We’re constantly told that life is supposed to have Meaning.

Capital M, neon-sign-flashing-in-the-dark, meaning.

Uh-huh. Sure. That’s the kind of thing people say in interviews with The New Yorker or after running a marathon. But for something so universal, the whole “meaning of life” thing remains disturbingly unresolved.

The terms and conditions for existence are the only ones we’d actually read but also the only ones we don’t actually get. You’d think, given how many centuries humans have been at this, we would’ve nailed it down by now, like the best way to cook bacon. Trying to find meaning can feel like trying to find a needle in a haystack, except the needle is also made of hay, and you’re not entirely certain what a needle is.

So how do we do it? Or at least make life feel more meaningful? Well, I know where we can find some answers…

Steven J. Heine is a professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia. His book is “Start Making Sense.”

Let’s get to it…

Self-Grounding

Want a quick way to boost that feeling of meaning? Do what’s called a “self-grounding exercise.”

Here’s the “technique” and I am using quotation marks because calling this a technique feels like calling microwaving a Hot Pocket “cooking.” It requires about as much effort as writing a grocery list.

Pick a value: kindness, loyalty, not yelling at call center workers, whatever. Write a small paragraph about why it matters to you. That’s it.

Simple as it sounds, this isn’t pop-psychological snake oil. It emerges from Claude Steele’s self-affirmation theory, a body of research so well-established that dozens of studies have confirmed its effects: a temporary boost in meaning, improved academic performance, even a more forgiving attitude toward one’s past poor decisions.

Sure beats brushing your teeth while screaming into the mirror.

(For more on how to find meaning in life, click here.)

So what’s another quick way to get a boost of meaning?

Nostalgia

You primarily get it accidentally via Facebook “Remember When” posts. But it deserves a little more respect than that.

Nostalgia helps us make sense of our lives. It provides narrative structure, which is desperately needed when most days feel like a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure story where every choice somehow ends with meh.

Here’s the psychology: humans hate open loops. We hate chaos. Nostalgia is a way of shutting the loop, of saying, “No, no, it all led here.” With nostalgia, life’s a journey. Nostalgia says you’re progressing, that it isn’t all just entropy with a soundtrack.

You stare at a Polaroid of yourself at eight years old (bowl haircut, missing teeth, Ninja Turtles backpack) and for a brief, hallucinatory second, you believe your life is not an aimless accumulation of trivialities but rather a novel with a discernible plot, a protagonist, and maybe even a moral arc.

Nostalgia makes you less bothered by your problems. Because if you can believe that once upon a time you felt carefree and invincible then maybe today’s challenges aren’t the end of the world either.

And if you’ll excuse me, I have to go watch a grainy VHS copy of “The Goonies.”

(For more on how to use nostalgia to improve your life, click here.)

Okay, time to take it up a notch and actually leave the house…

The Transcendent

Most days the news reads like a never-ending list of despair, every ping of your phone bringing fresh evidence of some small apocalypse…

But then you stumble out at night, stare at the stars, and for a brief, dazzling nanosecond, you feel at one with the universe.

You feel a little awe. And you need to feel that more often.

The irony? Real transcendence doesn’t make you feel bigger; it makes you feel smaller. You think transcendence is about enlightenment. It’s not. It’s about relief. Relief from what? From you. From the constant, difficult labor of being you.

Transcendence untethers us from our normal operating system. Those frantic loops of acquisition, comparison, grievance. And for a while we float above the grim bureaucracy of daily life.

(For more about how to increase the amount of awe in your life, click here.)

Okay, enough little tricks. Time to dig deeper for some real meaning-making…

Relationships

The real shortcut to existential significance isn’t found in a wellness influencer’s feed. It’s found in relationships, those messy, noisy, irritating, and absolutely necessary entanglements with other people that remind you you’re more than just a collection of bad habits wrapped in skin.

Children are the ultimate subscription service for meaning. You don’t have time to question the void when you’re too busy wiping applesauce out of your hair and explaining why, no, you cannot marry a cartoon character. Your continued existence becomes crucial because if you don’t show up, someone literally dies.

Overall, family can feel like a dirty trick life plays on us: you spend your adolescence trying desperately to get away from them, only to spend adulthood realizing that they are the only people genetically obligated to tolerate you.

Family not an option? Join a group. It doesn’t even have to be a good group. It can be the “We Hate How Expensive Avocados Are” Facebook group. Just find a crew. Find something stupid and decide it’s sacred. That’s literally how cults start and honestly, I respect the hustle.

One way or another, reach out to people. Not just when you need something. Not just when you’re lonely. But because they exist, and so do you, and the space between that is something holy if you bother to look.

Meaning is constructed, fabricated, stitched together out of obligation, loyalty, neediness, and a desperate, gorgeous refusal to give up on each other. If you’re waiting until you feel “whole” to show up for your kid, your family, your trivia team, you will die waiting. Show up broken. Show up faking it. Show up resentful and messy and tired. Show up anyway. That’s where meaning is. That’s the whole game. That’s all there ever was.

Now answer that text from your mom.

(For more on how to improve your relationships, check out my bestseller on the subject here.)

Some people are not going to like this next one but that doesn’t make it any less true…

Work

Let’s get this out of the way: yes, work can suck. You have to interact with people, some of whom pronounce “espresso” with an “x”. You have to answer emails, usually from someone who is wrong and also loud about it.

But we need it. We crave structure. We crave belonging. We crave a reason for being that isn’t just binge-watching true crime documentaries and wondering why you feel anxious all the time. Work fills that void. Even if it’s deeply imperfect.

Work gives you social structure. You have people to complain with, and that, my friend, is the glue of civilization. That’s tribal cohesion. The strongest bonds you form at work are with the person who’s also hiding in the supply closet during the team-building exercise.

Work also gives you purpose, which sounds embarrassingly earnest until you’ve tried living without it. We’re not talking about saving-the-world purpose here. But even the dumbest task gives you something to push against. A form. A shape. Sounds unimportant, but you know what’s worse? You, unsupervised.

Because here’s the thing: without work, you don’t become your truest self. You become your worst self. All you’ve done is switch bosses. Instead of answering to Susan from operations, you now answer to your bad habits, which are far worse and don’t even give you dental.

(For more on how to have a fulfilling career, click here.)

Okay, time for the big one…

Story

Real life, left to its own devices, is not a story. It is a slow-motion avalanche of obligations, minor regrets, and unanswered emails. They do not “add up.” They simply happen. And that, I would argue, is intolerable to the narrative-seeking, pattern-hungry minds of a species that invented both religion and Sudoku.

Enter Joseph Campbell and “The Hero’s Journey.” If you’ve taken a high school English class or accidentally watched “The Lion King” with a humanities major, you’ve heard of this. You’ve seen it in Harry Potter and literally every Pixar movie that made you cry about a lamp or a fish or whatever. Campbell’s structure, for all its overuse and Instagram bastardization, offers a way to interpret the mess.

Yes, we’re going to transform your life into “Star Wars”, but with less incest. Let’s break this sucker down. Seven parts to turn the bloated mess of your existence into a tale worth retelling, preferably over scotch and not therapy.

Think about a challenging time in your life where you overcame difficulty. We’re going to turn it into your superhero origin story:

1-The Protagonist (That’s You)

The main character. Before conflict shaped you for the better. (Yes, it did. Remember: even Luke Skywalker started out whining about power converters.)

2-The Shift: The Plot Twist No One Ordered

This is the moment when your previously stable world was upended. Could be you realized your job was eating your soul. That your partner didn’t know you anymore. That you didn’t know you anymore. Whatever it was, this is where the story starts.

3-The Quest: The Journey You Didn’t Want But Couldn’t Avoid

You had to do something about The Shift. The Quest is the part where you do something differently, where you make an effort and try. Not because you believe it will work, but because not trying is worse.

4-Allies: Not All Of Them Wear Capes

Somebody helped you. Nothing says “main character” like assembling your Fellowship of the Existential Crisis.

5-The Challenge (Insert Screaming Sound Here)

You initially struggled. You must struggle. That’s the point. The challenge isn’t really about victory. It’s about showing up anyway.

6-Transformation: Becoming (Slightly) Less Terrible

Forged in the fire of The Challenge, something changes. Not in the world, but in you. A realization. A re-prioritization of what matters.

7-Legacy: Leave the Place a Bit Less On Fire Than You Found It

Here’s the final part: you give back. Maybe you mentor someone. It’s the part where this story stops being just yours. The legacy of a good life is the relief it brings to others. Sometimes it’s being the person you once needed, for someone else.

Yeah, it’s all a bit twee and self-indulgent. But it beats the hell out of nihilism. Because without a story, your life isn’t a life; it’s just a to-do list with a death date.

The genius of this structure isn’t that it’s “true.” It’s that it’s useful. You manufacture significance through narrative coherence. Because when you skip that part? When your life is just a series of disconnected tasks and frustrations, without arc or resolution?

You don’t just feel lost.

You are lost.

(For more on how to create a meaningful story for your life, click here.)

Okay, we’ve covered a lot. Time to round it up and answer the big question of why meaning matters…

Sum Up

Here’s how to find meaning in life…

• Self-Grounding: Write a paragraph about a value that’s important to you. It’s simple, it’s easy and it’s far more tolerable than listening to motivational podcasts hosted by men who wear too many rings.
• Nostalgia: Indulging in nostalgia gives you a temporary boost of meaning. It’s a button-mashing cheat code for the game of life when you’re stuck in the quicksand of Now.
• The Transcendent: Get out in nature and feel some awe. Cue the violins, release the doves, quick, someone knit me a dreamcatcher. It’s transcendence, baby.
• Relationships: There is a very particular species of loneliness that descends on a person who has no one to attend to and no one attending to them. A loneliness that feels less like solitude and more like you’re a clerical error in the filing system of the universe.
• Work: If you weren’t working, you wouldn’t be writing a novel or starting that nonprofit. You’d be on your couch, in yesterday’s underwear, scrolling Instagram Reels until you feel like your soul’s been microwaved. Work provides structure and purpose.
• Story: If you’re not the hero of your own story, odds are you’re the side character in someone else’s. And trust me: they’re not paying you enough for that role.

When you start doing things that give you meaning, life starts getting better. It’s like your existential tinnitus has mercifully dulled. You stop measuring your worth in other people’s envy. You’re less bitter because you’re not in competition. You do things and you don’t immediately expect praise or likes. You do them because they matter. Even when no one sees it.

Meaning re-humanizes you. It resuscitates the parts of you that get trampled in the long, dull march of survival. You go from thinking of life as an endless sequence of things you have to get through, to realizing it’s something you get to live.

We treat meaning like it’s a side quest we’ll get to once we’ve unlocked the main mission of “Having It All™.” But spoiler alert: Having It All is a lie. Meaning is right here, in the tiny choices you make every day, disguised as responsibilities.

Raise a kid. Care for an aging parent. Build a community. Show up for someone who will never, ever say thank you. Risk being misunderstood. Risk mattering.

“But that sounds hard.”

It is. It’s supposed to be hard. If it were easy, you wouldn’t feel like it meant anything. And no, it won’t always feel transcendent. In fact, most of the time it’ll feel like nothing at all. You won’t feel like a better person when you clean up vomit at 3 a.m. or when you drive your cousin to chemo. There is no montage. There is no score. There is only you, doing what you believe needs to be done.

I have spent much of my life searching for meaning, and I can confidently report that I have found it approximately one million times and also not at all. I have found it in the lyrics of a song I played on repeat during a hard year. I have found it in a stranger holding the door open for me at a grocery store. I have found it in the quiet companionship of sitting beside someone I love.

I don’t have all the answers. But I do know that last week, I laughed so hard with a friend that my stomach hurt, and in that moment, I wasn’t worried about the question at all.