EP 127: The Four Pillars of a Meaningful Life | Emily Esfahani Smith

Welcome to Radical Responsibility, the podcast dedicated to ridding the world of blame and shame, where we explore the issues you care about from a unique perspective. 100% ownership for each and every circumstance we face in life, day in and day out. Hi, welcome to the Radical Responsibility podcast. I'm your host, Leith Mall. And in today's episode, I have a great confidence conversation with Emily Espahane Smith, a writer, editor and speaker based in Washington D.C. who's the author of the international bestseller the Power of Meaning. And she's an expert on well being and how to have a meaningful life. So we talked about a lot of interesting things, including some practical exercises on how to get in touch with what makes your life meaningful and clarify what your life purpose might, might be. You know, if we don't get clear about who we are and what we want in life, what our life purpose is, it's really easy to get distracted and scattered and just be driven about by the vicissitudes of life. We need that North Star. And she gives us some real practical tips on how to do that. She talks about, you know, the difference between meaning and happiness and, and what, you know, research has showed us about the benefits of leading a meaningful life and bringing an attitude of care and love to all of our actions and in order to experience a stronger sense of purpose. So if you're interested in the possibility of living a really meaningful life, a purpose driven life with that kind of clarity and direction, then give it a listen. Emily Espahani Smith. Enjoy.

Welcome, Emily.

It's good to be with you.

It's really great to be with you and thank you so much for joining the summit. We're here on day one of the summit, so we're really excited to get, get started with someone of your stature and the work, the journalistic work you've done. It's really been amazing. So very happy about that. So I'm going to introduce our audience to you a little bit and then we'll jump right in.

Okay, sounds great.

Okay. So Emily Sfahani Smith is a writer, editor and speaker in Washington, dc. She draws on psychology, philosophy and literature to write about the human experience, why we are the way we are, and how we can find grace and meaning in a world full of suffering. Her book, the Power of an International Bestseller has been translated into 16 different languages.

She's the former managing director of.

New Criterion. Smith's articles and essays have appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Atlantic and other publications. She's also appeared on NBC's Today Show, CBS this Morning and NPR. In 2019, Emily was a Poynter Journalism Fellow at Yale University. As a speaker, she had delivered dozens of keynotes and workshops at major corporations, conferences, and universities across the country and around the world. So, again, welcome.

Thanks, Blake.

So this first day of the summit is all about clarifying our life, purpose and vision. In your book, the Power of Meaning, you talk about purpose as one of four pillars of meaning, but first you make a distinction between meaning and happiness. Could you talk about that first?

Of course. So I started writing about these concepts in 2012, 2013 or so, and at the time, I was in graduate school studying positive psychology, which is the empirical study of the good life, things like happiness and meaning. And.

I learned some things in that program that really surprised me, and one of them was this kind of distinction between happiness and meaning. And the reason it was so interesting to me and the findings kind of surprising is because I noticed in our culture at the time, and I think this continues to be true and has certainly been true for a number of decades. I think this is kind of like a defining feature of American culture, that there's such a strong emphasis on happiness. And we're told constantly that a good life is a happy life, and that if we pursue happiness, we'll be more successful, better liked. All these great things that come with happiness, we're told over and over again. And as I got into the research in positive psychology, I realized that actually this obsession with happiness in our culture can backfire, and it can make people unhappy and lonely, and that there's this other thing, which is meaning, that can kind of fill that. You know, what Viktor Frankl called that existential vacuum, that kind of emptiness that so many people are living with today. And I think they seek to fill by pursuing happiness, but can only be filled with meaning. And so happiness, the way that it gets defined in the culture, in the research, certainly within philosophy as well, and I think the way that most people define it is as a positive mental and emotional state. So if you're happy, you feel good, you don't feel negative emotions. And if you're unhappy, you don't feel good, you feel negative emotions. And it's something that comes and goes. You can feel happy in one moment, one minute, but then 10 minutes later, maybe you're not happy. Meaning, though, is bigger. So the defining feature of leading a meaningful life is connecting and contributing to something beyond yourself. It could be your work, your family, you know, sense of spirituality, God, nature, what have you. And when people tell psychologists and in surveys that their lives are meaningful, it's because three conditions have typically been satisfied. The first is that they believe their lives have a sense of significance and worth, so they think their lives matter in some way. The second is related to the summit. They believe their lives have a sense of purpose, and we'll talk about that more, so I can define that later. And then finally, they believe their lives are coherent and to say, so their experiences don't feel random and disconnected. The world, it doesn't seem like a senseless place, but things make sense to them and come together in kind of a coherent story.

Wow. Well, thank you. Well, yeah, clearly obsessing about something as transitory as happiness is probably not a good mental health strategy. Right. Sometimes we make a distinction between kind of more talking about well being, but we associate that kind of transitory happiness with what's called hedonic well being, subjective well being, which is really how I feel in the moment. Things are going my way, I'm happy, as opposed to what's called economic well being, which has more to do, I think, with meaning, a sense of self efficacy, you know, that coherence you were talking about, they seem to be pretty related, what you're talking about and this deeper quality of well being.

Well, 100%.

What'S happened over the last kind of five years, 10 years in positive psychology is that researchers have really taken this distinction that you drew between hedonic well being and eudaimonic well being, which comes to us from kind of ancient Greek philosophy. And they've tried to, you know, tease it apart and figure out what happens when people are focused on pursuing the one hedonic well being well, or people are focused on pursuing the other eudaimonic well being. And there's this one really interesting study that I write about in my book that researchers had students, you know, come into the lab and they told them a little bit about the difference between hedonic and eudaimonic well being. And. And they kind of gave them examples associated with each. So they said, you know, eudaimonic well being can be increased by doing things like, you know, having a warm beer on. Having a cold beer on a warm day, you know, going to the spa, eating ice cream, taking a break, playing, things like that. Whereas eudaimonic well being, which is more associated with meaning, can be increased by doing things like studying, volunteering, helping a friend in need, things like that. And then they told them to go out for 10 days and do at least one thing every day to either increase their hedonic well being, their happiness, or the other group to go out and do something to increase their eudaimonic well being, their meaning. And what they found was that the people who went out to increase their happiness didn't feel happier in the moment, whereas the ones who went out to increase their eudaimonic well being didn't necessarily feel happier while they were doing it. Because oftentimes those types of things that we do to bring our lives meaning can be hard and stressful, like studying or volunteering. But then when they followed up with them three months later, it was the ones who had pursued meaning or eudaimonic well being who reported deeper feelings of peace and satisfaction, less negative emotions, whereas the ones who pursued hedonic well being, there was no lasting effect on it one way or the other.

That's really interesting. Sometimes in the coaching world they make a distinction, or at least they say what really contributes to what we might think of as less transitory happiness, a more lasting sense of happiness. Which is, I think the second category that you're talking about is the deeply felt experience that we're growing and that we're contributing to life, that those two factors and those seem like we achieve those things through what you were taught, the latter type of strategies you were talking about.

So you've talked about a meaning crisis in our culture and its impact on our collective individual and collective mental health. And certainly.

We have many social ills today. We have the worst opioid epidemic in history.

You could say we have an epidemic apart from the pandemic we're in now of. Of mental health issues, adolescent suicide, self harm, I mean, just so many things like that, school violence and all the rest of it. And I'd like to talk about more current events in a moment, but maybe first, just as background to this, if you could say something about what you mean by this crisis of meaning and how that is impacting the culture.

So Viktor Frankl, who wrote the book Man's Search for the Holocaust survivor and Psychiatrist, talked about this term I mentioned earlier, which is an existential vacuum. And he said that, you know, he identified even in his own time, which was, you know, several decades before, you know, before today, that there were many people living with an existential vacuum, with this sense that their lives weren't meaningful or they were unsure of what their purpose in life is, and that when people lived in that manner, they felt unmoored, they felt unhappy, because he said, human beings have a need for meaning that's as important to our psychological and spiritual health and well being, as the need for, say, food, water and shelter are to our physical well being. So that when we don't have meaning in our lives, we actually suffer in ways that are both psychological and spiritual. But we also know from research today, physically as well, that it kind of takes a toll in our biomarkers, our levels of inflammation, even what's going on in our brains, our heart health, and how soon we'll die. That meaning is associated with all of those things. And so today, when you look around at all these indicators of despair, of mental illness, you mentioned a bunch of them. And as I'm sure you know, there are even, you know, more kind of sad indicators out there as well from rising rates of suicide and self harm. And the list goes on. What researchers find when they try to determine what is driving this rising tide of mental despair. There was one really interesting study that showed that what's driving it is not a lack of happiness in people's lives, but a lack of meaning. So there's something about this mental health crisis where meaning is implicated. It seems like Frankel was right that in the absence of having meaning in life, the human psyche responds in all of these ways that are very destructive to the self and also in some cases to society.

Yeah, I think this is sort of the point. I'm glad you're writing about this. I remember back, you know, with these terrible school shooting tragedies. I remember all the way back to when Columbine happened in Colorado. And, you know, that the tendency in the media and so forth is to immediately demonize the killers, the people that commit, you know, the young people that did the shootings. I mean, it's normal, but. And maybe they'll look to the parents, like maybe there's something wrong with the parents, but nobody asked the question, is there something amiss with us, with our society, what we're doing? You know, nobody wants to look at the fact that we've created the most materialistic, somewhat superficial society that, you know, that worships materialism and celebrity and, you know, our civil society is being eroded. You know, the investment in our spiritual traditions and our religious traditions. I mean, all the things that have for several thousand years given human beings meaning and purpose have really been weakened in our current culture.

No, that's absolutely right. I mean, we, you know, we live in a, you know, consumeristic capitalist society where the values are things like, you know, as you say, you know, success measured in a very kind of materialistic way. Money, fame, wealth. These things, I think, have just been exacerbated by the rise of social media, which puts such an emphasis on, you know, the external image versus, you know, the kind of more intrinsic goals and values that I think people carry with them. And, you know, we all know what we actually value and care about. And yet the way that we lead our lives, the way that the culture pushes us to lead our lives, is kind of to get us further and further away from those intrinsic goals and values. I think the great value of, you know, spiritual and philosophical and religious traditions, of things like community and the traditions and rituals that, you know, bound us together as a community. Community is that they were intended to kind of bring us back constantly, to restore to us that sense of kind of wholeness and oneness that comes when we feel in contact with those intrinsic values. And so without those traditional sources of meaning in life, we really are at the mercy of these other pernicious factors that are kind of, you know, blowing us this way and that way instead of us kind of figuring out how to stay on our own, you know, true path.

Yeah. Any of us who've been around young people or are around young people these days, I mean, you just see them glued to their phones, right. And, and going through that period in adolescence where we're trying to figure out who we are and, you know, establish some kind of identity. It makes sense. How do I navigate this kind of crazy, challenging world? And they're trying to figure that out through social media and text. I mean, it's not good. So. And now, you know, this year has just been the past year, I should say 2020, and you know, we're not through it yet. It's been just been off the charts in terms of these kind of challenges. And, you know, we've been in this various stages of the pandemic lockdown for almost a year now, and it's going to continue for we don't know how much longer.

We had all the social unrest and the protest and the reckoning with race following, you know, the George Floyd tragic police killing and of so many others as well, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery, and there's just been so many Eric Garner and we've had all that unrest and all the political divisiveness around it. And then now, right where you live in Washington D.C. we've had this insurrection in the U.S. capitol.

By these.

Right wing Trump supporters who are more angry, disaffected people looking for meaning in their lives. Right. And feeling this loss of meaning. And so, you know, we're really.

We'Re in a pretty tough spot, I think, in our, in our society here in the US but around the world, this pandemic is affecting everyone. And a similar crisis is going on around the world. And we see the rise of this kind of authoritarian leadership and all this kind of thing. So, you know, you. In one of your articles that I read, you spoke about Viktor Frankl's term tragic optimism and how we deal with challenges. And then you've read the research around post traumatic growth and so forth. So I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about that and how even in the face of these incredibly uncertain and challenging times, there are ways which this can actually leverage our growth and where we can find more meaning in our lives. But it could go the other way as well. Maybe you could talk about what, what, what determines that.

So this is, this is a place where I think purpose really, that concept is so central. And, you know, my, my reading of the research and of, you know, kind of more theoretical approaches to it, like Viktor Frankl's work and some of the other humanistic psychologists, has led me to kind of distinguish between purpose and meaning, even though I think they're terms that get used interchangeably. And so the way that I think about purpose, you know, coming from the research and Frankel's work and others, is that it's some, you know, it's, it's like a goal or a principle or value that organizes our lives, and that involves making a contribution to the world in some way. And they can come in all shapes and sizes. You know, for some people, raising their children is a purpose. Frankl talks about in the camps, how, you know, he spoke to several men who had lost the will to live. They were so depressed by all, you know, obviously by the horrible circumstances that they were in, losing their freedom. Some of these people had watched their own children walk into the gas chambers, and so they gave up on life. They were hopeless. And he talks about how for a couple of them, restoring in them the will to live was a matter of getting them to reconnect their purpose. And so for one, it was his child who was living in safety elsewhere in Europe. And for another, he was a scientist. It was a series of works that he had been working on that only he really could complete because of his unique expertise. And stories like that led Frankl to conclude that people who were able to maintain a sense of purpose, some sort of hope that pulled them into the future, were far more resilient to the suffering that they were being forced to endure than those who didn't have a sense of purpose. And, you know, there's so much empirical research, contemporary empirical research, that supports that point, that when you have a sense of purpose, whether it's big or small, it does carry you through these kind of turbulent times, whether they're.

Collective tragedies like 9, 11 or this pandemic, or more personal tragedies like losing a loved one or receiving some kind of terrible diagnosis of disease, that maintaining a sense of purpose can really carry you through. So that has to do with how resilient you are as you move through a difficult experience. But then there's also the question of what happens in the aftermath of that difficult experience. And this is where the really interesting concept of post traumatic growth comes in. And I love this concept because I think it's a really hopeful concept, and it aligns really well with. Well, it's simply. I mean, it's congruent with the experiences of most people. We hear all the time about post traumatic stress disorder and how it can be so devastating. But as it turns out, only a small number of people who undergo some kind of trauma or adversity experience ptsd, whereas most people who come out of adversity or trauma or whatever experience post traumatic growth. And I think that's really wonderful. And so what post traumatic growth is, the idea is that after you go through some kind of terrible experience, you're really shaken by it. You know, if you can imagine a building during an earthquake, this is the metaphor that the researchers use. You know, it shakes you and it shakes your foundations. And there are some people, because of their sense of purpose and meaning and whatnot, whose foundations are strong to begin with. And so the building doesn't. It shakes them, but it doesn't break them. But then there are some people who, you know, regardless of how strong those foundations are, build a bigger and stronger building in the aftermath of the trauma by growing in various ways. And so some of the ways that people grow after a terrible experience are, you know, they deepen their spiritual lives so they realize maybe that there's more to life than the, you know, things that they've been pursuing on the success and achievement treadmill. That's one domain of post traumatic growth. Another is that they deepen their relationships. They realize that what really matters are their friends and loved ones. Another element is they become more grateful and appreciative of life itself because they come to realize how scarce it is. And another is they have a newfound sense of purpose. So purpose doesn't only carry you through and kind of make sure your foundations are strong enough to withstand whatever earthquake hits you. But it also becomes even stronger in the aftermath of the traumatic experience. And so, you know, some of the examples from the research are people who receive a diagnosis of cancer once they, once they, you know, hopefully if they are and become in remission for it, end up choosing a career that is related to oncology in some way because they want to help people.

Withstand and kind of cope with the suffering, you know, in the same way that they had to kind of withstand and cope with it. All of this relates to this concept of tragic optimism that Frankl talks about, which is, you know, when bad things happen, it's really important to acknowledge the suffering, the grief and just how terrible things are and yet at the same time to maintain a sense of hope that things can get better. And so that's what tragic optimism is. It's realizing that life is full of loss and suffering and yet at the same time that there's meaning there to be found.

Wow, that's really helpful. So that's interesting term, tragic optimism. So it clearly doesn't mean being in denial or you know, looking at, you know, tragedy through any kind of rose colored glasses. It's really about really grappling with it, but finding some sense of hope, purpose, future. I know from what I've read and I actually have the privilege of leading a retreat at Auschwitz every year. I've been going there for 20 years where Viktor Frankl was and former Nazi death camp there. From what I've read that a lot of the people who survived that for some of them was just that determination to get out and bear witness to what had happened there in hopes that it would prevent future genocides. So that gave them that sense of meaning and purpose and allowed them to actually survive.

Wow, that's powerful.

So in your book you talk about four pillars of meaning. So let's talk about those four. One of them is perfect purpose and, and, and you have three more. So why don't you talk about them and kind of how they're interrelated and how they can, can help us maybe if we focus on those a bit, find more meaning in our life and clear sense of purpose and direction.

So when I first came across across the research indicating that really it was, you know, the search for meaning, the pursuit and possession of meaning that was important to our well being more so than the pursuit of happiness. I then wanted to know, okay, what do we have to have in our lives in order for our lives to feel Meaningful? Does the answer differ person to person, or are there certain principles that we can all rely upon? And I thought this question was especially relevant in modern life because, as you say, so many of the traditional sources of meaning that grounded us, you know, in the past, for thousands of years, are no longer essential to our lives, are much weaker in the culture, and so on. So given that, where do we turn to find meaning? And so I interviewed a lot of people, heard their stories of meaning. I looked at the research, I looked at the philosophy, you know, anything I could get my hands on. And I began to notice that there were some themes and patterns that came up again and again in the stories people told me and in the research. And in particular, I was able to kind of extract these four themes. And one of them, as you say, is a sense of purpose, and then the other three are a sense of belonging, storytelling, and transcendence. And so I'll just kind of briefly, you know, define. Define them, if that's helpful. So purpose, as I said, it's a Golder principle that orients your life that involves making contribution to others. And I think it's important to remember with purpose that purpose isn't something that you necessarily have to go searching for. Turn over a bunch of rocks and poof, one day you find your capital P purpose, and you're set for life. Actually, in the interviews that I did, it seemed much more the case that people's sense of purpose was constantly changing throughout life. So, you know, at one time, you know, when you're young, it's kind of trying to develop an identity as you get older. The psychologist Erik Erickson talked about developing a spirit of generativity, so giving back to society in some way as you get older, still, maybe it's turning back and reflecting on your life to see what you've done. You're less focused on what you'll do than on the things that you've accomplished and making peace with what you haven't done. So it's kind of this dynamic thing. And then also, purpose isn't necessarily. I mean, it certainly can be a pursuit that you have your mind set on. Like, for one person, it might be finding a cure to cancer if they're medically in the medical profession, but they can also be something that you live with. So living with purpose is kind of having an attitude or a mindset where everything you do is an opportunity to find purpose, if you have that right mindset. So I remember, for example, speaking to someone who was Buddhist, and he we're talking about meaning and things like that. And he said, for me, I find purpose in simply doing whatever it is that I'm doing with care and love, whether it's washing the dishes or speaking to my friend or doing the work that I do. So bringing that attitude of care and love kind of dignifies what you do and endows it with purpose. Purpose. The next one is belonging. And that's really about being in relationships and communities where you're valued for who you are intrinsically and where you're valued and where you value others for who they are intrinsically. And I think today that.

Distinction of being valued for who you are intrinsically is really important because you can imagine that there are lots of communities out there, a lot of relationships we can be in where you are valued, but it's not because of who you are, but because of what you achieve, what you're willing to do and what you believe. You know, in the case of these kind of political. This political unrest that we're seeing, where, you know, there is kind of this false sense of belonging because it's based on in group and out group. True belonging springs from this place of kind of generosity, where you bring this generosity to the other, any other, where you value them regardless of what they believe and who they are, just for who they are. So that's belonging. The next pillar I'll talk about is transcendence. And transcendent experiences are those moments where you're kind of lifted above the hustle and bustle of daily life and you feel connected to something much bigger than yourself. You know, we were talking before the interview got started about mindfulness and meditation. And certainly meditation and mindfulness are one portal to transcendence. When you come into the present moment, your kind of petty anxieties melt away. Your sense of self diminishes a little bit as you feel connected to something bigger, Whether it's your true self, whether it's God and certain traditions, universal consciousness, however you want to define it, other ways to experience transcendence, music, dancing. I mean, there's a lot. We can talk more about that if you'd like. And I save storytelling the fourth pillar for last, because in some ways, I think that this is the most interesting one. And I found that when I talk to people about this work, it's the pillar that can sometimes resonate the most with them. And so when I'm talking about storytelling, what I'm talking about is the story that you tell about yourself, about how you became the person that you are today. I think A lot of times people look back on their lives and they think that, you know, their lives are just a series of events. I was born here, moved here, this happened, that happened, and poof, here I am. When actually that's not what we do. When we actually talk about our lives, we make narrative decisions about what we include in our story and what we leave out of it. And those narrative decisions say a lot about how we make sense of ourselves and how, you know, how. How much. How meaningful our lives are. Because sometimes you can tell a story that holds you back that is kind of a negative story rather than one that, you know, to go back to. That concept of tragic optimism is hopeful and carries you forward. And you mentioned, you know. You know, speaking to people who are Holocaust survivors and part of their purpose was bearing witness. I think that's part of storytelling, too, is sometimes your story or what you've seen can be a way to, you know, preserve history, carry it forward for others so that they, you know, learn from the experience, whether it's a terrible experience that you want not to be repeated or there's some lesson or wisdom that you want to pass down to them.

Wow. Well, you know, there's. I'd like to talk a little bit more about two of your pillars of belonging and storytelling or narrative. I just think this is so important. You know, we've seen our culture politically and socially kind of devolving into a kind of tribalism on both the right and the left. And part of that, I think, is the pole to belonging. People want something to belong to, and so they find, you know, they get into their bubble. They get into their information bubble. They only pay attention to news media that. That aligns with, you know, the ideology of that particular bubble and so forth, and they get a sense of belonging. You know, probably, you know, not to justify in anything the craziness that happened in Washington, D.C. but. But if you look at where does this really come from, there's a group of people probably getting some sense of belonging, meaning by being part of that. And, you know, and it happens on both ends of the political spectrum. And. And. And then the storytelling you mentioned, stories can be affirming and. And. And help us move forward in life. And they can also be negative and debilitating. So a lot of that tribalism is driven by narratives that are basically victim narratives that. That, you know, as opposed to a survival narrative or a narrative that includes transcendence or greater meaning. You know, they're basically narratives of victimization which, you know, comes out of Real victimization. But nonetheless, where do those narratives take us? And where do. Seeking belonging in that way and that kind of tribalism, where does that take us? I wonder if you could talk more about that.

I mean, those are such great points. And they're, you know, obviously these are kind of issues that are, you know, are at the very core of our culture at the moment. And I think, you know, obviously you're so right that there is this tribalism that is kind of, I mean, frankly, just tearing our country apart. And when you look at. And I think you're right also, that it's on. It's on both sides. And when you look at each side, I think there is this narrative of, you know, we are dispossessed, our voice isn't heard. And so let's, you know, if we band together and, you know, show our anger, then we can find belonging together and also kind of make some impact. And I think. I think in the absence of some of those, you know, what's happened kind of in modern life and it's happening now, but it's happened in many ways, you know, across the decades and today in kind of these extremist political ideologies. When people aren't satisfied with the meaning that the culture is offering them, or they haven't found deeper, richer sources of meaning on their own in those more traditional ways that we talked about earlier, they turn to politics, you know, for meaning. And oftentimes politics is. Is kind of divisive and tribal. And so I think that's what's happening now. And I think, by the way, to get outside of our own, the political context, because that can be polarizing. And maybe even talking about it in this way is polarizing some people listening. This happens with gangs. It happens with the organization isis. In all kinds of contexts, people seeking meaning are kind of promised this false meaning, this false belonging in these groups that actually kind of degrade them and don't elevate them. And so I think that's one sign of whether there is true belonging being offered by the group or kind of this false or cheap belonging is, you know, to the extent to which it does kind of lift you up, I would argue that, you know, movements that inspire violence and discord are probably not elevating to people.

So that's one thing. And when it comes to narrative, I remember hearing the British rabbi Jonathan Sacks talk about how narratives can really bring people together and tear people apart. And it kind of matters how big your story is. So, you know, these kind of subgroups, each have their narrative about how they're the ones who are dispossessed, how the other side is evil. Where in this country there used to be this bigger narrative of this is a place where everybody is welcomed, where every human being has dignity and has the potential to realize their potential. I learned as part of this writing project that I'm doing that the term the American Dream was initially coined by historian, and it was not defined as this kind of dream of material and economic. Plenty of. It was defined as, you know, America is this place where the dispossessed from around the world have come so that they can realize their potential as human beings in the societies where they were before. They were basically treated as subhuman because they didn't have the right status, they weren't born into the right families. Here they can come and have freedom and live this bigger, ennobling dream. And somewhere along the way, that narrative has kind of been degraded or forgotten. And I think that one way to heal these tensions is by remembering that there's a larger story that we all fall within and that we all can tell that brings us all together, you know, by virtue of the fact that, you know, we're all kind of, you know, immigrants to a certain extent, being here. So that's one of the things that I think about when I think about storytelling and how it has the potential to move us forward in these. In these dark times rather than holding us back.

Yeah. Certainly not in any way to dismiss the real issues that drive a lot of this polarization or to gloss over the real problems that we need to reckon with and deal with. But I think if we can't find our way to some common, ennobling, shared narrative, it's going to be difficult to hang together as a culture in the US and in other countries as well and globally to find our way forward as humanity. Because we have some really tough problems to tackle, to say nothing of climate change and all the rest of it that we need to figure out how to tackle in our generation. So just seems this whole question of meaning and narrative, and it all seems really so important.

Yeah. And, you know, I mean, I was kind of talking about the American story and the American dream, but, you know, what you said just makes me think that at the end of the day, we're all human. And one of the teachings that I love so much from Buddhism is that, you know, when we acknowledge that we're all human and that we're all suffering, it not only allows us to experience more compassion for other people, but Also for us to see that, you know, we. We too, are, you know, are deserving of compassion. And once we see that, we can kind of see how we're all kind of part of the same human story. So there really is kind of a universal story that we can tell to help us, you know, move into these things.

Absolutely. So part of your foundation for meaning in your life, I assume, and what's given you a foundation.

You grew up in a Sufi house, and I assume that gave you a pretty good foundation, kind of a contemplative, spiritual foundation in your life. But could you tell us more about that? Maybe some of our audience may not be that familiar with the Sufi tradition. So could you tell us a little bit about your background?

So, Sufism is a spiritual and mystical path and practice that grew out of Islam. And today there are many kind of branches of Sufism throughout the world. I mean, they all kind of originated, you know, most of them, I should say, originated in the Middle East. And so I think it's helpful to think about it as, you know, in the same way that within Catholicism, there are different monastic orders, like the Benedictine order, the Dominican order, or within Protestantism, there are different, you know, expressions of the faith, like Unitarianism or Episcopalianism and so on. Also within Sufism, there are different.

Expressions of Sufism out there in the world. And so when I was growing up, the particular order of Sufism that my parents belonged to was called the Nimitalahi order, which originated in Iran in the Middle Ages. And my family is from Iran. My mother came here after the Islamic revolution. And so growing up in the Sufi meeting house.

It was very much kind of being surrounded by a very Persian culture. People would come to our home. And this was in Montreal, by the way. I grew up in Montreal, so this was in downtown Montreal. And in our home, there was this large room with no furniture on it, just cushions on the floor. And twice a week they would come, many of them Iranians, but also some Westerners there.

And.

And they would sit on the ground, and they would meditate for several hours. And there'd be classical Persian music, Persian Sufi music playing in the background. And so part of what Sufism is, it's often called a path of the heart. Part of the path is learning to kind of turn the volume down on the ego. This part of our nature that can be very selfish and self involved in order to feel a sense of connection with something beyond the self, which ultimately would be God, but, you know, steps along the way. You know, other people, the Earth as a whole. You know, all of these things which are, which Sufis believe are manifestations of God anyway. So when you feel, when you turn down the volume on the self to connect to God and, you know, feel your heart kind of being absorbed in the heart of God, you can do that by, you know, showing loving kindness to other people through acts of service, through things like that, because, you know, all of creation is a manifestation of God, as Sufis believe. So, you know, growing up with people who believed that, you know, was very formative for me. And these were people who, you know, really kind of lived out the principles of loving kindness and service. And these are ideas, of course, that come up in all the great religious and spiritual traditions. But I think living in a Sufi house, which might, you know, an analog might be kind of like, you know, living in a, in a, in a Buddhist Sangha or Buddhist center where people come to meditate, you know, on a weekly or bi weekly basis, being surrounded by people who had such clear ideas and answers about what a meaningful life consisted of, I think did seed in me this interest, meaning that, that I carried with me throughout my life. And, you know, when we moved out of the Sufi meeting house when I was about 12 years old and we came to the United States, where I've lived ever since, one of the things that happened was I began to wonder, you know, is it possible to live a richly meaningful life, to have sources of meaning that you can easily identify and connect to outside of a religious and spiritual context? You know, for the Sufis, there are pretty clear answers to, you know, what is the meaning of life? How do I lead a meaningful life? The meaning of life is something like, you know, we could call God. And leading a meaningful life can consisted of engaging in rituals and practices that brought you closer to God, whether it was, you know, the meditations or performing acts of loving kindness, things like that. And so when you don't have those clear answers, you know, where does that leave you? Do you have to figure it out on your own? And that's basically. That was the path that led me to initially studying philosophy and undergrad and then positive psychology and then doing the writing that I did and what we're talking about now.

Yeah, I think, you know, in my generation, a lot of us in the west kind of moved away from the religious traditions of our families and started exploring all the Eastern traditions. We were looking for meaning. And somehow.

You know, somehow it seems like various cultural institutions and religious institutions can kind of lose their relevance or go. Go stale if we don't continually to renew them and reinvest in them. And, and it seems like that's happening at even larger scale today. And, and, and, you know, so, you know, the Dalai Lama sometimes talks about we need a new universalist, you know, kind of secular, ethical religion of spirit, but not, not non spiritual, but a spirituality or something that brings us all together, because religion has been very divisive in some ways, but also the great religions have been the holders of meaning and those values and principles. So it's challenging times. I think just leaving it to each person to have to figure it out on their own is probably not a good cultural strategy completely. But what would you suggest to our audience who are feeling, you know, listening to all this, and, you know, here we are on the first day of the summit talking about, really getting clear about, you know, who am I, what does my life mean? What's my purpose? What's my vision for my life? Where could they start if they're looking to try to get.

Their feet more on the ground with this?

Yeah, that's a great question. I mean.

There are some studies that I came across that I thought were helpful in terms of offering practical things that people can do to kind of get in touch with their sense of meaning. So I'll just mention a couple of them. So, you know, one of them had to do with journaling. And this kind of touches into the pillar of storytelling, but I think also relates to purpose as well. And so, you know, many of us, millions of people around the world, billions, we're collectively going through this very difficult time right now. And in this particular journaling activity, people are called on to write about a difficult emotional experience from their lives. It could be this time, maybe you lost your job during this period, maybe you lost a loved one, or maybe it's some other kind of experience and to really write about it. This is called expressive writing, and it was developed by James Pennebaker at the University of Texas. And he tells people to really write and let go emotionally your deepest thoughts and emotions about what's happened to you. And in the studies, people do this for three or four days, for a period of 15 minutes. And it's fascinating because what Penny Baker and his colleagues see over that time is that the stories people are writing in this journaling exercise become more coherent as the time goes by. And as the time goes by, people are much more able to find some kind of positive meaning that emerged from the difficulty that they experience. And so if at the beginning they're saying this was Just a horrible thing. Nothing makes sense. By the end of it, they're saying this was so horrible, but it caused me to grow in ways that have now made my life richer. I wouldn't have wanted the experience to happen, but given that it did, it's improved me in X, Y or Z way. And so I think that kind of reflection is very. It can be really fruitful and help in clarifying, you know, what our kind of purpose might be or because oftentimes what people find as a positive meaning is a new sense of purpose or in just, you know, instilling in us that spirit of tragic optimism that can help us withstand adversity and grow, you know, as a result of it. The other thing I'll mention is it's also a writing exercise. And you mentioned the word vision. And this kind of has to do with vision, vision and purpose. And in this exercise, which I think was developed by a psychologist named Laura King, a researcher, she has people write about their ideal selves in the future. So your best possible future self. And you know, so people, you know, you're kind of called on to look ahead into the future. You know, what does that ideal look like? Do you have a family? What kind of work are you doing? Where are you living? What kind of person are you? And to again write about this once, twice, three times over the course of a few days. And what she finds is that people who do this kind of vision exercise, clarifying exercise.

It kind of enhances their well being because it's kind of a positive, hopeful type of exercise to do. But also you're more likely to accomplish the goals and meet the aspirations that you set out for yourself by doing this exercise. When you spend the time to think about it and to write about it. So those are just some concrete things that maybe might be helpful.

Well, that's really beautiful and it ties in perfectly. We've had a pre summit challenge going on for the last six weeks that's really involved journaling. And it's been about how can we bring 2020 to a close in a beautiful, powerful way, celebrate our wins, mourn our losses, learn everything we can, and let go of what we need to let go of in order to make a fresh start, move moving into this year. And the latter exercise, it has included, people have been doing some journaling around, envisioning their best self, what that would look like in the future. But the other one, the first one you mentioned, focusing on what has been some difficult emotional experience and journaling about that. For those of you in The Pre Summit Challenge, that's your next assignment. But I really would encourage everyone, whether they been involved in the Pre Summer challenge or not, to really start journaling throughout the summit. And you know, just with all these presentations, just taking notes and journaling. But that particular assignment would be a really good one to begin your journey through this summit. So thank you very much for that. So what would make 2021 the best year of your life or what you might be doing to kind of create 2021 as the best year of your life?

I'm currently enrolled in a clinical psychology PhD program. That has really been an enriching experience. I started it last semester, was my first semester. And in the fall we're going to begin seeing our first clients. And so I think I'm really excited for that experience to kind of get closer to people's stories and to maybe even help them edit their stories into things that are more hopeful. So that's the prospect of doing that I think is going to bring a lot of meaning to me in 2021. And the other thing that, God willing, my husband and I would like to start a family. And so maybe that will also happen in 2021. And I think that will be greatly enriching in some ways as well.

Wow, that's wonderful. Well, there's a tremendous sense of possibility there and I hope as you emerge into this career as a clinical psychologist, that you will maintain your career as a journalist and keep writing and sharing your wisdom and experience with us. And I can imagine future books that are going to be very valuable. And again, just wanted to mention your book, the Power of Meeting and really recommend people to check that out. So thank you so much, Emily. This has been fabulous. A really, really rich discussion and, and just a pleasure to have you be part of our journey on this best year of your life summit.

Thank you so much. It was such a joy speaking to you and there's so much more that I want to learn about you. So hopefully we have a chance to talk again.

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