Hi there. Thank you so much for joining and welcome.

So the next in-person gathering will be in New York on October 2nd and I hope that anybody who happens to be around

then will join us at center yoga on Sunday evening and I hope to put the information up on our website,

darmaPunks NYC.com and punks is with an X. Yeah, that's the next in-person event. And if you'd like to support my work as a Buddhist pastor. Everything I do is offered entirely without charge. I live entirely based on the generosity of people who get something from the teachings.

So the Venmo is Darma Punks with an ex-nyc.

The PayPal buttons on the podcast site and on the website and there's a Patreon link as well.

So thank you for that and tonight we're talking about a sense of purpose in life. Only a short time ago back in August, a group of five

psychologists, a multinational study of some 13,000 participants of various ages and it was the

study went over a four or five year multi year period and they found over an analysis of these 13,000 participants that people who have a clear sense of purpose were not only healthier, they had reduced insomnia, anxiety, depression, experienced or

expressed far less periods of loneliness in their life and they concluded that it was an important factor in improving health and well-being of individuals.

So what does it mean to have a sense of purpose and how is it different than having a meaning for life?

So, it must be noted that meaning and purpose,

while they're often conflated or confused or intermingled, they actually point to very different concerns.

A meaning is how we make sense of our lived experience. It's a cognitive exercise and it's what allows us to have a sense of coherence as we look back on life.

Purpose isn't about understanding or making sense

as much as it is about finding a set of activities that when we're engaged in it are motivating,

reduce what we will call default mode, self-oriented thinking purpose is an activity that when we're doing it we're completely embedded, immersed in it.

It is an activity that brings us self-esteem and at the same time we enjoy or we find a sense of well-being from doing it.

So you can have a meaning for life. You can have a real sense of what a meaning for life is, but it won't necessarily give you a purpose.

It simply tells you what you've decided the whole point of it is.

Whereas a purpose is an act, you know, activities or yeah, basically how you spend your time and in a

meaningful way that is towards something.

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