious and in that
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life we have all these moments that
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we've been given and we have to make
04:16
those moments matter you're going to
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meet a lot of people today who go right
04:20
to the edge of oblivion they go to the
04:23
fragility of existence and it yawns and
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father may be out of a door of an
04:27
airplane maybe down the sheer face of a
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mountainside the jaws of a shark other
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people find that fragility of existence
04:33
in the eyes of another person a starving
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child a bruised woman a shattered
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veteran as people find it in a damaged
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and destroyed landscape but these people
04:44
are going and embracing the fragility of
04:46
existence and finding ways to enhance
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what we all have what we all share
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they're making their moments matter and
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that's all we can ask how can we find
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ways to connect and contribute and
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consider how to make these moments
04:59
matter at the same time there are people
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out there who discard those moments like
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fast food wrappers out a car window
05:07
littering the landscape with toxic
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throwaway moments in life casual cruelty
05:13
thoughtless destruction mindlessly
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squandering this one thing that we've
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got the contrast between these two
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groups is a psychological study of
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meaning in life and in a sense what
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psychologists are trying to do with this
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question is turn that from you are here
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- why are you here and that's we're
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trying to figure out now in the
05:33
psychological study of meaning we think
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that meaning is at least two things
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meaning is purpose and significance and
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purpose is the need to do the University
05:42
of Minnesota psychologist Eric clinger
05:44
argued that we didn't evolve from
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passive rooted organisms that can stand
05:49
around and wait for what we need to come
05:51
to them we evolved from creatures that
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need to move we must move to find and
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seek and obtain what we need in life and
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that entails risks but it also entails
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doing we can't just stop it's in our
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very being to do I think a purpose as an
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anchor we throw it out into the future
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this aspiration we have this big dream
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we throw it into the future and it keeps
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the future alive in us and sometimes
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when the present is too hard
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it serves as asset as a source of Solace
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we can transcend what's happening now
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because we know that out there is a big
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dream that we're pursuing so in our very
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being is the need to do but what are we
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supposed to do what kind of purpose are
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we supposed to pursue the answer comes
06:34
from significance the need to make sense
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raise your hand if you see a camel right
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so there's no camel there obviously it's
06:43
just a little squiggly thing and if you
06:44
didn't see a camel initially when I said
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do you see a camel it became a camel
06:48
someone some people think it looks like
06:50
a an old person with glasses and a cane
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it can be that too it can be almost
06:55
anything because our brains are created
06:57
and have evolved incredible capacity to
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combine and recombine and find
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associations and link and relink and
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find patterns and maps and meaning
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everywhere the question isn't can we
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find meaning in life we can't not find
07:12
meaning in our lives it's happening all
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the time it's happening a hundred times
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today for you the question is can we
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build powerful meaning if we forge a
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powerfull purpose that transforms our
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life and helps transform the lives of
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our shared future that's really the what
07:27
we're trying to understand with
07:29
significance and purpose combining it to
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the meaningful life meaning tends to
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have the sort of intuitive appeal it
07:37
sounds good right if I said hey you get
07:38
it your choice meaningful life
07:40
meaningless nothing meaningless life a
07:42
lot of us choose the meaning side right
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but we can do better than that we've
07:45
been studying this for over 50 years in
07:47
Psych
07:47
ecology and we can take a look and we
07:50
can say this meaning matter
07:51
yeah it's associated with a whole
07:53
constellation of amazing and cherished
07:56
psychological attributes people are full
07:59
of vitality and happy and energy they
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pursue the future their goal-directed
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they care about other people they're
08:04
kind they're benevolent they seem better
08:07
equipped to cope with the adversity
08:08
that's inevitable for all of us but I
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want to see if I can even do a little
08:13
bit better than that and asked his
08:14
meaning matter and maybe put the seed in
08:16
your head that maybe meaning is a
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life-and-death issue I want to choose
08:20
one study here this is by Patricia Boyle
08:22
her colleagues at the Rush University
08:23
Medical Center in Chicago Illinois their
08:26
couple studies like this they're
08:28
concerned with longevity among older
08:30
adults and it's kind of interesting I
08:32
think that the way we study longevity is
08:34
by setting who dies and who dies first
08:37
so on the left-hand side here we have
08:39
cumulative hazard of dying and you can
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read those numbers as if they're kind of
08:44
like percentages so 5% 10% 15% hazard of
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dying on the bottom we have the number
08:49
of years this study they followed the
08:50
adults for five years and we're
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concerned about two groups the first
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group of the people in the top 10% of
08:57
feeling their lives are rich and
08:58
abundant and overflowing with meaning
09:00
that's the blue group the red group are
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the people who score in the lowest 10%
09:05
of meaning in life they're telling us
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these older adults my life is
09:09
meaningless my life has no purpose and
09:12
what we see when we run this study is
09:14
that over time one of the truths of life
09:17
emerges the longer alive the less life
09:19
we have left and so even for the people
09:22
who are in the highest 10% of meaning
09:24
their hazard rate their hazard of dying
09:26
was somewhere around 11% but if you look
09:28
at what happens with the people in the
09:29
lowest 10% of meeting there's a big gap
09:31
here their hazard dying is close to 21
09:34
percent over the course of this study
09:36
and that gap is significant it
09:38
translates to 57 percent less hazard of
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dying for those whose lives are abundant
09:43
and overflowing with meaning compared to
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those whose lives are bereft of meaning
09:46
now we all know that a lot of things are
09:49
associated with longevity and this study
09:51
is great because it controls for these
09:53
things over and above depression
09:55
disability neurotic personality traits
09:58
that tendency to approach life in a
10:00
negative fashion
10:01
over and above chronic medical
10:02
conditions and income 57 percent less
10:06
hazard of dying for people whose lives
10:08
are rich and meaning compared to those
10:09
whose lives are bereft of meaning so
10:12
maybe just maybe meaning as a matter of
10:14
life and death and that's not where the
10:17
story ends right because well hey I'm
10:19
saying meaning is this great thing I
10:20
can't say and then you can't have it so
10:22
how can we try to find meaning and this
10:25
has been the question that's really kind
10:27
of obsessed me over the last several
10:28
years and I think there's a good
10:29
news/bad news situation you know of
10:31
course you know social scientists always
10:33
have a little bit of this a little bit
10:34
of that we never commit the bad news is
10:37
I can't tell you how to find meaning in
10:41
your lives you are going to go out and
10:44
find your purpose and you are going to
10:47
forge the sense that you make in your
10:48
own lives there's no answer from me or
10:52
anybody the good news is that you can
10:54
all do it anyone can do it and when we
10:58
take a look at research we find patterns
11:00
emerging and that's what I'd like to
11:01
share with you in the last little bit of
11:03
mice of my talk today we did a very
11:05
simple study we simply gave digital
11:07
cameras to college to said take pictures
11:09
of what makes your life feel meaningful
11:11
come back and tell us what you took a
11:12
picture of the number one answer was
11:16
people almost 90 percent of these
11:18
students mentioned explicitly a form of
11:21
relationship brothers sisters parents
11:24
grandchildren colleagues lovers
11:26
co-workers people relationships are the
11:30
ocean in which we find meaning is the
11:32
landscape of meaning but beyond that we
11:34
find some other interesting and
11:35
compelling ways to look for meaning in
11:37
our own lives and I'm going to share
11:39
with you a few of these these pictures
11:41
from the actual study so this is what
11:43
one person took a picture and what she
11:44
told us about this picture is this
11:46
picture represents the beauty of the
11:47
world stopping and taking it all in
11:49
helps make life meaningful so we see a
11:52
20 year old college student
11:53
rediscovering thousands of years of
11:55
wisdom about the secret of meaning in
11:57
life which is there's no secret at all
11:59
it's all around us there are invitations
12:02
and opportunities to find meaning and
12:04
get meaning all around us all the time I
12:07
grew up in a rural area so this isn't a
12:10
quite unusual picture for me but the
12:12
story behind it is deeper
12:13
I suspected this person says the main
12:15
focus is a tractor I picked it because I
12:17
wanted to show how farming was a large
12:19
influence in my life it shows that are
12:21
still people who work hard just put food
12:22
on the table and that those are my roots
12:25
we see this person connecting with
12:28
family and connecting with heritage and
12:30
tradition contributing working hard and
12:32
finding a way to make something
12:34
important of the way that he spends his
12:36
moments the last picture I'll share with
12:39
you is a scene that plays out countless
12:41
times all around us in malls and
12:42
airports restaurants everywhere but are
12:45
we missing something are we missing a
12:46
chance to find something deep because
12:48
what this person says is this is my work
12:50
in the Lauria Student Center though I am
12:52
a custodian I'm proud to be one this is
12:55
the first job that will not get me in
12:57
trouble
12:57
I am proud because the job pays for my
13:00
family again this vital connection the
13:04
ability to contribute to other people to
13:06
weave our futures together and for this
13:08
person to consider ways in which the
13:09
moments he's spending at work are
13:11
building something powerful important
13:12
for himself so we come to this question
13:16
what makes life meaningful and maybe
13:19
it's the biggest question we can ask why
13:21
are you here what are you going to do
13:23
with your life what makes your existence
13:25
matter and maybe the answer that is a
13:28
matter of life and death just may be
13:31
right but maybe the answer this hugest
13:34
of all questions is very small all
13:36
around us opportunities to build
13:39
together meaning through connecting
13:41
contributing and consuming ways to make
13:43
all of our moments matter and this
13:45
question is really important to me
13:46
because if I can bring you back to
13:47
manzanita beach in that moment where I
13:51
got a little bit of surprising answer I
13:52
think that doesn't happen in the John
13:54
Cusack movies for that you know John
13:57
Cusack says stay with it and so I kind
13:59
of I didn't run away crying like it was
14:02
part of my plan at that point but you
14:04
know later she asked me questions says
14:06
are you sure I want to say I built a
14:09
clam thing that's
14:12
that's being sure
14:15
I said yeah I'm sure and now many years
14:18
later we have two kids
14:20
and this is this isn't a flee for
14:23
sympathy they're great kids I'm lucky
14:27
they're going out into this world though
14:30
and I can already see it in them they
14:33
want to make a difference they want to
14:35
make moments matter and they're no
14:36
different than the other kids in their
14:37
class and the world they're going into
14:40
has a lot of people like the people who
14:42
are here we're doing the same thing
14:44
we're grabbing life and spending their
14:46
moments wisely to make a difference and
14:48
make things matter but they're also all
14:51
those other people right who litter all
14:53
of our collective landscapes with these
14:56
tragically misspent moments these
14:58
destructive ticking time bombs of a life
15:00
not considered and the question for me
15:03
is what if everyone tried to live a
15:05
meaningful life life is short it's easy
15:08
to waste and hard to use it's not easy
15:12
to say I'm going to go live a meaningful
15:13
life I'm sure everyone says that from
15:15
time to time but my background is in
15:17
clinical and counseling psychology and
15:20
we say to clients all the time we can't
15:21
do anything about everybody I can do
15:24
something about me and you can do
15:26
something about you so what if you and I
15:29
starting today taking advantage of what
15:31
we're given and this opportunity to hear
15:33
so many great ideas and share so many
15:34
great ideas
15:35
what if today you and I tried to live a
15:37
meaningful life the concern I have is
15:41
what if meaning becomes just another
15:44
commodity what if meaning something I
15:47
want more of and I want the best kind of
15:49
meaning and so meaning becomes like this
15:51
bottled water that we have to get from
15:53
some South Pacific Island it's made out
15:55
of raindrops or something
15:57
is there a better way to do this what if
16:00
we change this question just a little
16:02
bit what if instead I think there's a
16:04
great question don't get me wrong what
16:06
if you and I tried to live a meaningful
16:07
life what if you and I tried to give a
16:09
meaningful life what if instead of only
16:13
harvesting meaning from life around us
16:15
what if we try to help other people find
16:16
it too and give some of the meaning that
16:18
drives us some of the purpose share the
16:20
energy for purpose in the drive share
16:23
the sense that we make that the world is
16:25
worth investing in that there's a great
16:26
future that we can build together out
16:27
there
16:28
can we give meaning away that's the
16:31
question I hope you'll explore for the
16:33
rest of today thank you
Finding your why
The military culture can provide us with meaning. As members of the NZDF we share a strong sense of belonging, we have a collective purpose and shared values. These inform how we interpret and respond to situations.
The NZDF has a mission statement: "To secure New Zealand against external threat, to protect our sovereign interests, including the Exclusive Economic Zone, and to take action to meet likely contingencies in New Zealand's area of strategic interest.” This is the reason we all do what we do. It gives us, as an organisation, a reason to carry on no matter what we may face. It is our why.
To help you understand your why, Chaplain Russell Bone adapted Simon Sinek’s teaching in the book, 'Find Your Why'. By reflecting on your past, assessing your present, and looking to the future, this tool will help you to see the common themes that boil down to, your why.
Your unique why statement includes an impact - the difference you want to make in the world. It also includes a contribution - the primary action you will take to achieve this dream.
The end result will take time, but if in the end you feel an emotional (gut) connection to your why statement, you are in the right place.
00:02
I imagine a world in which the vast majority of people wake up every single
00:07
morning inspired to go to work and come home every single day fulfilled by the
00:11
work that they do. My hope is that this course takes us a little further down
00:16
that path. If people learn their WHY, it makes them better qualified and more
00:20
importantly more confident to choose the careers, choose the jobs, and find the
00:24
companies that create environments in which they are more likely to be
00:28
inspired and feel fulfilled. And that's the goal. The discovery of WHY was not an
00:32
academic exercise or commercial exercise. It was something deeply, deeply personal.
00:37
I had a small business and after a few years had lost my passion for what I was doing.
00:42
People gave me silly advice like "do what you love." I was doing the same thing,
00:46
I didn't love it anymore. Thanks to the confluence of some events
00:49
I discovered this naturally occurring pattern. I knew what I did and I knew how
00:53
I did it but I couldn't tell you why. And I realized I had to answer that question
00:56
if I was gonna find that balance and so I became obsessed with answering this question,
01:02
Why do I do what I do? Not only did it restore my passion, it restored it
01:05
to levels I'd never experienced before. And as we do when we discover something beautiful
01:09
we share it with the people we love.
01:10
And so I shared it with my friends and my friends started making crazy life changes.
01:14
And they invited me to share it with their friends and I would show up
01:18
at someone's apartment and literally give a little talk about this discovery I'd made.
01:21
And I would just get more and more invitations and this thing just
01:24
sort of spread organically and its really changed the course of my life and
01:28
changed the course of my career where now I'm completely devoted to spreading
01:33
this idea and helping people either find their passion or amplify it if they already have it.
01:37
Having a job we love is a right and not a privilege.
01:41
It's not for the chosen few.
01:42
And so my hope is to share this idea with as many people as possible
01:47
so that indeed saying "I love my job" becomes the standard and not the exception.
01:52
I used to do the WHY Discoveries myself that's how it began.
01:57
I would actually help my friends learn their WHY. I used to sit down with them
02:01
and go through this process, it took hours, where I'd ask them all about their
02:06
life and try and see the patterns to try and discern their WHY. And it was great
02:09
and highly effective but I was the only one doing it, so I shared it with others
02:13
and there was a few of us doing it but still, you know,
02:16
there was this desire to do it with more people and so we took this process
02:19
that I used to do manually and took everything that I learned and put
02:23
it in this online course but it's basically the exact same thing I used to
02:27
do by myself so it's it's really fun to see it come to life in a course.
02:31
The best thing about the WHY is that it's a biological constant, it has nothing to do
02:35
with what we do. It's based on the biology of how we make decisions and
02:39
what drives us and motivates us, which means that it doesn't matter whether
02:43
you're retired or whether you're a student, it doesn't matter what industry you're in.
02:46
This course is designed to help people understand what makes them tick
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and what drives them, what inspires them, And that's why I'm really proud of this.
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I mean this will give people something to grasp on to and find inspiration
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and fulfillment and in everything they do, hopefully for the rest of their lives.
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All you need to do is have the will and the desire to want
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to understand what drives and inspires you. And that's why we designed this course.
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It's designed for people to find that thing, to understand the thing that
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gives them their true north and helps them wake up every single morning
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inspired and come home fulfilled, I mean, who wouldn't want that?