A Worthwhile Life: How to Find Meaning, Build Connection, and Cultivate Purpose

By Michael Westover

Coasting through a life filled with distractions? It's time to live with value, purpose, and meaning.

Michael Westover looked in the mirror one day and wondered what the point of it was. He had a successful career in health care, a stable family, and great friendships. Yet, he felt aimless. His life was full—meetings to further his career, hours of TV, activities with his children—but was it worthwhile?

Digging through centuries of research and theory, Michael set out on a philosophical journey to find connection and meaning. Why do countless people coast through life as he had, feeling lost and disconnected, yet others approach each day feeling worthy and valuable?

It turns out that living a life that matters is simpler than you may think. Following five types of commitment that are research-proven to give life more meaning, you can build a worthwhile life and avoid the cycle of distractions.

In Westover's guide, you will learn

• The 5 goals you may be chasing that distract from a worthwhile life.
• The conditions to create a life of meaning—and why it's different from having a purpose.
• The vital role responsibility plays and the many forms responsibility takes in our life.
• How to create your Happiness Hierarchy list and the relationship between happiness and meaningfulness.
• How the erosion of family, jobs, community, and faith lead to disconnect.

Told through real-life examples, easily relatable analogies, and research-based philosophical theory and wisdom, A Worthwhile Life highlights Westover's five specific techniques to create a more fulfilling existence. Stop going through the motions and start living by reading A Worthwhile Life: How to Find Meaning, Build Connection, and Cultivate Purpose today.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Michael Westover
• Release date: Mar 14, 2023
• ISBN: 9798986793412

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Copyright © 2023 Michael Westover

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ISBN: 979-8-9867934-0-5 (paperback)

ISBN: 979-8-9867934-1-2 (ebook)

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Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Meaninglessness in the Mirror

Chapter 2: Purpose versus Meaning

Chapter 3: Meaning’s Hard Questions

Chapter 4: Independence and Meaning

Chapter 5: Two-Faced Meanings

Chapter 6: Institutes of Meaning

Chapter 7: Religion and Meaning

Chapter 8: Meaning and Trials

Conclusion: Take Responsibility

Bibliography

Endnotes

Meaninglessness in the Mirror

This book was born of a midlife crisis. I stared at my reflection in the bathroom mirror one afternoon and asked what my life meant. The blueness of my eyes seemed to be fading. The old hockey scar wrinkled the skin below my right eyebrow. Worry lines extended from the corners of my eyes, past graying temples and down my cheeks. My whole countenance sagged in the bright lights.

I had achieved many of my aspirations by then. I had a wonderful wife, and we had exceeded the financial goals set early in our marriage. I had a great education and a supportive extended family. I was healthy, and I was well-respected in my field. And yet a surprising hollowness was still seeping into my life.

I understood myself and the world better at that time than I had at any previous point in my life. I had opportunities to be involved with a staggering array of activities and causes… and yet, aimlessness was creeping in. I had tried to distract myself from the emptiness, but it had raged back louder and deeper than before. So I increased the dose of distraction and experimented with new entertainments. They dulled the pain and made me forget for a moment.

So, in that moment of introspection, I strained to look beyond my image in the mirror. Was I here on earth to sit in meetings all day and then watch television until I fell asleep? Why did I try so hard, and why should I try at all? I wondered if the world would be any different without me in it.

The popular answers to these questions seemed incomplete. So I studied what I could about how to squeeze more meaning from life. I gathered sources from the fields of philosophy, theology, business, evolutionary biology, and the social sciences. I reflected on the meaningful moments from my own history. These pages are the result.

This book is not about the nature of reality and the universe. It does not attempt to answer questions of where we came from or where we are going, but it does propose reasons for us being here. It is about what makes existence worthwhile. If you are looking for a book to tell you, Nothing really matters, so do whatever you want, you might prefer the writings of Camus or Sartre. If you want to see your life as valuable, keep reading.

In these pages, we will explore why some people perceive their lives as worthwhile while others do not. We will ask hard questions about what it means to have a meaningful life, and we will face uncomfortable answers. Some activities are conducive to meaning while others are not. We will investigate the differences, and we will expose the counterfeits.

The concepts in this book are rooted in the literature, but I extend some of the research findings into new territory and add a few thoughts of my own. Who am I to write on this topic? There may be others with stronger credentials and sharper pens, but I can state with conviction that there was a time when my life felt empty, and now it is meaningful. I hope this book can help you in some small way.

At 6’8", Clayton Christensen was a wiry intellectual giant who knew something of the meaning of life. As a child, he could be found navigating a local river with his brothers and friends in home-built canoes. By age 12, Clay had read the entire World Book Encyclopedia.¹

With more than a little understatement, his youngest brother said that Clay was not a passive participant in life.² He was his high school’s student body president and attended college with a full-ride academic scholarship. After graduating with high distinction, Clay won a Rhodes Scholarship and finished the rigorous graduate program in two years instead of three, all while playing on the school’s national championship basketball team.

Clay graduated from Harvard’s business school with high distinction. He founded and ran a successful company and then returned to Harvard to receive an advanced degree in business. Then he joined the Harvard faculty, teaching a popular business course. He was a best-selling author of 10 books. Forbes called him one of the most influential business theorists of the last 50 years and featured him in a cover story.³

But Clay’s life was not universally charmed. In the space of only a few years, he had a heart attack, three cancerous tumors, and a major stroke—and he was only in his fifties. Of the three experiences, he described the stroke as the most trying.

Clay described his vocabulary as an organized file cabinet filled with words. When he had his stroke, it was as though the file cabinet tipped over and scattered the contents.⁴ Clay retained his keen intellect but lost the words to share it with others.

So, Clay began the painstaking work of refilling his mental file cab-inet—one word at a time. He made vocabulary lists and purchased English learning software. He challenged his six-year-old granddaughter to noun-naming competitions and lost badly each time.⁵

His progress was maddeningly slow. Clay began spending more and more time in his basement, and he fell into a profound sadness—something he had never experienced before. Years later, he spoke openly of how discouraging it was, as a supposedly brilliant academic, to lack the power of speech. He said, Sometimes I just wanted to quit trying to learn and speak and write again and just go into my basement and build furniture. Then I [would not] have to talk to people…. The more I focused on myself, the unhappier I became.⁶

After Clay rose from the fog of depression, he said, I screwed my head on straight and I learned that focusing on my own problems does not bring happiness. God didn’t say, ‘Okay. For those with problems it’s okay to focus on [yourselves]. And for those who don’t have problems, I want you to focus on helping others.’⁷

So Clayton Christensen stepped out of his basement and into the world. He wrote and he taught. He mentored and he inspired. Sometimes it was more difficult for him to find the right words as quickly as he had been able to before the stroke, but he cared more about the people in front of him than about how they perceived him.

We are going to draw from the lessons of Clay’s life in this book. We will investigate the effects of accomplishments and high status on our perception of self-worth. We will explore suffering and what it has to do with the value of our lives. And we will consider taking responsibility for others despite our pains. So let this be a modest start on our journey toward a worthwhile life.

Purpose versus Meaning

The stirring call to find purpose and meaning is part of the human condition. Most of us loathe the idea of accepting our lives as pointless—as only as meaningful as an insect’s.⁸

The phrases purpose of life and meaning of life are used interchangeably, but the word purpose and the word meaning have different connotations. Purpose is a perceived direction—something to do and to achieve. On the other hand, the social psychologists Costin and Vignoles state that those pursuing meaning need assurance that their lives have value.⁹ They seek confidence that their existence is worth the suffering.

People need both purpose and meaning in their lives. One is not necessarily preferable to the other. We need to have direction and to know that we matter.

It is possible to have a purposeful life that is devoid of meaning. Imagine someone who dedicates his time to collecting artisanal cookie jars. He spends nearly all his disposable income on ceramic containers from around the world. But this man is embarrassed by his hobby. So he keeps his cookie jars in a vault and shares them with no one. Without more to his life than cookie jars, this man may wake up one day to find his life an empty vessel.

It is also possible to experience meaningful moments when you have no clear sense of purpose. These are the times when a friend drags you to sing at a nursing home and you come away wondering how such a trivial activity suddenly made life worthwhile, or when someone thanks you for a gift that seems insignificant to you.

The Meaning of Life Through the Ages

The universal desire for meaning is debated in Eastern and Western philosophies, addressed by every religion, and found in myths and stories throughout the records of human history. The quest for meaning belongs with other great questions: How can I be happy? Is there a God and does he care? Who am I?

The visual below summarizes the meaning of life according to different philosophers over the ages. It conveys the general confusion on the topic. Some philosophies advocate for pleasure-seeking and self-fulfillment while others promote hard work or self-sacrifice. Some say meaning is universal while others say we create our own. Each of us subscribes to one or more of these philosophies, and they are each enticing in their own way. A few choose their life philosophy deliberately, while the rest pick theirs up somewhere along the way. They manifest in how we spend our time, how we treat other people, and how we view religion.

Take the pickup artist, for example. His life revolves around the study and practice of wooing as many women as possible. The set of beliefs that undergird his behavior likely include hedonism, liberalism, and some nihilism. He may not have studied these philosophies in depth, but they are enmeshed in the cultural fabric and impossible to avoid. The Casanova will chase thrills in the short term and negative consequences over the long term if his behavior persists.

Each of us internalizes a system of values that directs our priorities, decisions, and behavior. What we believe about the source of a meaningful life is just such a motivator. We don’t follow our beliefs all the time, but they are there in the background, nudging us. Although there is a dizzying array of conflicting perspectives on how to have a meaningful life, a growing consensus among academics is emerging around what it means to have one.

Attributes of a Meaningful Life

The author and researcher Emily Esfahani Smith wrote that people have meaning in their lives when three conditions have been