"Helping others can actually create the sense of meaning we’re seeking. Rather than ruminating on what makes our life worthwhile as we work toward burnout, we can find the answer outside ourselves, in human connection.”
Elizabeth Hopper, Ph.D. candidate at the University of Berkeley How do we live a virtuous life of meaning and purpose? This is a deep question. It is one philosophers, religious leaders and other thoughtful people have struggled to answer since… well, since ever. It is a question (I’ll speak for myself) we should probably struggle with more often.
One of the big promises of Approachable Leadership is that approachability doesn’t just improve your leadership. It improves connections in all areas of your life. Now you can add to that list that helping others provides a sense of meaning and purpose to your life.
Professor Hopper’s research suggests there are two types of well-being: “hedonic well-being (a sense of happiness) and eudaimonic well-being (a sense of meaning and purpose).” Hedonic well-being is short-lived and fleeting. What do you achieve the second kind of well-being? One study looked at those differences and found that while “having strong social connections was important for both happiness and meaningfulness… helping others in need and identifying oneself as a ‘giver’ in relationships were related to meaning alone.” According to a different study published in The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, this is because “when we choose to engage in prosocial actions, it helps to meet our basic psychological needs: for autonomy (feeling that we have freely chosen our actions), competence (feeling that we are good and capable), and relatedness (feeling close to others).” Who wants to feel they are living a life of purpose and meaning? Everyone. Understanding this is especially important for us as leaders.
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