My mind does a strange kind of somersault whenever I'm reminded of my approaching 40th birthday. It's as if the turning of the decade is a complete surprise – when I have, of course, had half a lifetime to get used to the idea.
I look to my past and wince with pain as I see how many of my childhood dreams have been unfulfilled. Then I look to the future and see a kind of blank space, without any clear direction.
I mostly avoid articulating the fears behind my midlife crisis and the questions that arise from them: Why am I here? What will be left behind when I’m gone? The trouble is, this existential uncertainty doesn’t bode well for my health in the years ahead.
How to find your life’s purpose: The biggest lessons from the world’s top expert
“If you have higher levels of purpose in life, you’re less likely to be dead 10 years later,” says Dr Stacey Schaefer, a neuroscientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the US.
This, she emphasises, is true for people of any age. “It doesn’t matter whether you’re in your 20s or your 50s – it’s protective at all stages of adulthood.”
Scientists like Schaefer are getting to grips with the mechanism behind this link, which appears to be yet another manifestation of the mind-body connection – and the latest psychological research offers ways of using this to our advantage.
Basic human instinct
The Austrian neurologist, psychologist and philosopher Viktor Frankl, who lived from 1905 to 1997, offers one of the most poignant and powerful arguments for the value of purpose in life, based on his experiences of the Holocaust.
While imprisoned in Nazi concentration camps, he noted how many detainees would engage in creative and artistic pursuits, such as making music, despite their daily suffering.
When he was able to do so, Frankl gave talks on topics like mountain climbing and medicine, and used his training as a psychotherapist to help other inmates who were struggling.
He saw a sense of purpose as a fundamental human drive. In the concentration camps, he would dream of bringing his insights to a wider audience.
“There is nothing in the world, I venture to say, that would so effectively help one to survive even the worst conditions, as the knowledge that there is a meaning in one’s life,” he wrote in his seminal book Man’s Search for Meaning.
Quoting 19th-century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, Frankl concluded that “He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how.”
In the subsequent scientific research, meaning and purpose in life are sometimes used interchangeably, though there are subtle differences.
Meaning refers to a general sense that you know your place in the world, whereas purpose concerns more specific goals that align with your values and which may give your life meaning.
Our everyday travails are hardly comparable to the extreme experiences of suffering that Frankl was describing, and yet a sense of meaning and purpose can benefit people from any walk of life, no matter how much or how little material privilege they may have.
“When you do a deep dive into the literature, you find that purpose is associated with health, happiness and longevity,” says Dr Jordan Grumet, a specialist in palliative care and author of The Purpose Code: How to Unlock Meaning, Maximize Happiness, and Leave a Lasting Legacy.
“There are tons of great studies.”
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A protective outlook
Consider an eye-catching result from the Midlife in the US (MIDUS) study.
Beginning in the mid-1990s, researchers recruited more than 7,000 participants aged 20 and over, then followed their health and wellbeing during the succeeding decades.
At the start of the study, the participants were asked to rate statements intended to measure their purpose in life on a scale of 1–7 (from strongly disagree to strongly agree, respectively).
For instance strong agreement with “some people wander aimlessly through life, but I’m not one of them”, would indicate a high purpose in life.
“I live life one day at a time and don’t really think about the future”, meanwhile was reverse-coded, meaning that strong disagreement would be taken to indicate a high purpose in life.
In the early 2010s, psychologists Dr Patrick Hill and Dr Nicholas Turiano counted how many of the participants had survived in the 14 years since the study began.
Overall, 569 had passed away and it was far more likely to be participants who had previously reported having little purpose in life.
On average, people with a higher sense of purpose were about 15 per cent less likely to die than the average participant.
The association remained even after they had controlled for other psychological factors that might influence longevity, such as life stress experienced at the time of the survey.
“These longevity benefits don’t appear to be conditional on the participants’ age, how long they lived or whether they had retired from the workforce,” according to the researchers.
“In other words, having a purpose appears to widely buffer against mortality risk across the adult years.”
One obvious mechanism may be that having a sense of purpose confers increased mental resilience on a person.
Multiple studies have confirmed that people with a greater purpose in life are less likely to experience depression, anxiety and suicidal behaviour.
A 10-year study of US military veterans, for instance, concluded that not having this sense of direction proved to be more important than symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder or a history of alcohol abuse – two well-established risk factors for suicide.
Puzzlingly, however, purpose in life appears to be entangled with many other causes of mortality that aren’t so obviously linked to people’s current state of mind.
One recent analysis of 6,985 over-50s found that lacking purpose can nearly triple your risk of death from cardiovascular disease.
Having a raison d’être may even protect the brain as we age.
Schaefer and her colleagues recently analysed brain scans of people in the MIDUS study, with a particular interest in their ‘white matter’ – the nerve fibres that transmit information between different parts of the brain.
The team found that people who scored more highly in the questionnaire on their purpose had greater volumes of white matter across the whole brain.
“It’s protective,” Schaefer says. Their findings fit with multiple studies that show people who have greater purpose and meaning in life face a reduced risk of Alzheimer’s disease.
A whole approach
There are many pathways through which our mindset might influence our physiology. One is through our behaviour.
Someone who feels that they’re living a worthwhile existence may be more motivated to take care of themselves so that they can continue their good work. They may also be more active.
“You can think of a whole constellation of behaviours – from physical to cognitive to social activity – that all promote better health and, to be honest, greater engagement in life,” says Schaefer.
Knowing our place in the world and feeling that we’re making a positive contribution could also buffer our emotional response to life’s trials and tribulations.
It could be that small setbacks seem less devastating when you put them in the broader context of your long-term plans, or you might be more inclined to think about the lessons they bring you.
You might see challenges as stepping stones and failures as obstacles to overcome, rather than ruminating on your hurt feelings.
“It’s not necessarily minimising the event, but allowing yourself to think about it in a way that can help you either cope with it better or learn from it,” says Schaefer.
The effects can be seen in the body. “It kind of blunts the impact of toxic stress on various physiological systems,” says Dr Eric Kim, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia, in Canada.
Given that chronic stress can predispose us to many illnesses – including cardiovascular disease and Alzheimer’s – these coping mechanisms could make a very real contribution to the health boon that comes with a sense of purpose.
Such findings are now making waves inside and outside of academia. “Scientists, policymakers and the public alike are recognising the importance of purpose and meaning for health and wellbeing,” says Kim.
The positives of having faith
The power of purpose may help to explain why people of faith tend to have greater life satisfaction and live longer than agnostics and atheists.
“People have a kind of core set of values within a given religion,” says Kim. The services may also map out a set of long-term goals to follow. “And they’re socially reinforced in the congregation.”
Fortunately, there are many ways for non-believers to reap the same rewards. You might pick a cause that you believe in and offer your services to an organisation that supports it.
The more you see the positive effects of your actions, the more your sense of purpose will grow.
Graduate student Mallory Bell and Prof Kenneth Ferraro at Purdue University in Indiana, in the US, recently found that volunteers aged over 50 were 46 per cent less likely to have a heart attack over 12 years of data collection, compared with those who didn’t volunteer.
Tellingly, the benefits were linked to the participants’ sense of purpose in life: the volunteers who saw the greatest value in what they were doing were the least likely to suffer from cardiovascular disease.
There are many other strategies – from pursuing certain professional ambitions to finding a creative outlet or focusing your attention on your personal relationships.
Your ‘prescription’ will necessarily depend on your values and personality – a fact that Frankl repeatedly emphasised in his seminal text on the subject.
“It is impossible to define the meaning of life in a general way,” he wrote in Man’s Search for Meaning. “No man and no destiny can be compared with any other man or any other destiny.”
A process known as ‘life crafting’ may help to set you on the right path.
You first note the values that you feel most passionate about, your current abilities, your social life and your career. In each of these spheres, you need to ask yourself what currently brings you a sense of fulfilment, what doesn’t and how things might be improved?
You then reflect on what an ideal future might look like, including the skills you would need to acquire to get there.
Next, you formulate some specific short- and long-term goals, along with action points to put them in motion – a process known as setting ‘implementation intentions’ that has been proven to encourage long-lasting behavioural change.
Finally, you make a public commitment to achieving those objectives – such as telling your friends and family about your plans.
Try not to set yourself unrealistic targets. Grumet emphasises the distinction between “big P” and “small p” purpose. “Big P purpose tends to be audacious,” he says.
If you’re a writer, you might become fixated on getting a huge book deal or winning the Booker Prize; if you’re a musician, you become obsessed with the thought of joining a prestigious orchestra.
Unfortunately, those grand ambitions can seem so daunting that they become a source of stress, or they may drive us away from the thing that we love doing.
The writer or musician, for instance, spends more time cultivating a social media following to promote their work than practising their craft.
For this reason, Grumet thinks we should focus more on cultivating “small p” purpose.
“It’s much more process-oriented,” he says. In these examples, it would be the act of creativity itself; you write or make music for its own sake.
While you may still have dreams of achieving something spectacular, it doesn’t become the primary purpose of the activity. “I can set up this big, beautiful goal, but if I don’t get there, it’s no big deal,” Grumet says.
If you’re struggling to identify any small-p purpose, he suggests casting your mind back to your youth. “What did you love as a kid, before society told you who you were supposed to be?”
Engaging in a little life crafting has certainly helped me to feel more sanguine about my 40th.
Based on my conversation with Grumet, I realised that writing fiction had been one of my greatest pleasures as a child and adolescent, and in my free time I have again started playing with characters and plots.
On the social side, I plan to volunteer my services for a mental health charity.
I’m sure that, with further reflection, I will find further means of boosting my sense of purpose and meaning, which – I hope – will set me up for greater health and happiness for decades to come.
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