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Key points
- Meaning emerges from what people choose to focus on, for better or worse.
- Focusing on unimportant things or things out of one's control distorts meaning.
- On autopilot, most interpretations of one's experience have a negative bias.
- Strive to give an experience the most benign plausible interpretation.
“Ever more people today have the means to live, but no meaning to live for.” —Viktor Frankl
Creating meaning is a learnable skill that depends on the objects of our focus. Focusing on unimportant things or things out of our control distorts meaning. That’s because mental focus creates an artificial importance. What we focus on becomes more important than what we don’t focus on, which is how unimportant things can seem important. For a meaningful life, focus on what’s most important to and about you, that which is worthy of appreciation, time, energy, and, if necessary, sacrifice.
What We Can Control
Think of the things that have the most profound influence on life and how little control we have over them. We didn’t choose the historical period in which we were born. We didn’t pick our parents; we didn’t sit down with God and say, “I’ll take those two!” We didn’t choose what illnesses our mothers suffered during pregnancy or whether they smoked, drank, or took drugs. We didn’t decide how much money our families would have, what early childhood illnesses or accidents we would experience, which schools we would go to, or what kind of teachers and peers we would find there. We didn’t choose whether other children would like or bully us, respect or humiliate us.
Although we have little control over major influences on our lives, we have absolute control over what every influence on our lives means to us. When we make our experiences more valuable—that is, worthy of appreciation—we create a life of meaning, purpose, and personal power.
The “Remembered Self” vs. the “Experiencing Self”
The lifelong work of Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky shows that we must make a deliberate effort to recall experience. On autopilot, we remember our interpretations and evaluations of experience, and therein lies the key to controlling the meaning of our lives.
All experience is open to a range of plausible interpretations and evaluations. On autopilot, these are susceptible to negative bias because negative emotions get priority processing in the brain, probably due to their immediate survival utility.
How to Create Positive Meaning
Temper automatic negative biases must be tempered with plausible reality testing. For example:
“Is my partner really selfish?”
Never accept an automatic negative interpretation or evaluation without considering disconfirming evidence.
“She sacrifices a lot for the family.”
Strive to give your experience the most benign plausible interpretation. For example, I grew up in a violent home. In my youth, I assigned a plausible meaning to my experience:
I’m a victim, a troublemaker, and mean-spirited because of the way I grew up.
With maturity, I appreciated the wondrous capacity of the human brain to create meaning. With practice, the meaning of my experience changed for the better:
I’m resilient, able to sympathize with human suffering, and transcend the past.
As I live up to the meaning that makes me like myself better, my experiences—and life in general—become more valuable.
When we improve the value of our experience, life means more to us, and we control the meaning of our lives.
