#891 - John Vervaeke - The Psychology Of Finding Meaning In Life

Modern Wisdom

Chris Williamson

Society & Culture, Health & Fitness

4.7 • 4.6K Ratings

🗓️ 18 January 2025

⏱️ 88 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

John Vervaeke is a cognitive scientist, professor, and YouTube educator. Humans are meaning making machines. Even when we believe our lives lack meaning, we instinctively follow something; an idea, a goal, or a routine. So, how can we intentionally create more meaning in our lives, and what’s the best way to discover it when it feels absent? Expect to learn why humans need meaning and why having meaning is very important to humans, what creates meaning for an individual, why the word purpose is not the same as meaning, the relationship between affluence and meaning, how to avoid self-deception, how to think about meaning without embracing something outside of reality and much more... Sponsors: See discounts for all the products I use and recommend: https://chriswillx.com/deals Get a 20% discount on the best supplements from Momentous at https://livemomentous.com/modernwisdom Get 5 Free Travel Packs, Free Liquid Vitamin D, and more from AG1 at https://drinkag1.com/modernwisdom Get a Free Sample Pack of all LMNT Flavours with any purchase at https://drinklmnt.com/modernwisdom Extra Stuff: Get my free reading list of 100 books to read before you die: https://chriswillx.com/books Try my productivity energy drink Neutonic: https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom Episodes You Might Enjoy: #577 - David Goggins - This Is How To Master Your Life: https://tinyurl.com/43hv6y59 #712 - Dr Jordan Peterson - How To Destroy Your Negative Beliefs: https://tinyurl.com/2rtz7avf #700 - Dr Andrew Huberman - The Secret Tools To Hack Your Brain: https://tinyurl.com/3ccn5vkp - Get In Touch: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact - Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Given that we are biological creatures, why do we need meaning? Why do humans need to do all this
0:07.2	extra work in order to be satisfied with life? Well, I have to tell you that I've been going
0:16.4	through a, since the publication of the book, I've been going through a serious reflection on this
0:21.2	question again and going deeper into it. There's many levels of answering that question. At one level,
0:30.4	meaning has to do with sensemaking. It has to do with how we properly pay attention to the right
0:37.2	kind of information that can allow us to
0:40.2	reliably solve a wide variety of problems and a wide variety of domains. And that's one aspect of
0:46.4	meaning, that sort of agentic aspect. But consonant with that is we need to be connected to other
0:53.7	people because most of our problem
0:55.3	solving is done in connection with other people. So there's an initial sense-making dimension.
1:01.2	This is often talked about as sort of coherence in the meaning in life literature, it's your world.
1:06.8	Is your sense-making making sense to you, as how I sometimes put it?
1:10.8	Like the sense-making is what you're doing sort of automatically, and when you reflect on it,
1:14.7	you go, yeah, that makes sense.
1:15.9	My world isn't absurd or things like that.
1:19.0	And then we need to feel connected to other people because most of our problem solving is done via other people. That's our great superpower, individually,
1:31.7	biologically, as you framed it. We're pretty pathetic animals. A really angry dog can take us out.
1:37.9	And so our superpower is we can coordinate some, train some of those dogs and sharpen
1:45.7	some of those sticks and then kill anything on the planet.
1:48.6	And so we need to be connected to other people.
1:50.7	And that brings with it its own special problem.
1:53.8	My friend Greg Enriquez made sort of prevalent.
	...

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