Here’s another potential purpose of having a sense of purpose—it can help prevent loneliness. A survey of 2,312 Swiss adults found that those who reported having a sense of purpose were less likely to report feeling lonely, as detailed by a publication in the journal Psychology and Aging. This alone is positive news if you’re feeling kind of alone in this world. While you can’t always control who is and isn’t around you and how others may treat you, you do have a lot more control over whether you have a sense of purpose in life.
Having a sense of purpose means that you feel that your life has meaning, that there is a clear reason why you are on this large spherical object known as Earth—and, by the way, it is spherical and not flat. It’s when you have concrete long-term goals that go beyond simply existing, taking up space, accumulating “likes” on social media and consuming chicken wings. And such goals should be “more than meets the I” and instead should be more oriented towards helping others and making some type of positive impact on the world.
Speaking of purpose, the co-authors of the study—Patrick Hill, PhD, a Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, Gabriel Olaru, PhD, an Assistant Professor of Developmental Psychology at Tilburg University, and Mathias Allemand, PhD, an Assistant Professor at the University of Zurich—had a clear purpose in administering a survey to that sample of people in Switzerland, which had an average age of 52.34 years and a standard deviation in age of 17.35 years. The researchers wanted to see how well having a sense of purpose correlated with not feeling lonely.
In order to evaluate each study participant’s senses of purpose, the research team let them respond to, well, something known as the LET: the Life Engagement Test. This test presented study participants with the following six statements:
- There is not enough purpose in my life
- To me, the things I do are worthwhile
- Most of what I do seems trivial and unimportant to me
- I value my activities a lot
- I don’t care very much about the things I do.
- I have lots of reasons for living
The respondents had to rate each statement on a scale of 1 to 5 with a “1” meaning “Strongly disagree” with the statement and a “5” meaning “Strongly agree” with the statement. Note that the test also included the following instructions: “Be as honest as you can throughout, and try not to let your response to one question influence your response to other questions. There are no right or wrong answers.” That was as opposed to being as dishonest as you can.
The resulting score on the LET for each study participant came from totaling that participant’s ratings for items 2,4 and 6 and adding in the totals of the reverse ratings for items 1,3 and 5. For example, if you answered a “1” for “There is not enough purpose in my life,” meaning that you strongly disagreed with that statement, you would get a “5” for that question, meaning that you actually thought that there was plenty of purpose in your life. The research team also asked respondents to rate whether they felt a lack of companionship, isolation from others, and “left out or passed over” over a four week period.
Ultimately, those with higher sense of purpose scores tended to have lower levels of loneliness. This correlation held across different ages in the sample. In feat, those participants in their 70s and older did have slightly higher rates of loneliness on average along with a lower likelihood of feeling a sense of purpose compared to their younger counterparts. This shouldn’t be super surprising since many older adults are no longer working in regular jobs. Having nothing to do may sound great when you are busy grinding away under some douchebag boss. But things can change when you really have nothing to do.
Now, finding a sense of purpose doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to identify some kind of global problem that you have to then tackle and somehow connect everything that you do in life to that global problem. For example, when you got a mullet haircut, you may have simply liked mullets and not seen it as a key to solving world hunger. It’s too much pressure to expect yourself to change the world on a massive scale. No one can do that without a lot of help.
Instead, begin by finding someone around you whom you can help in some way, even some small way. It could be a family member or friend in need. It could be a total stranger. It could even be some random squirrel. There are plenty of people who could use your help. You could offer some assistance, provide some mentoring or even send them a gift as long as it’s not another fruitcake. A simple act of kindness can go a long way.
In order to sustain such helping activities, try joining an organization or cause that is not bent on politics or making money and instead truly aims towards improving the conditions of humans. There’s no shortage of injustice around the world whether it’s racism, sexism, wealth inequities or some other situation where one group of people is treating another group unfairly or preventing other groups from accessing resources. There’s also no shortage of health and public health problems whether it is climate change, the spread of infectious diseases, the continuing rise in obesity and chronic diseases, the loneliness epidemic, the rise of anti-science or some other situation that’s effectively being ignored by many political and business leaders. So, you’ve got a big Cheesecake Factory-size menu to choose from to find a sense of purpose.
When you lack a sense of purpose, when you lack the earnest desire to improve the world, you can end up feeling lonely no matter how many people, how much money and how many resources you accumulate. That can leave you in a vicious cycle where you keep trying to further increase your wealth and power and domination over others and still never achieve what your mind, heart and soul truly want. Deborah Heiser, PhD, who is an Applied Developmental Psychologist specializing in midlife and aging, wrote in her The Right Side of 40 newsletter, “In a world that often emphasizes acquiring and accumulating possessions, the act of giving can sometimes be overlooked or undervalued. However, as we navigate life on the right side of 40, we often find ourselves seeking deeper connections and a greater sense of purpose. This is where the act of giving takes on a special significance.”
In other words, if you find yourself taking rather than giving, try to have a better take on life. Before you keep trying to accumulate more for yourself, instead ask yourself “What is the purpose?”
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