The Meaningful Things in Life

“The most meaningful thing you can do in life is help other people” is something a doctor who loves their job would say. This is not uncommon. In fact, we often find people making claims to what the meaningful things in life are whether in the form of advice or is presented as valued words of wisdom. Yet, we instinctively view these claims as irrelevant to us, deeply motivating, or somewhere in-between. We all, then, have some sense of what aspects of life we find personally meaningful, and we use this to decide what what we want to do with our lives. Nevertheless, if we were asked to name the top five things that matter to us in life, we may feel stumped, we may forget some important things, or we may just provide a surface-level or socially desirable answer, even though these are the things that we should be seeking to do more of in life [1].

An open journal with handwriting and a colorful painted bookmark on a table.

What Makes Meaningful Things Meaningful?

This raises the question: How do we go about understanding, describing, and systematically identifying the things that are meaningful to us in life? To answer this question, we must first understand what it means for something to be meaningful. For that to be the case, it has to

  1. truly matter to us,
  2. be freely chosen,
  3. and acting in ways that embody it should make life with its ups and downs worthwhile [2].

Let’s see how this shows in real life. Consider the following scenario: Someone made a mistake at work, and no one yet knows about the mistake or who is responsible, but if this person’s manager finds out they made a mistake, the person would be penalized. In this situation, the person may choose to lie and avoid punishment, possibly leading to someone else taking the fall. On the other hand, another person in the same situation might decide to take accountability and tell the truth, despite the fact that they will be penalized.

But why would the second person do that? One likely answer is that being honest and accountable matter to them. And so, they are willing to experience the pain of being penalized in order to stick to what matters to them. They may even feel ‘good’ or fulfilled despite the pain because they find meaning in what they did. Meanwhile, the first person might give more weight to avoiding the pain of being penalized over being honest and accountable, which would indicate that these qualities are not very personally important to him.

How Do We Talk and Think About What Is Meaningful to Us?

Now, we could use a more-practical language to talk about those ‘things’ that matter to us and that we find meaning in. We describe the ‘things’ that we have been talking about as ‘values’ [2]. Accordingly, we can say that we experience meaning in life when our actions are aligned with and embody our values.

However, if we plan on aligning our lives with our values, we must first set some criteria for what defines a value. In this regard, there are two important criteria that should be added to the earlier list of criteria. First, values have to be described in terms of behaviors, not thoughts or emotions [3]. For instance, “being happy” cannot be a value; this is because we simply have nothing in our control that would guarantee that we experience certain thoughts or emotions, but we do have control over our behaviors. Second, values should describe directions or ways of living rather than specific goals [3]. For example, we cannot “achieve” being accountable or honest; rather, we behave in ways that aligns with or embodies them. Though, specific goals can be based on values. We could set a goal of taking accountability for every mistake we make this week, and this goal would be aligned with our value of being accountable.

How, then, Do We Identify Our Values?

By now, we have an idea of what values are and how we can describe them, but how do we go about systematically identifying our personal values without being stumped, forgetting important ones, or only thinking of surface-level ones?

An exercise to help with that is the values sorting exercise (find link below). In the exercise, you will find a list of over 60 values (you can even add in your own if you want), you will first need to sort each value into one of 3 piles: “very important,” “quite important,” or “not so important.” Then, you will choose the top 5 most important values to you from the “very important” pile. This way we can systematically move from a wide range of values to just the most important 5 without missing any important ones.

This should serve as a good first step towards aligning our lives with our values. After all, we cannot truly describe the exact behaviors and goals that align with our values and commit to them, or understand how we prioritize values in different situations, without first knowing which values are most important to us.

Where Are We Now?

We have now identified our most important values, or the “things” that give us the most meaning in life. Here, values were defined according to 5 main criteria:

  1. they have to truly matter to us,
  2. must be freely chosen,
  3. and acting in ways that embody it should make life with its ups and downs worthwhile [2].
  4. must be behavior focused, not about emotions or thoughts,
  5. and have to describe directions or ways of living, rather than specific goals.

Values, in turn, could dictate how we behave in different situations, the choices we make, and our willingness to face certain consequences or put up with pain. And, even when we are not aware of it, they are behind the statements we make and hear about the meaningful things in life.

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Values Sorting Exercise

Rate each of the following values according to importance (making sure you get at least 10 in the very important column).

Written by: Mohamed Elemam