Is There A Hidden Link Between Your Life Purpose and Physical Health? Research Finds Out

You can easily find a number of books and guides for finding or creating your lifeโ€™s โ€œpurposeโ€ and โ€œmeaning.โ€ But could doing so affect your physical healthโ€”for better or for worse?

A new study says yes. It found that if you experience meaning and purpose in your life, youโ€™re more likely to be physically healthy, as well as mentally. โ€œWe found the presence of meaning was associated with better physical functioning and better mental functioning,โ€ said senior study author Dr. Dilip Jeste. Moreover, โ€œfinding meaning in oneโ€™s life can help people stay healthy in later years.โ€

The research also found, however, that if you search and struggle continuously to find a purpose, it may have a negative effect on your physical health. Moreover, a fruitless search also negatively affects your relationships, your cognitive functioning, and your overall psychological health. In short, if you donโ€™t have a purpose in life and are searching for it unsuccessfully, you will feel much more stressed out, according to the researchers.

Related: How To Answer Your Calling And Find Your Life Purpose

These findings add to the increasing awareness that all dimensions of ourselvesโ€”we are organic beings, after allโ€”are interwoven. All impact each other, and are influenced by the world we inhabit, as well. So letโ€™s unpack what the mixed evidence means from this research. It was conducted by researchers from UC San Diego, involved over 1,000 adults between the ages of 21 and over 100 years old, and is described here.

From the data, the researchers suggest that a transition occurs over time from the โ€œusual uncertainties and turmoil of young adulthoodโ€ฆ a period of considerable anxiety. You are desperately searching for meaning, but you havenโ€™t found it,โ€ as Jeste put it. Then, the researchers maintain, things change when youโ€™re older, as life moves along towards a finite end, and you start thinking about what to do with your remaining life; what is the most meaningful.

In my view, this explanation is too linear. It reflects an earlier, more predictable era of life and society. It doesnโ€™t match so much with the experiences of life through oneโ€™s decades in our current, more fluid, more changeable world.

It would be more accurate to seek an understanding of what the shifts that occur over time meanโ€”what they arouse in your inner life. The latter is the source of what could become an enduring sense of meaning and purposeโ€”if you tune into it and heed what it tells you along your lifeโ€™s journey.

But our society and culture often inhibit that awakening. It does that by defining the most valuable and meaningful life to aim for as a good career, a relationship that lasts, friends, money, and all that it buys for you. No question, these are very pleasurable and rewardingโ€”to the extent you acquire them, that is. We live in a material world, after all, so you might believe that โ€œmeaningโ€ and โ€œpurposeโ€ are equivalent to all that you acquire. Until life tells you theyโ€™re not.

And that can occur because the material world is the external world. There, money, position, and recognition canโ€™t generate a sense of purpose or a meaningful life because they can be disrupted by unexpected change, loss, or disappointment. They may fade, take different forms, or unravel altogetherโ€”perhaps unexpectedly.

purpose

Constant impermanence is the reality of life. It can disrupt your external world and reach right down into your interiorโ€”your inner life. It may then cause you to question why youโ€™re living, what youโ€™re living for, and why it even matters. If youโ€™ve been inattentive to your inner life, the consequences of that awakening can range from mild to severe.

Some are tuned into that awareness along the way; more centered on their inner life, regardless of ageโ€”contrary to the linear assumption of the current research. But many others awaken with a shock. For example, a man once said to me in a therapy session that heโ€™d always defined the meaning of his life by what heโ€™d acquiredโ€”his career, his family, and his investments.

And now, having been thrown into upheaval by a simultaneous business failure and family crisis, heโ€™d concluded that โ€œlife will never be the same.โ€ True. But now, what defines his reason for being?

Related: 4 Ways to Find The Purpose Of Your Life

It also brings to mind a woman who suffered a personal loss that called everything into question about what the point of her life was, now, at this point. A more extreme kind of awakening, but not at all unknown, was expressed by the person who said to me, โ€œI now realize Iโ€™ve pretty much wasted my life by being afraid to live it.โ€

Even sadder, in a way, was the 60-year-old with a successful career he never enjoyed, who liked to lament, sardonically, โ€œI have no purpose.โ€ I pointed out that he had made having โ€œno purposeโ€ into his purpose.

I think the findings of the study, published in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, make an important link between long-term physical health and living with a sense of purpose. But assuming that the quest is more located within in the โ€œdecliningโ€ years doesnโ€™t match with peopleโ€™s experiences from different generations in todayโ€™s nonlinear world.


Written By Douglas LaBier
Originally Appeared On Psychology Today
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