This fall we are tackling the four pillars of resilience: 

• Purpose and Meaning;
• Beliefs and Mindset;
• Habits and Practices;
• Relationships and Supports.

In the last post, we examined the protective power of traveling back in time to assign strength-based meaning to past struggles.

In this post, we will take a look at the importance of cultivating purpose in both our daily interactions and larger life pursuits.

---

To review, Dr. Anthony Burrow, the author of “The Ecology of Purposeful Living Across the Lifespan”, describes purpose as the why that propels us forward, the reason we do what we do, the inspiration we have for being in this world (check out his interview on Hidden Brain).

The John Templeton Foundation gives this fancy definition: Purpose is a stable and generalized intention to accomplish something that is at once personally meaningful and at the same time leads to productive engagement with some aspect of the world beyond the self.

In other words, purpose combines the why behind what we do with a long-term desire to make a dent in the world.

Let’s say you are a teacher. To “be a teacher” would not be your purpose but a vehicle for your purpose. The answer to “Why do you want to teach?” combined with “How might that make a positive contribution to the world?” would begin to give us hints about your purpose. For instance:

• To inspire kids to read, which might open up new horizons in their lives.
• To help kids enjoy math, which may help create more math-savvy citizens who don’t get exploited.
• To expose kids to Spanish, so they can be better neighbors and global citizens.
• To instill a life-long commitment to health by making exercise fun.

Having a sense of purpose predicts a multitude of positive outcomes that allow us to overcome obstacles, thrive in tough situations, and live healthier lives. 

Below is a list of some of these outcomes, arranged in a Top 10 Countdown (though many of them were a tie for me). Some references are included within each section; others can be found in the Reference section found at the bottom of this post.

Top 10 Ways Purpose Can Change Your Life

#10: May be related to higher income over time. A nine-year study of 6,000 American adults showed that people who rated themselves as having a higher sense of purpose had higher incomes at the start of the study and increased their income more over time, compared with their peers who said their life felt more “aimless.” (However, we also know that higher income leads to increases in wealth through other pathways, such as investments, avoidance of fees, and less participation in predatory practices.)

#9: Makes us more likable. A 2010 study showed that people who self-reported a more meaningful life were rated by others as more likable, more desirable conversation partners, more attractive, and having more “friend” potential.

#8: Helps us be more even-keeled. Having a sense of purpose seems to help us stay off the emotional roller coaster of despair and joy caused by outside events, potentially creating more equanimity and peace in our lives.

#7: Helps our brains resist aging and dementia. A 2015 study of 453 seniors in their 80s found that, after they died, those who had “a strong sense of life purpose were 44 percent less likely to have suffered major brain tissue damage, infarcts visible to the naked eye.” A series of studies by Patricia Boyle’s team at the Rush Alzheimer’s Disease Center also found astounding effects of Purpose in Life (PIL) on dementia symptoms. “After following more than 900 older people at risk for dementia for seven years, they found that those with a high PIL were only half as likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease than those with a low PIL… and were 30 percent less likely to develop mild cognitive impairment.”

#6: Helps us live longer. Several studies suggest that a sense of purpose is related to longevity. For instance, one five-year longitudinal study found that older adults with a higher sense of purpose had a “substantially reduced risk of mortality,” even after controlling for differences in previous conditions, depression symptoms, and income.

#5: Improves our health. Related to #6 above, purpose in Life (PIL) has been shown to dramatically lower the risk of heart attack, stroke, and cardiovascular diseases, and reduce the likelihood of developing a sleep disorder. In a correlational study, older women who scored higher on a measurement of purposeful well-being (sense of purpose, autonomy, environmental mastery, and other constructs) had lower levels of daily cortisol (a stress hormone) and lower inflammatory responses.

#4: Improves academic success. Students who rate themselves as having more purpose have better outcomes including increased persistence, a sense of self-efficacy, time spent studying, and satisfaction with school. Students who felt more connected to their purpose at the beginning of a college semester were more likely to exhibit “grit” or stick with it when things became difficult.

#3: Increases work satisfaction and success. For instance, hospital custodians who believed they were an integral part of the hospital’s mission of saving lives and improving people’s health, had greater work satisfaction than those who believed they were doing a menial or technical job. A 2016 international study of over 26,000 LinkedIn members found that employees with a higher sense of purpose had more satisfaction, self-efficacy, and leadership opportunities.

#2: Protects us from some of the negative effects of stressful events such as COVID-19, cancer treatment, bereavement, financial recession, surgery, daily stressors, looking at upsetting pictures, stressful social situations, and being the only minority in a majority group. On the flip side, people with low sense of purpose have been found to be more likely to experience depression, addiction, anxiety, loneliness, and boredom (see Templeton review below).

#1: Helps us experience more hope, optimism, and life satisfaction. According to the extensive Templeton Foundation report on the Psychology of Purpose, “Purpose is a central component of most leading conceptions of optimal human development and psychological well-being (Bronk, 2013).” The report summarizes numerous studies showing that being connected to one’s purpose increases satisfaction in life, sense of efficacy, self-esteem, and hope in both adults and youth. Sense of purpose (especially with a prosocial focus) may be particularly potent in changing the trajectory of young people’s lives. Youth from low-income backgrounds experience similar levels of purpose and positive outcomes as youth from higher-income backgrounds, and can find meaning in their hardships. Teens who pursued meaningful lives “beyond self-gratification” experienced less depression a year later than those who were not connected to a sense of purpose. However, research also shows that purpose is important in midlife as well.

As stated by the Templeton report, although there are some exceptions,

“Researchers have found that across the ages, one of the best predictors of happiness is having a purpose in life.”

Interested in more positive practices like these? Check out Elaine’s new workbook on Amazon, with 40 “challenges” that help grow purpose, possibility, connection, and courage in the new year.

The Resilience Playbook

---

References

Besides the links included in each section, below are some resources that summarize multiple studies on purpose:

• An extensive (26 page) summary of Purpose theory and research can be found at Templeton/Psychology-of-Purpose
• Dr. Bronk’s Adolescent Moral Development Lab has resources and an extensive list of Lab Publications via a link at the bottom.
• The Hidden Brain interview with Dr. Tony Burrows on “Cultivating Your Purpose” has several references. 
• Further resources can be found at Dr. Burrow’s Cornell University page on “The Benefits of Having a Sense of Purpose”. Dr. Burrow’s Purpose Lab also has a comprehensive list of (their) publications.

For those of you who are science fiction fans, or simply fans of social science, I have good news and less good news.

Good news: Time travel is possible, right now, today. We can go into the past in our minds and shift how we think about it in ways that can change our future.

Less good news: It’s not as simple as getting into a souped-up DeLorean and flooring the gas pedal. It’s challenging and takes lots of practice.

More good news: It is never too late to start, and it’s truly worth it.

Dusting off our DeLoreans

In my last post on “4 Ways to Boost Resilience,” I briefly talked about the importance that a sense of purpose and meaning can play in helping us thrive during tough times. 

Although I have used these two words interchangeably for most of my life, it turns out they are distinct, and that each of them supports our resilience in a different way.

Dr. Anthony Burrow, the author of The Ecology of Purposeful Living Across the Lifespan, describes purpose as the why that propels us forward, the reason we do what we do, the inspiration we have for being in this world. 

Having a sense of purpose predicts a number of positive outcomes, from better health to more wealth—and I plan to cover this super-achiever of the resilience world in another post.

Today, however, I want to talk about the time-traveling machine we all have at our disposal: our ability to create alternative meanings from the same situation.

According to Burrows, meaning is what we say to ourselves looking back. It is how we explain what happened, the interpretation we give to past events.

Every time we go back to visit an event, we are time traveling. When we assign meaning to that event, we are shifting our own future.

While all events are made up of unchangeable facts, we can control which facts we highlight—and the story we tell ourselves about them. This story, especially when it takes on a particular pattern over time, can change our future in concrete and specific ways. 

For instance, there is now evidence that repeatedly delving on the negative parts of an event can create neural changes in our brains that make us more susceptible to cognitive decline. A massive British study of more than 30,000 people also suggests that the meaning we ascribe to stressful and traumatic events can help protect us from depression and anxiety—or make these symptoms worse.

Thus, using tools like cognitive reappraisal, we can create a better tomorrow for ourselves when we find that we have been transported to yesterday. Cognitive reappraisal, which relies on reality-based information (not wishful thinking) to purposely reframe our explanation of what happened in the past, has been used to help people overcome mental health struggles (especially in situations where people feel low levels of control), improve performance in math, reduce some PTSD symptoms, and even make a tough run feel easier.

Below are two personal illustrations to show how it works.

One of my bucket-list items has been to visit the Grand Canyon before I turn 50. Over time, this goal turned into a desire to hike down and see the bottom of the canyon, which eventually morphed into a wish to backpack and camp in the canyon (with no backpacking experience whatsoever, when this final version of the dream solidified in 2018).

Two years and a pandemic later, I was 48 and time seemed to be speeding up. Thus, I began to make my way towards my goal by getting support, getting in shape, learning about backpacking, and going on increasingly more difficult backpacking trips with experienced groups of people. The latest of these was a four-day trek in the North Carolina Blue Ridge Mountains this summer. I trained for the trip by walking around my neighborhood with a heavy backpack, taking weekend hiking trips, and working with weights in the gym.     

Some of the facts: (a) I was able to keep up with the other hikers on the NC trip; (b) I made it to the peak of Cold Mountain (our final destination); and (c) the climb was at the edge of my technical and physical abilities (for the non-hikers out there, “technical” means scrambling over loose rocks and pulling yourself up boulders while questioning whose idea it was to go on this trip).

The meaning: What meaning shall I assign to these facts?

Option 1: Do I focus on how difficult the climb felt, how the younger members of our group sometimes surged ahead of me with apparent ease, and how much my knees complained on the long trek down? Do I tell myself that I need to set a more “realistic” goal than the Grand Canyon, that I am too old to dream so big, that it will be too difficult for my aging body? Which future would this help to create?

Option 2: Or do I interpret the climb as something to be proud of, an illustration of my inner strength and stamina? Do I focus on the way I kept up with the group, the months of training I put in to get there, the ease with which I carried a 35-pound pack in the pouring rain for eight hours on day two, despite my squelching shoes? Do I tell myself that successfully climbing 2,000 feet of boulders and slippery rocks shows I can accomplish more than I ever thought possible? Do I tell myself that the Grand Canyon will be the biggest physical challenge of my life and clearly, I can get there? Which future would this help to create?

It’s easy to see how the interpretation I give to the facts of the trip will influence what I do next in terms of the Grand Canyon—and beyond. 

A smaller and less dramatic example happened last week. One of my training goals has been to do two “tough” gym workouts a week. For these, I want to complete three circuits of stair-machine/plyo box/leg press (rinse and repeat). This particular week, in which I was feeling fatigued and somewhat “off,” I skipped one workout and barely dragged my body to the gym for the second one. Then, I was only able to complete one of the three circuits before giving up and making my way back to the car.

Sitting in the parking lot, I could hear the two parts of me dueling about which meaning to assign to my gym experience. 

One part insisted that I was emotionally weak, lacked grit, and was never going to make it into the Grand Canyon at this rate. Another part reminded me that I made it to the gym during a tough week (true) and that one circuit is better for my body than zero (also true). 

This example underscores one of the keys to cognitive reappraisal: it is not as much about validating your self-worth (you are awesome no matter what) as it is about finding a reality-based alternative explanation to the event that is also true.

It is also important to know thyself. While studies have shown that self-criticism and negative self-talk are not sustainable motivators for most people, there are individual differences. One thing we can do is start tracking what works for us. My personal experience has shown that celebrating small wins—when I can manage it—is a better way for me to get back on the stair machine than beating myself up.

How do we use our time machines to build resilience?

As I said in the beginning, learning to use our time machines to increase resilience takes practice and persistence. There are multiple times per day that we mindlessly get into our DeLoreans, revisit our past, assign meaning, and inadvertently shift our futures. Unfortunately, we often operate on automatic pilot and don’t even notice the science-fiction feat we have just accomplished.

The trick is to start doing it more mindfully so that we are first aware, and eventually in charge, of the choices we make.

The truth is that even when we remember that we have a choice, as I did in the parking lot, it can be challenging to go against our propensity to choose the more negative story. In my case, despite years of awareness and practice, my parking lot duel ended in a kind of grudging draw with neither side claiming victory.

Other times, however, I am successful. After all, I am now booked to travel into the Canyon this fall with a small group of other dreamers. Thus, even in thinking about how tough it is to time travel well, I need to choose my meaning with care. It is in my best interest to remind myself that I own a time machine and can use it to create a better future for myself, even if it’s not always easy and not always effective.

As we practice more, we gain increasingly more choice during our time-traveling forays. Even now, as some of you may be blaming yourselves for being “too negative” too often, you can take a moment to be kind to yourself and ask “what else is true?” 

I hope you give your DeLoreans a spin and remember to have fun along the way.

---

Interested in more positive practices like these? Check out Elaine’s new workbook on Amazon, with 40 “challenges” that help grow purpose, possibility, connection, and courage in the new year.

The Resilience Playbook