Are you doing what matters most to you? Does your work give your life meaning?<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not asking whether you are happy, but whether your life has meaning. A study in the Journal of Positive Psychology<\/em>examined attitudes toward happiness and meaning, and found that a meaningful life and a happy life overlap in certain ways, but are ultimately different.<\/p>\n \u201cWhile happiness is an emotion felt in the here and now, it ultimately fades away, just as all emotions do,\u201d wrote Emily Esfahani Smith about the study in The Atlantic. \u201cThe amount of time people report feeling good or bad correlates with happiness but not at all with meaning. Meaning, on the other hand, is enduring. It connects the past to the present to the future.\u201d<\/p>\n Another study confirmed this, she said. \u201cPeople who have meaning in their lives, in the form of a clearly defined purpose, rate their satisfaction with life higher, even when they were feeling bad, than those who did not have a clearly defined purpose.\u201d<\/p>\n Giving your work meaning can be a simple shift in perspective, as it was for me.<\/p>\n Back in the 1990s the focus of our company, Learning Strategies, was to sell more audio programs and enrollments. We were sales oriented as were most companies.<\/p>\n Then we switched our mindset from selling to helping more people experience their potential, and two things happened. First, I felt more fulfilled and happier, and second, our business grew significantly. The level of meaning in my life increased considerably as did the success we enjoyed.<\/p>\n