powerful role that belonging plays: This study was specifically measuring “being socially valued.” Dutton draws a distinction between belonging and being valued, arguing that the former is related to feeling like part of the group, while the latter refers to feeling a sense of worth. My definition of belonging includes both concepts: you feel belonging not only when you feel part of a group or relationship, but also when people treat you like you matter and have worth.
relationship to their work changed: See also Amy Wrzesniewski and Jane E. Dutton, “Crafting a Job: Revisioning Employees as Active Crafters of Their Work,” Academy of Management Review 26, no. 2 (2001): 179–201.
Buddha offers an instructive parable: This information is from PBS documentary The Buddha, a film by David Grubin, which aired on April 8, 2010; and Sister Vajir¯a and Francis Story, Last Days of the Buddha: Maha¯aparinibb¯ana Sutta (Kandy, Sri Lanka: Buddhist Publication Society, 2007). Note that in the quotes, I changed “Nibhana” to “Nirvana.”
3: Purpose
Ashley Richmond: Interview with author, October 8, 2015.
zoo community as “enrichment”: Beyond the interview with Ashley, information from this section came from an author interview with Scott Carter, Chief Life Sciences Officer at the Detroit Zoo, on October 8, 2015; an author interview with Ron Kagan, Executive Director and CEO of the Detroit Zoo, on October 7, 2015; and Vicki Croke, The Modern Ark: The Story of Zoos: Past, Present, and Future (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2014).
zookeepers have an unusually strong: Stuart J. Bunderson and Jeffery A. Thompson, “The Call of the Wild: Zookeepers, Callings, and the Double-Edged Sword of Deeply Meaningful Work,” Administrative Science Quarterly 54, no. 1 (2009): 32–57.
purpose has two important dimensions: William Damon, Jenni Menon, and Kendall Cotton Bronk, “The Development of Purpose during Adolescence,” Applied Developmental Science 7, no. 3 (2003): 119–28. The authors mention a third dimension as well: “Unlike meaning alone (which may or may not be oriented towards a defined end), purpose is always directed at an accomplishment towards which one can make progress” (121). In my opinion, the first dimension of purpose—that it is a long-term goal—implies this third dimension.
Teens who help: Eva H. Telzer, Kim M. Tsai, Nancy Gonzales, and Andrew J. Fuligni, “Mexican American Adolescents’ Family Obligation Values and Behaviors: Links to Internalizing Symptoms across Time and Context,” Developmental Psychology 51, no. 1 (2015): 75–86.
their lives are more meaningful: This paper examines the connection between goals, purpose, and living a meaningful life: Robert A. Emmons, “Personal Goals, Life Meaning, and Virtue: Wellsprings of a Positive Life,” in Cory L. M. Keyes and Jonathan Haidt (editors), Flourishing: Positive Psychology and the Life Well-Lived (Washington, DC: American Psychological Association), 105–28. See also David S. Yeager and Matthew J. Bundick, “The Role of Purposeful Work Goals in Promoting Meaning in Life and in Schoolwork during Adolescence,” Journal of Adolescent Research 24, no. 4 (2009): 423–52.
more satisfying: In this study, living a meaningful life was associated with life satisfaction. The researchers measured meaning by asking participants purpose-related questions like “My life serves a higher purpose” and “I have the responsibility to make the world a better place”: Peterson et al., “Orientations to Happiness and Life Satisfaction: The Full Life versus the Empty Life,” 31.
more resilient…their goals: Todd B. Kashdan and Patrick E. McKnight, “Origins of Purpose in Life: Refining Our Understanding of a Life Well Lived,” Psychological Topics 18, no. 2 (2009): 303–13.
When Damon looked: He describes this study in William Damon, The Path to Purpose: How Young People Find Their Calling in Life (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2009).
more motivated…better grades: David S. Yeager, Marlone D. Henderson, David Paunesku, Gregory M. Walton, Sidney D’Mello, Brian J. Spitzer, and Angela Lee Duckworth, “Boring but Important: A Self-Transcendent Purpose for Learning Fosters Academic Self-Regulation,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 107, no. 4 (2014): 559–80.
risky behaviors like drug use: Martha L. Sayles, “Adolescents’ Purpose in Life and Engagement in Risky Behaviors: Differences by Gender and Ethnicity,” PhD dissertation, ProQuest Information & Learning, 1995, cited in Damon et al., “The Development of Purpose During Adolescence.”
8 out of 10: Damon, The Path to Purpose, 60. Based on a 2006 analysis of the initial wave of data, Damon and his colleagues found that only 20 percent of the young people he and his colleagues interviewed were purposeful. Twenty-five percent expressed essentially no purpose at all, while the remaining participants were either “dreamers,” who had aspirations but did not know how to achieve them, or “dabblers,” who tried a number of purposes but did not have a clear sense of why they were doing what they were doing.
“expressing virtually no purpose”: Damon, The Path to Purpose, 60.
Coss Marte was: Interview with author on December 10, 2014, and January 15, 2015.
the crime rate in New York: This paper shows that most indices of crime were rising from the 1980s until the mid-1990s: Patrick A. Langan and Matthew R. Durose, “The Remarkable Drop in Crime in New York City,” paper presented at the 2003 International Conference on Crime (December 3–5), Rome, Italy. Retrieved March 10, 2016, from scribd.com/doc/322928/Langan-rel.
epicenters of the drug trade: As former police commissioner Howard Safir put it: “Historically, the Lower East Side has had a lot of entrenched drug gangs.” John Sullivan, “Once More, Lower East Side Is the Focus of Drug Arrests,” New York Times, August 7, 1997.
At nineteen years old: When I asked Coss about how much violence he experienced or participated in, he said: “I never brought up any violence, but violence came with it. People robbed me, tied me up, broke into my houses.”
biggest drug busts: According to the New York City government website, it was a “Significant Case” of 2009.
Defy Ventures: From the Defy Ventures website: defyventures.org.
self-reflection and self-knowledge: See, for example, the literature on “self-concordant goals,” or goals that align with our values and identity: Kennon M. Sheldon and Andrew J. Elliot, “Goal Striving, Need Satisfaction, and Longitudinal Well-Being: The Self-Concordance Model,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 76, no. 3 (1999): 482–97; and Kennon M. Sheldon and Linda Houser-Marko, “Self-Concordance, Goal Attainment, and the Pursuit of Happiness: Can There Be an Upward Spiral?” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 80, no. 1 (2001): 152–65.
Erik Erikson described identity: See Erik H. Erikson, Childhood and Society (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1993); and Identity: Youth and Crisis (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1968). I’m grateful to William Damon and Dan McAdams for helping me understand Erikson’s ideas about identity.
“ego integrity”…“despair”: Erikson, Childhood and Society, 268.
Researchers at Texas A&M University: This section was informed by author interviews with researchers Joshua Hicks on February 17, 2015, and Rebecca Schlegel on October 9, 2015.
In one study, a group: Rebecca J. Schlegel, Joshua A. Hicks, Jamie Arndt, and Laura A. King, “Thine Own Self: True Self-Concept Accessibility and Meaning in Life,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 96, no. 2 (2009): 473–90, study 3. For more on the link between self-knowledge and meaning in life, see also Rebecca J. Schlegel, Joshua A. Hicks, Laura A. King, and Jamie Arndt, “Feeling Like You Know Who You Are: Perceived True Self-Knowledge and Meaning in Life,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 37, no. 6 (2011): 745–56.
their “true self,” as opposed to: The true self, the researchers write, is “defined as those characteristics that you possess and would like to express socially, but are not always able to, for whatever reason…those traits you are able to express around those people you are closest to.” Following a convention in psychology, they refer to the inauthentic self, a bit confusingly, as “the actua
l self” and define it “as those characteristics that you possess and are often able to express to others in social settings.” They also call this the “public self.” The idea is that “people only feel comfortable expressing their true selves around close others and keep them hidden during most of their daily activities.” Schlegel et al., “Thine Own Self,” 475.
subconsciously reminded of their true selves: In the control condition, students were flashed traits that they had earlier listed to describe their “actual self.” Students who were primed with their actual self, as opposed to their true self, did not rate their lives as more meaningful after the task.
Someone whose strengths are: There are several assessments individuals can take to help determine their strengths, including the Gallup StrengthsFinder and the VIA Survey of Character Strengths. For more on each, see Tom Rath, StrengthsFinder 2.0 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2007), and Peterson and Seligman, Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification.
use those gifts: According to Ryan Niemiec of the VIA Institute of Character, your strengths don’t pigeonhole you into particular careers. The important thing to remember about your strengths is that you can use them in a variety of work environments (and nonwork environments).
more meaning…perform better: See Claudia Harzer and Willibald Ruch, “When the Job Is a Calling: The Role of Applying One’s Signature Strengths at Work,” The Journal of Positive Psychology 7, no. 5 (2012): 362–37; and Philippe Dubreuil, Jacques Forest, and François Courcy, “From Strengths Use to Work Performance: The Role of Harmonious Passion, Subjective Vitality, and Concentration,” The Journal of Positive Psychology 9, no. 4 (2014): 335–49.
more satisfied…persevere: Sheldon and Elliot, “Goal Striving, Need Satisfaction, and Longitudinal Well-Being: The Self-Concordance Model.” See also Sheldon and Houser-Marko, “Self-Concordance, Goal Attainment, and the Pursuit of Happiness.”
story of Manjari Sharma: Author interview on March 6, 2013, and October 16, 2015.
German thinker Immanuel Kant: Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, edited and translated by Mary Gregor and Jens Timmermann (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 35. I was inspired to make this point about Kant as a result of an article I read: Gordon Marino, “A Life Beyond ‘Do What You Love,’ ” New York Times, May 17, 2014.
as the theologian Frederick Buechner: Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking: A Seeker’s ABC (New York: HarperCollins, 1993), 119. Buechner, a theologian, has a theistic understanding of vocation and calling. Buechner writes: “The kind of work God usually calls you to is the kind of work (a) that you need most to do and (b) that the world most needs to have done….The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” Indeed, the idea of calling has religious origins as discussed in Bunderson and Thompson, “The Call of the Wild.” Today, researchers who study calling acknowledge the religious roots of this idea but define it secularly. See Amy Wrzesniewski, Clark McCauley, Paul Rozin, and Barry Schwartz, “Jobs, Careers, and Callings: People’s Relations to Their Work,” Journal of Research in Personality 31, no. 1 (1997): 21–33.
The four most common occupations: According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics in a press release from March 2015, bls.gov/news.release/pdf/ocwage.pdf.
Amy Wrzesniewski…told me: Author interview, April 18, 2014.
see their work as a calling: Cited in Ryan D. Duffy and Bryan J. Dik, “Research on Calling: What Have We Learned and Where Are We Going?” Journal of Vocational Behavior 83, no. 3 (2013): 428–36.
Grant points out that those: Adam Grant, “Three Lies About Meaningful Work,” Huffington Post, May 6, 2015. See also Stephen E. Humphrey, Jennifer D. Nahrgang, and Frederick P. Morgeson, “Integrating Motivational, Social, and Contextual Work Design Features: A Meta-analytic Summary and Theoretical Extension of the Work Design Literature,” Journal of Applied Psychology 92, no. 5 (2007): 1332–56.
In a survey: The survey was conducted by the organization PayScale in 2013 and the resulting list of the most meaningful jobs can be found here: payscale.com/data-packages/most-and-least-meaningful-jobs/full-list.
university-call-center fundraisers: Adam M. Grant, Elizabeth M. Campbell, Grace Chen, Keenan Cottone, David Lapedis, and Karen Lee, “Impact and the Art of Motivation Maintenance: The Effects of Contact with Beneficiaries on Persistence Behavior,” Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 103, no. 1 (2007): 53–67.
a coupon-processing factory in Mexico: Jochen I. Menges, Danielle V. Tussing, Andreas Wihler, and Adam Grant, “When Job Performance Is All Relative: How Family Motivation Energizes Effort and Compensates for Intrinsic Motivation,” Academy of Management Journal (published online, February 25, 2016).
children can be a source: S. Katherine Nelson, Kostadin Kushlev, Tammy English, Elizabeth W. Dunn, and Sonja Lyubomirsky, “In Defense of Parenthood: Children Are Associated with More Joy than Misery,” Psychological Science 24, no. 1 (2013): 3–10.
raising kids makes parents unhappy: For a summary of the research on parenting and unhappiness, see Lyubomirsky, The Myths of Happiness, 85. “Although the evidence is mixed,” as Lyubomirksy writes, “a number of studies that simply compare the happiness or satisfaction levels of parents and nonparents drawn from all ages and life circumstances find that parents are less happy.” For a good summary of the complicated link between parenting and well-being, I recommend S. Katherine Nelson, Kostadin Kushlev, and Sonja Lyubomirsky, “The Pains and Pleasures of Parenting: When, Why, and How Is Parenthood Associated with More or Less Well-Being?” Psychological Bulletin 140, no. 3 (2014): 846–95.
raising children is a powerful: See, for example, Nelson et al., “In Defense of Parenthood: Children Are Associated with More Joy than Misery”; and Debra Umberson and Walter R. Gove, “Parenthood and Psychological Well-Being Theory, Measurement, and Stage in the Family Life Course,” Journal of Family Issues 10, no. 4 (1989): 440–62.
As one mother told me: Author interview with Eleanor Brenner, September 30, 2015.
“The growing good”: George Eliot, Middlemarch (Hertfordshire, United Kingdom: Wordsworth Editions Ltd., 1998), 688.
adopted by the janitor: This story appears in Carolyn Tate, Conscious Marketing: How to Create an Awesome Business with a New Approach to Marketing (Milton, Australia: Wrightbooks, 2015), 44.
a roadworker: Bryan J. Dik and Ryan D. Duffy, Make Your Job a Calling: How the Psychology of Vocation Can Change Your Life at Work (Conshohocken, Pennsylvania: Templeton Foundation Press, 2012), 4.
“My job isn’t to take”: Thanks to my friend Luis Pineda for this story.
4: Storytelling
Erik Kolbell vividly remembers: Erik told his story at The Players club at a Moth event on December 9, 2014. This information comes from that story and an author interview on August 26, 2015.
As a young man, George: Information about The Moth, its origin story, and how it finds and puts on stories from author interview with Green on August 26, 2015; author interview with Catherine Burns on November 18, 2014; the organization’s website, themoth.org; and Catherine Burns (editor), The Moth (New York: Hyperion, 2013).
Jeffery Rudell told a story: Jeffery’s story is available at The Moth, themoth.org/stories/under-the-influence. Details from his story came from this online recording and from information he sent to me via several emails in 2013 and 2014.
“act of creation”... “the way”: Mary Catherine Bateson, Composing a Life (New York: Grove Press, 2001), 1.
and coherence, psychologists say: Recall that the definition of meaning from the introduction included coherence. See Michael F. Steger, “Meaning in Life: A Unified Model,” and Roy F. Baumeister, Meanings of Life. Baumeister compares the meaning of one’s life to the meaning of a sentence: the more coherent it is, the more meaningful it is. See also Aaron Antonovsky, “The Structure and Properties of the Sense of Coherence Scale,” Social Science & Medicine 36, no. 6
(1993): 725–33.
the need to make sense: For more information on our powerful sense-making drive and its relation to meaning, see Steven J. Heine, Travis Proulx, and Kathleen D. Vohs, “The Meaning Maintenance Model: On the Coherence of Social Motivations,” Personality and Social Psychology Review 10, no. 2 (2006): 88–110; Jerome S. Bruner and Leo Postman, “On the Perception of Incongruity: A Paradigm,” Journal of Personality 18, no. 2 (1949): 206–23; and Samantha J. Heintzelman, Jason Trent, and Laura A. King, “Encounters with Objective Coherence and the Experience of Meaning in Life,” Psychological Science (published online, April 25, 2013).
“Storytelling is fundamental”: Bateson, Composing a Life, 34.
when it comes to defining: Dan P. McAdams, “The Psychology of Life Stories,” Review of General Psychology 5, no. 2 (2001): 100–22.
Take the story of Emeka Nnaka: Author interview, September 14, 2015.
McAdams is a psychologist: Information about McAdams’s research on narrative identity, redemptive stories, and meaning comes from Dan P. McAdams, “The Psychology of Life Stories”; The Redemptive Self: Stories Americans Live (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005); “The Redemptive Self: Generativity and the Stories Americans Live By,” Research in Human Development 3, no. 2–3 (2006): 81–100; Jack J. Bauer, Dan P. McAdams, and Jennifer L. Pals, “Narrative Identity and Eudaimonic Well-Being,” Journal of Happiness Studies 9, no. 1 (2008): 81–104; and author interview on May 20, 2014, and subsequent email exchanges in 2014 and 2015.
“about who we are deep down”: As Jonathan Gottschall writes in The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human (New York: Mariner Books, 2012), 161.
we can edit, revise, and interpret: As Gottschall points out in The Storytelling Animal.
“life story gone awry”: Michele Crossley, Introducing Narrative Psychology (Buckingham, United Kingdom: Open University Press, 2000), 57; quoted in Gottschall, The Storytelling Animal, 175.
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