Steven Heine is a professor of social and cultural psychology at the University of British Columbia. He is the author ofCultural psychologythe most traded book in the field. Its research was shown in itselfNew York Times,Washington Post,Guardian,NewsweekandNew scientistbetween other publications.

What is the great idea?

Currently, many people feel lost, anxious and hopeless. It is very important to maintain sense in our lives in these dark times. Fortunately, life can be improved and life can grow rapidly. The emerging area of ​​exeviensial psychology processes regulatory practices in accordance with the value, purpose and importance of your life.

Below, Steven shares five main concepts from the new book,Starting the Sensor: How can I help you build meaningful life in Ambur times. Listen to the audio version of Steven in the application of the next great idea.

1. The meaning in life helps protect against anxiety.

Everyone appears outside these days. The world goes with many mental health crisis, because anxiety, depression and despair deaths sharply in many countries. How can we cope with these dark times?

The feeling of a meaningful life protects us from anxiety and uncertainty. When people feel that their lives are meaningful, they think the sense of purpose and their life is meaningful. They feel what they do and make a change in the world. People who feel their lives can stand strong in the face of sliding and arrows thrown by these uncertain times. They enjoy more welfare and go better in fighting anxiety.

The area of ​​exeviensial psychology, gave evidence-based answers to things that are meaningful of life. As a result, meaning is a relationship and meaningful liferich. For example,Interpersonal relationshipsIt plays a key role, because people feel more meaningful in their lives, especially when they spend time with their closest relationships. Also feel more meaningful when people are part of each otherpublicBecause they give them a sense of affiliation and personality. Relations with themworkMay also give a sense of purpose and craft. People feel meaningful when people are related to their livesTransfer worldFeel that they are part of something greater than the material world.

Are people life in these domains, they areAvailable. Their lives are meaningful, they feel a sense of purpose in what they do, and feel the matter in the big scheme of their lives. This mentality helps us to test people.

2. We say to make the stories feel vital.

We only feel meaningful when our lives seem meaningful. But the main problem is that life is often not suitable. For example, we can look like different people in various situations. We can move a fool with friends, but we can be short-term in our daily way, and then we will be in business, ambitious and responsible. Which persona is true self?

Or we can struggle to determine a common rope that unites different chapters of our lives. We can understand that the person we are in the high school is a common way with us now. How can we touch all the different ropes of ourselves together? We realize that by explaining thisStories.

We create stories with ourselves as a central character, meet all the experiences and difficulties in our lives. These stories help us to organize our understanding of what we are, what we are and why we do. Puts the foundation of itself.

“These inconsistencies combine these inconsistencies because they allow ourselves to a certain episode and make it quite inappropriate parts.”

What is important, the stories we say, are not the literal accounts of what is happening at all, butlandscapingWires that make our lives feel vulnerable. Stories integrate their inconsistencies because they allow you to focus on certain episodes and make it quite suitable parts. We feel that our lives are the meaning of our lives when we say our stories well.

Each story is unique in a certain way that every story we tell ourselves is unique, often shares common features with the stories that others say. We share common topics as many of our storiesdeceivingOur story stressed how we conquer a problem or a themepollutionIn our story, when we suddenly explain how our lives go from the abyss.

Also, our stories are simple but extremely importantbuildingGuide to how we live in our lives. Can be set up around key buildings like our stories “I’m fine“Or” or “People get what they deserve“These rooms serve as a lens we see how our lives are opened. The leading part of a meaningful life is to learn how to explain the events in our lives through a compulsive and sensitive story.

3. When the meaning is threatened, we try to reset it.

The main problem by living a meaningful life is often not to feel meaningful. Stream like EBB meaning and tide. But we need a psychological need to feel that things are meaningful. When things feel trivial, we will be particularly motivated for items to make sense again. Akin to feel hungry if we don’t have enough food. In the same way, our brains signal when our lives do not mean enough.

Research points to our brains with unitySensation systemIt tries to make these things feel meaningful. When things feel meaningless, our brains detect a signal showing the lack of meaning and I try to restore a sense of meaning. A homeowner is a system like your thermostat, which is also triggered enough. This happens under our consciousness of all of us.

There are different ways to restore a sense of meaning. Many research finds people more meaningful after people are reflected in nostalgia. It is better to remember how we are in the past chapters of our life, and that we are the person we are now, the meaning we have increased my sense.

Most likely, when the meaning of life is not being unsatisfactory, it is likely to be sliding in a clear nostalgic reverie. For example, our lives are feeling more meaningless when we are lonely or bored. When a sense of meaning is difficult to come, we see unconscious efforts to increase the meaning. So we often apply to many memories to restore an existing part. We can play songs from our youth’s soundtrack or pass through the photo album. Our Sense preparation is a way to restore our system and nostalgic reflections.

I do not think that the world has spent a nostalgic boom since 2010. Cinema theaters play remake of previously generated films for decades. The new TV series established in previous decades are discussed as they are most plotting for their plots, fashion and the music of those periods. During this period of concern, we felt a collective need for meaning and the world has become the past to gain the impact of meaning-increasing the nostalgium.

4. Life struggles can make more sense.

Feeling a sense of feeling meaningful and happy. But in life there is more meaning than positive feelings. We can learn a lot by noticing how much sense isdifferentlyFortunately.

Jean-Paul Sartre “starts on the distant side of human life” and supports this dispute. A study examined people’s characteristics with a more meaningful life and found them moreNegative Life ExperienceAlthough these experiments come to happiness. Our struggles can often make sense.

In the same way, we can see this connectionwhereMeaningful life is often found. Interestingly, you find more in where life is difficult. On average, one country, the lives of their citizens are more meaningful. The convenience and comfort that people living in the country seem to be the value of existential yeast, it often does not provide the struggles to build people.

“The spiritual life of people is often deeper after trauma.”

Friedrich nitsche announced: “This does not kill me makes me stronger.” Research finds people often rose to the challenges they throw in them. The most common reaction to trauma is a traumatic increase. People make more sense after trauma because they are often closer to their relationship because they usually receive a large number of social support. Because people re-evaluate their lives, they are also common to develop a new purpose and often become more altruists against others living frequently. People also tend to grow because they find that they are strong in the interior they do not happen. In addition, the spiritual life of people often becomes deeper after trauma. And the last one can be lost at a time, he still ends the trauma who thanked the things they are still being. They don’t give their lives anymore.

We can never drive a life without suffering and our struggles are undoubtedly happiness. However, it is confident that these difficult times can help make our lives more meaningful.

5. The meaning in life can be cultivated.

The meaning of our lives can be nurtured. We are not born with a particular meaning; The meaning can be cultivated as any abilities.

First, a sense of meaning is existential exercise exercise that gives you a temporary push of a meaning that can be irreplaceable to help you get out of a rut. I think of these as the equivalent of a stroke of Espresso. A simple exercise helps people feel themselvesgroundedThey clearly understand who they are and why they stand. People will feel more substitically after reflecting the most important values. Just write a short paragraph about your most important values, puts you in a better position to respond to difficulties with more durability.

The second way to develop a more meaningful life is to explore the main parts of your life: our relations, especially the closest relations, communities, work and transfurrent world. I recommend that how deep you are connected to these domains and hold the exist of existence to determine that you are the most space for growth. Everyone in all these domains is closing in a rich way, but the meaning is funney. That is, in the sense that you get from a domain of connections can be made to make a sense of a meaning in another domain. It is as if we can pay the meaning of different accounts in our lives.

Remember that our life stories connect the threads of our lives and are eligible, goals and significance. We cannot change the past, but this does not mean that our life stories are carved in the stone. Author Gabriel García Márquez, “What matters in life are what happens to you, but not what you remember and remember.” Don’t explain life story Some ways make sense more than other ways, and you probably reflect your life story differently.

The mythologist Joseph Campbell is one of the most successful templates for stories called the hero’s journey, pay attention to a person who conquers difficult problems with a group of allied groups. When people are instructed to think of their lives, they come to feel that their lives are more meaningful in terms of individual elements from the travel template. If you try to determine your transformation, modesty or outstanding guests, you will be able to identify your allies, most likely you can learn how to think in your life in a more constructive, meaningful way.

This article first appeared in the next major Idea club magazine and was re-printed with permission.