ASM213 The Power of Meaning with Emily Esfahani Smith

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you got questions he's got answers even though he may not understand he'll talk anyway he got problems he won't solve them but he'll talk and talk and talk until he flew in the face [Music] well hello everyone and welcome to ask science mike this is a weekly podcast where we believe that every sincere question deserves an honest and non-judgmental response i'm your host mike mccarg the science mic of the title and um well you know usually on the show people send in questions and then i respond to them but sometimes we do other things because that feels good and right to do that day and and this podcast is one of those times where it felt good to do something else i've got a book coming out in april specifically on april 28th called you're a miracle and a pain in the ass and it's all about growth and transformation and the frustrating mystery that is myself and frankly yourself it's about life and living and being human and it's a wonderful book i'm very proud of it and as we move toward that book uh caitlyn and brent and andrew and greg and the people that work on this show had an idea and they said why don't i reach out to some of the authors and researchers whose work informed my next book and i thought that sounded like a great idea but i thought it was a problem and that was that nobody would want to talk to me why would these really successful practitioners and researchers uh join me on my show but they said don't worry about that you just tell us who you'd like to have on the show and we'll reach out to them and if you're right and no one says yes then we just won't do it so that's what i expected to happen what i did not expect was for people to say yes and actually for many people to say yes uh and so that's what we're doing here as we move towards the release of my book we're talking about the books behind the book and so this could be a fun opportunity if you want to get ahead of the game you could read some of these books and have some background before you read my book or guess what these are just great books on their own these are brilliant people who do amazing work and so the first in this series is my conversation today with emily esfani smith who wrote the power of meaning a book that came to me as you'll hear over the course of this interview at a very difficult time in my life so without further ado here is that conversation and here we go edited into the show at the last possible second is our really exciting announcement i just got an email from my friend and manager brent and it's a list of all the tour stops for the year a miracle book tour that i'm gonna be doing uh this april late april and early may and uh i wanted to go ahead and tell you the dates and the city so you can save the date and also know probably by this time next week we will drop a link where you can buy tickets to be at these events i'm so excited to get back on the road a little bit again so april 27th atlanta georgia we'll be kicking it off with you april 28th that's the day of the book launch itself i'll be in nashville tennessee uh in on april 29th i'll be in minneapolis minnesota april 30th seattle washington may 1st portland oregon and back home in los angeles california on may 8th one more time that's atlanta georgia april 27th nashville tennessee april 28th minneapolis april 29th seattle april 30th portland oregon may 1st in los angeles may 8th i would absolutely love to see you at those events so here's what you can do if you want to make sure that you get the tickets as soon as they're available number one i will send those tickets to my patrons on patreon first they'll get a first shot at grabbing tickets to these events and then after the patrons have their chance i will email my email list with the events and then finally i will put them on the website and announce the ticket sales on this podcast so i'd love to see you in april and may for the you're a miracle book tour [Music] so we're in that uh awkward and amazing season in my life where i've got a new book on the way and i was talking to caitlin and brent and some of the other people that helped ask science mike happen and we thought it'd be really fun to introduce you to some of the brilliant thinkers and teachers and researchers who created the material that inspired and helped shape my life in the years that i was writing you're a miracle and a pain in the ass and one of those is emily espioni smith she's a writer in washington dc and her book the power of meaning is an international bestseller published by crown and has been translated into 16 different languages as the former managing editor of the new criterion emily's articles and essays have appeared in the new york times the wall street journal the atlantic and many other publications she also holds a master's degree in positive psychology from the university of pennsylvania so folks unlike me emily as fanny smith is an actual expert emily thank you so much for joining us on ass language mic today thanks for having me mike it's so good to be here i just want to let you know how i encountered your work you know i um i basically brushed across your book and they say not to judge a book by its cover but i was attracted to the cover design in a bookstore a couple of years ago and i put it on my shelf and then it kind of blended in with my other books and i forgot about it and uh and then last year i had a cardiac event and i was hospitalized and i was in the process of having to you know examine the way i lived my life because i had a really unsustainable relationship to public work had a really unsustainable relationship to anxiety and i'd found that i was leaning into finding all of my identity and uh trying to become a happier person and try to teach other people to be happier as well and so i had a period of medical rest where i was not able uh to work and i was not able to really go outside very much other than kind of sitting in my yard because i had heart disease and it meant as an avid reader i did even more reading but i couldn't get to the bookstore so i started scanning my shelf looking for any of those you know how it is if you're a reader you buy more books than you can possibly ever read and so i started looking for those things on my shelf that i had bought with great intention to learn from and then somehow forgotten and the first book i pulled off the shelf was the power of meaning and i just have to tell you at the top of the interview that my life is in such a better place than it was six or nine months ago and certainly better than it was a year ago and a a huge part of that was reading your book that helped crystallize and clarify so many different threads i'd been pulling at from different disciplines uh it is an astoundingly powerful book that i discovered very late in the process of writing my next book uh which is good because otherwise i probably would have started another ground-up rewrite uh what an incredible theme that you have uncovered in this book the power of meaning uh could i ask you just to start kind of from a high level and let us know what drew you to the project well first of all thank you thank you i mean that was such a kind uh introduction and story and i'm really touched that the book was something that helped you get get through a difficult period in your life and so um really just thank you for sharing that uh as as far as what brought me to this topic i think that um there's kind of two two answers to that question one has to do with my upbringing so i i grew up living in a sufi meeting house and and for those who might not know sufism is a form of mysticism and you know the poet roomie was a sufi the whirling dervishes are sufis those are often uh cultural touch points that people uh know about and so living in the media meeting house was a lot like you know living in a buddhist sangha so there were people who came to our home twice a week in the evenings for several hours to meditate and uh the the practice of sufism like buddhism and like the other uh you know major world religions it emphasizes uh kind of turning down the volume on the self on the ego so that you can connect with something beyond yourself which you know you know sufi's called god you know so this kind of sacred transcendent uh thing that's beyond you that you're trying to reach connection to and i think you know growing up surrounded by people who were had this kind of strong spiritual bent and who had devoted themselves to us you know serious practice that you know was demanding uh of them and that you know didn't always necessarily make them happy because it's hard to you know say no to your ego and to kind of act with loving kindness all the time and yet it brought them this kind of you know satisfaction and fulfillment and so that was always um that stayed with me and as i got older and you know we moved out of the cp meeting house and this was in montreal canada by the way so we moved out of the meeting house we came to the u.s where i still live and you know without that kind of daily presence of religion in my life i began to wonder i think like a lot of young people do as they you know reach their later teenage years go to college you know is it how do you find meaning outside of a religious and spiritual context is it possible to do that and then that eventually led me to studying philosophy but also this field that you mentioned called positive psychology and it was in that positive psychology program where i um encountered research about the difference between meaning and happiness and that was kind of the second answer to the question is really encountering that research um ignited this fascination in me that led me to writing about the work and then eventually uh to to writing this particular book you know it's interesting to me as i was reflecting on positive psychology and the benefits it brought us as well as some of the challenges um when you know you and i both live and work in the united states and when some people sat down and thought about making this an independent country and they thought about what would be the like uninalienable rights of our country they said life liberty and the pursuit of happiness like right there in the founding letter declaration that led to the united states is this pursuit of happiness and then that kind of becomes a national theme for our culture that then really runs away almost becomes distilled and intensified in uh positive psychology as you've pivoted uh to incorporate meaning as this major focus of your work and how you communicate with the public do you ever find yourself brushing up against uh the cultural norms of north america and europe uh in almost trying to detox people from a constant pursuit of feeling happy definitely i mean it's one of the reasons why i i began initially writing articles and then this book about the research distinguishing meaning and happiness is because i i felt dissatisfied myself with this kind of happiness side guys that i was perceiving in the culture and that um i think a lot of people were perceiving in the culture and just feeling like it didn't ring true to my experience you know living day-to-day didn't ring true to the experience of the people i really admired living day to day who i would not describe as you know happy people in the sense that you know they were having a lot of positive emotions positive you know feeling states that's how psychologists and many philosophers define happiness um and yet they there were important significant projects and pursuits that took up their time whether it was raising their children their work their you know involvement with the religious or spiritual community and all of those things often were you know stressful required effort didn't bring this kind of you know conventional happiness the yellow smiley face that we're so used to seeing in the media with happiness articles and yet it brought them this deeper thing that was meaning and for me like encountering that research distinguishing between meaning and happiness helped me make sense of their experiences and also my own experience thinking oh i'm not i don't feel happy all the time is there something wrong with me because i think that's what the culture of happiness leads a lot of people to believe that if you if you're not happy there's something wrong with you when in fact it's totally normal not to be happy all the time happiness comes and goes it's an emotion that's the nature of emotions and yet um you know all of us are doing things that are meaningful and so that's another way to kind of make sense of the goodness of our lives if we're not happy we're doing things that are meaningful and i'll add as well that um the you know sometimes i get asked you know is it only can you have both can you have both meaning and happiness and the answer is absolutely and there's you know some data that i write about in in my book um that a researcher shared with me where she you know she asked you know many thousands of people whether their lives were meaningful whether they felt happy and if i recall correctly it was about a quarter um who felt both like their lives were meaningful and and that they were happy about a quarter who said my life is meaningful but i don't feel happy another quarter that said i i feel happy but my life does not feel meaningful and then another quarter roughly speaking that felt like they had neither happiness nor meaning um so it's definitely impossible to have both possible to only have one possible to have neither you know and i've i've been realizing in my life lately how we have seasons where we we live in those different places um what i found so often is a difficult situation will cause me to return to a posture where my life is oriented around meaning making and that will generally produce a satisfaction and that satisfaction will produce a happiness if i'm not careful i'll start chasing the happiness so hard i forget to stay grounded in the deeper significance of meaning that sets me up for a period where i neither feel meaning nor happiness um and that's that's you know that's what the power of meaning did so well for me was not only remind me of the importance of meaning making and the practices they're in but elucidate them in really accessible actionable ways i you can hear right here i'm keeping the book on my desk right now as a reminder a physical tactile reminder as i go through my day to go through these processes that orient my life around meaning as opposed to just constantly trying to be happy in the inevitable emptiness and crash that seems to come along with that and as i do that in my own life this this kind of structure you've created pulling from positive psychology and psychology and all these other disciplines in what you call the four pillars of meaning have been incredibly helpful and useful for me and i wonder if you'd be willing to offer uh the listeners of this program an overview of those four pillars definitely and and i just want to you know highlight the point that you just made which is that you know it's there's nothing wrong obviously with wanting to be happy or being happy but part of what i'm trying to do is encourage readers to not be motivated by the pursuit of happiness but to be motivated by the pursuit of meaningfulness because as you say and as i write in my book like when you chase happiness it can actually make you unhappy and take you away from the things in your life that make your life feel meaningful but when you pursue the things that make your life meaningful you not only get that kind of deep sense of you know satisfaction but also um this kind of deeper form of happiness as well so um there is just something you know richer about the pursuit of meaningfulness and when i realized that i i then you know began to ask myself okay if if meaning is is is you know where is that then um what do we need to have in our lives in order for our lives to feel meaningful and this led me to doing a lot of research within psychology positive psychology neuroscience you know philosophy i interviewed a lot of people both experts and ordinary individuals about their own life stories and at the end of that you know research project i i began looking at my notes and all you know all that i had compiled and i began to notice these themes that came up again and again and there were four of them and basically when people told me about what made their lives meaningful or when i looked at the research about what makes people's lives meaningful it was these four things that i identified that you know we're coming up and so the first one is the first pillar of meaning is belonging and this is really about the relationships that you have with others uh the second pillar is purpose and this is kind of about where your life is leading and driving to and what you do on a day-to-day basis that um that you know with the worthwhile things that you fill your day up with uh the third is uh storytelling or which i'm really referring to specifically about the the narrative that you craft about your own life about who you are where you came from and where you're going and then finally um is transcendence and and this has to do with um kind of your your spiritual life whether you're you know you're religious or or not but these are experiences you know in a liturgical service in nature watching a baby being born looking up at the stars at night where you all of a sudden feel tiny compared to the vastness and the mystery of of what's around you and yet feel connected to that mystery at the same time and these these are really powerful experiences that can um that can change people's lives actually so those um kind of briefly speaking are the four pillars of meaning you know one thing um i reflected on you know as i uh both read the book and then you know i'd read the book i'd never seen your ted talk uh and then i watched the ted talk a couple of days ago preparing for our conversation to make sure i you know had useful and interesting questions to ask you and um i thought it was really interesting to read the book first and then read the ted talk or watch the ted talk it almost like pulled out parts of the text more clearly for me and one thing i was really really really deeply struck by was in this pillar of belonging you know one thing i i think about a lot is how how human beings are primates and we're very social primates and how our brains equate the presence and acceptance of other people with survival and then you called out something that i think at the particular intersection this audience is in one thing that ties a lot of ask science mike listeners together is they've gone through a period of a faith transition where they were one faith and then they became a different faith so there's a lot of people here who used to be evangelicals and now they're not and they could be a lot of things there are people in this audience that used to be atheists and now they're uh spiritualists of some kind but the thread kind of bringing these people together is a disenfranchisement in their community because of changes in belief and you called out um the cheap or false belonging that some communities and systems offer that are based on what we believe as opposed to who we are and i'm wondering in your research if you had any words or experiences or thoughts for people who have found themselves on the outside of that first type of belonging that cheaper false belonging and are are desperately searching for a new type of belonging you know based on who they are it's such a great question and just to explain about belonging the you know i one of the really interesting things about this particular pillar is it's we we often think that belonging is just a feature of our close relationships or the communities that we are a part of you know but to your point like there are a lot of people in marriages or you know relationships between children and parents or within a community like a faith community where um they actually don't get that sense of true belonging because true belonging is about being valued for who you are intrinsically and not for you know what you believe or who you hate or you know what you wear what you accomplish all these other ways that we can value people and i realized as i was researching this particular pillar and i think that this is a really hopeful takeaway it was for me anyways um is that if you don't find that type of belonging you know within these networks that you might find yourself embedded in or within um your relationship so first of all you can you know extricate yourself from those communities or relationships if they if they're toxic and the second is that you can find belonging in unexpected ways um with other people because it's something that you can cultivate in the moment uh and it's a choice that you can make you can choose to cultivate belonging with somebody else and it's kind of a two-way street it's not just that um you know other people are valuing you for who you are intrinsically but it's that also in that moment as with all relationships there's um there's a kind of a bi-directionality to them so it's also about you valuing that person for who they are intrinsically and that's where the strongest bond of belonging is formed when it's moving in both directions and i you know i tell a story in my in my ted talk and it's the one that i like to tell because i i think that it really illustrates it beautifully where you know one of my friends who lives in new york city goes every morning and he buys a newspaper from the same street vendor uh there on the corner near where he lives and you know it's a big city it's rush hour you can imagine that these two men have every incentive to rush through this exchange of you know goods for money but that's not what they do they they both you know they slow down they they take a moment to ask each other how they're doing ask about their you know one another's families and over the years they've developed like a relationship with one another where they know about each other in a more intimate way than just kind of an economic uh type of relationship and and that and they leave that interaction feeling elevated because they're they are seen by one another and they see one another and so that's um you know i think that's really that's really you know a powerful thing to remember it's that any there's so many moments in the day where there are people who are kind of making the these bids for belonging and uh you know relationship with you whether it's the person checking you out at the store someone you're walking by on the street who who makes eye contact and smiles and we can you know choose to engage with them or we can choose to kind of ignore them or look at our phones or not be engaged and depending on the choice we we either get that kind of feeling of uh belonging where there's this authentic kind of encounter between two people or we or we don't get it and in fact when we if we do kind of choose to you know look away when someone walks by us or if we're at the dinner table and you know the person your spouse is telling you something from their day and you're looking at your phone we know that these moments of rejection not only make people feel uh like their their lives are less meaningful but they make them feel like life in general is less meaningful so there's something really powerful about being acknowledged and listened to and cared for by another and feeling like your life matters i think about that so much and how you know i saw a meme the other day and um the the the takeaway was basically how every time a person sees a dog they say hello and every time they see a person uh they look away and try to avoid speaking and it seems like for a variety of frankly valid reasons um some of the the social fabric and the the connective tissues between people who don't know each other well have become a little frayed or a little tight and and then that starts leaking we've become so exhausted moving to a world where everybody kind of feels mutually unsafe to engage uh and then that leaks into a sense of exhaustion where it's difficult for us to show up uh in other relationships with people that we are closer to and i think this reminder that you've just given us to be intentional about our posture and i certainly don't mean in any way that uh that would ever if someone felt unsafe i would think of uh you know a woman passing an unknown man at night you know i could certainly see some caution being warranted there but in those other moments in our lives where where we know we might be able to let our shoulders drop and we might be able to take the risk of of um just having a moment with someone we don't know i have found in these last uh last few months of my life i'm having more and more of those moments i feel less i feel less afraid uh to take the risk of having small encounters with new people uh as i've been orienting myself toward meaning so i i just wanted to pause and uh and thank you for your reflections and words there i think they'll be helpful to many people as they've already been i mean gosh [Laughter] international bestseller is no joke i'm so thankful to better help for sponsoring ask science mike and i'm also so thankful to better help for connecting me with a counselor that i love you know i've been working through a lot of emotional challenges these last few years in my life and betterhelp has played a major role in my growth and my recovery you know i've been experiencing and learning about the codependent tendencies i have and meeting with my better help counselor online in the comfort of my own home has been instrumental in me not only feeling better but getting concrete strategies to make my life improve each day and each week here's how the process works if you go to betterhelp.com slash science mic you'll not only get 10 percent off of your order but you'll go through a questionnaire that will help better help connect you with one of their 6 000 licensed therapists that can get you the support that you deserve over 800 000 people have done it and because their service is secure and online and completely private you can change therapists at any time for any reason it's affordable it's private it's anytime it's anywhere so why not get started today by visiting betterhelp.com mike today's kids are tomorrow's scientists and designers and engineers and artists and makers and my sponsor kiwico can help them get from where they are today to where they will be tomorrow when they make a new world kiwi co specializes in helping people understand and connect with science technology engineering art and math in a way that is fun and innovative and exciting they do that by sending crates in the mail these are sustainably produced designed in california tested by thousands of hours by educators and kids alike in various lines you can actually switch to any kiwi crate uh line at any time in your subscription you can go from an art subscription to an engineering you can change ages including the new eureka and maker crates that are appropriate for adults they are wonderful and you can get 60 off your first month's kiwi co crate service by visiting kiwico.com science mike where there are special offers just for ask science mike listeners and i'm telling you these things are just so much fun that i can't believe it and what i've noticed is that my children now well they're barely children anymore my kids are teenagers uh having kiwi cos a part of their monthly routine has deepened their connection to the sciences especially at an age where our culture starts you know trying to suggest to girls that they shouldn't be involved in the sciences and the the intuitive and hands-on understanding they have about science and engineering from these crates has helped keep science as wonderful in their eyes as it should be i just can't say enough wonderful things about kiwiko and i'd invite you to join my family in getting kiwi coke rates every month by visiting kiwico.com slash ask science mike [Music] kind of pivoting towards purpose um i've noticed that it seems as if of all the pillars um this one might seem the one that we seem to have the most control over and yet many people have the most difficulty nailing down um what what have you learned about finding purpose so purpose is is interesting first of all i think people often conflate meaning and purpose uh with one another and even even though they're very close that they're they're separate and purpose psychologists define purpose as a goal or a principle that is kind of in a long-term pursuit that organizes your life and your activities and that involves making contribution to others so they say it's both meaningful to you and meaningful to the world and i think that what trips people up about purpose is it can sound so big so you know a lot of people especially you know kind of emerging and young adults put a lot of emphasis on i need to find my one true capital p purpose and if only i could find it then i'll figure out what the perfect job is and everything else will fall into place um but it turns out that you know we know from the research that only about and and i'll just step back and say it for a lot of people too purpose is something they want in their professional you know lives within their careers um and then they want so and they feel this kind of obligation and this pressure to find a career that gives them lots of purpose and we know actually from the research that it's not realistic to expect a career to deliver in that way because only about one-third of people say that they have a calling orientation in their work so only about a third of people really feel like their work is their location and so what does that mean for the rest of us it doesn't mean that we can't find purpose in our work and in other domains of our life but it means that we have to rethink what purpose is and what i found is that the people who actually live with the most purpose day to day do a really good job of bringing purpose down to earth so i you know there was this one study that was conducted of hospital cleaners at a university hospital in the midwest and the researchers talked to hospital cleaners about how they kind of thought about their work and there was this one cleaner who i later interviewed her name was candice and she said you know my purpose isn't cleaning bed pans and mopping the floor my purpose is healing sick people so she was able to take what she did you know the cleaning uh and connected to something much bigger she understood that what she did contributed that creating a clean environment contributed to this larger goal of helping the patients feel better get better in an environment that you know was hopefully kind of nurturing to them and clean so um so that's one example another example that i really liked was uh this was from a study that showed that kids who do chores around the house feel a greater sense of purpose and the reason is because they feel like they're making a contribution to the family to the to the creation of a sense of home and even though you know most kids don't like doing chores there's this sense of satisfaction they get because they feel like they're helping out so there are these small ways that we can find purpose and for me um i think reframing purpose in this way really helped because now you know if i'm doing something that you know before i thought was a waste of time like but but i had to get done like doing chores or you know doing taxes you know i was just doing taxes before we got on this call um i realized okay like maybe doing taxes is not my favorite thing but as a writer as a small business person who's kind of you know trying to maintain his career as a writer it it enables me to accomplish my bigger goal of writing sharing ideas with others so on and so forth you know that notion of reframing was a major part of um the third pillar you talk about with storytelling and this is like i'll just i'll level with you my life's passion um i study story i have since i was a child i consider myself a story geek i'm a writer as well so telling telling stories through my life and experience has been a big part of of my work in the last few years but recently i've started um you know helping the the big media companies out here tell stories on a big scale as a story consultant for film and television and uh so i i believe so deeply in the power of story to transform our lives and to to do public advocacy and and really to transform the whole world so i was i literally kind of squealed in the book when i realized storytelling was one of them because i just felt so excited uh but you talk about storytelling in a very particular context and when you talk about storytelling and the power of meaning you're talking about the story that we tell ourselves about us or if i was to speak directly on your behalf to a listener the story you tell you about you and i wonder if you would tell us a little bit more about the story we tell ourselves about ourselves so this pillar was definitely the the most challenging one to sort out and i found that when i talk to people about this you know work it's often the pillar that intrigues them the most and i think the reason is and i think it's the same reason why this pillar was hard for me to sort out writing the book is that we don't always realize that we are the authors of our own stories that we're constantly have a constant running narrative in our mind about what's going on in a particular moment and also what's going on what has gone on over the course of our entire lives and that we're constantly making narrative choices about what to include in that story and what gets left out of that story and what that means is that we have the power to kind of edit the story to interpret it in new ways to reframe it as you mentioned earlier to rethink it even while respecting the facts that i'm not talking about you know like editing the facts of your story i'm talking about editing how you interpret what's happened to you and what's happening to you and there's there's kind of two um you know courses over which we can think about storytelling there's the here and now the story that we tell about what's going on right now and then there's a story of the kind of the the epic of our of our lives the myth of our lives and when it comes to it and the same kind of principles i think apply to both but i'll just give a quick example for each one to to you know illustrate what i'm talking about um when it comes to the story that we tell you know right now right here you know think of you if you or one of the listener received an email from your boss saying call me immediately what is that is a scary message that's a really scary message so what what's the kind of immediately your mind jumps into like storytelling you you either tell yourself something like oh my god i'm in trouble i'm gonna get fired like things you know something terrible is gonna happen or you know if you're more of an optimist maybe or or you're you feel confident you know that you haven't been messing up at work that you just got a good performance review maybe the story is like oh um i wonder what he wants to talk about is he going to put me on a new project am i going to get promoted so um so there's you know you there's that discrete piece of information in the world and then you are telling a story about it and a lot of times because human beings have such a strong negativity bias what psychologists call negativity bias we pay much more attention to the negative negative events uh affect us much more deeply so a lot of times what that means is that in our stories we're focusing a lot more on the negative and more likely to tell these more negative um interpretations even though um we there's a lot of positive things going on that we're not paying attention to because of this negativity bias that we have so in the day-to-day if you kept if you find yourself kind of telling a negative story or one that holds you back asking yourself wait what is the evidence for this conclusion that i'm coming to is there countervailing evidence what are the good things that are happening that i'm not paying attention to all of that is really helpful in getting and getting you to kind of reframe that story um and when it comes to the story of kind of the the grand story of our lives this um you know this again is like an ongoing narrative that we're telling in our minds it's not like you know we think about our lives oh this happened then that happened and this happened and then poof here i am our li our narrative isn't like just the list of things that happened to us we are you know we put emphasis on certain things like it may be that where you are from is a really important part of your story maybe that's something that happened to you when you were young a parent dying or getting divorced or um or something really good happening like being singled out for an accomplishment that this becomes a really key part of your story a key turning point that you're constantly coming back to or constantly explaining where you are right now in terms of uh and one of the things that researchers have found with you know narrative identity is what they call this form of storytelling is that there are certain kinds of stories that we tell about our life that are more associated with leading a meaningful life and in particular um stories that are defined by or have the theme of growth uh of love and of redemption are the ones that often uh are the issues are the ones that are associated with leading a more meaningful life and redemptive stories are are really interesting they're stories that move from bad uh to good and this is the type of story that people a lot of people are telling uh by by default whether they they realize it or not and and kind of uh bringing that knowledge to the front of your mind that redemptive stories are a thing and that you might be telling them about your life by itself might be enough to kind of help you understand your story in a more meaningful way you know i thought a lot as you've just told us about the therapeutic process as being one of of reframing a narrative of my life of seeing the ways in which times that were difficult or challenging almost inevitably set me up for times that are better or more rewarding and sometimes remembering that in the midst of difficult times at least helps me to weather them and to survive and um we are a storytelling animal and i think if we're not intentional and aware of that process the fact that we are indeed writing a story about our lives every day whether or not we write books um we can lose that thread and that story can become something that robs our life of meaning and indeed happiness instead of setting us up for feeling meaning and and sometimes happiness and i just i hope you don't get tired of me saying your book is meaningful but that that uh that portion in particular was a very grounding and helpful part for me although honestly the fourth pillar um well it's no joke either it's one i think that is especially uh cognizant and appropriate for where our society is today we find that people are becoming less and less affiliated with organized religions but at least in north america we're not seeing any decline in spirituality or spiritual inclination so people clearly have a desire for the transcendent but we've left behind some frankly appropriate baggage to leave behind as a culture um what did you learn in your research about the pursuit of transcendence i think i mean i think you're exactly right that there is this kind of widespread yearning among people for transcendence and yet um as as our society becomes more secular that yearning is is is not being satisfied the way that it used to be i mean it used to be that you know if you go back thousands of years you know before the scientific revolution and and everything that's occurred since it's the life itself seemed enchanted and populated by you know spirits and and the divine and for people who today have like a very mystical sensibility they still they still feel that way about about the world they i remember a spiritual teacher telling my dad that you know when he looks out at a tree he doesn't see a tree he sees the face of god and so i think some people still have that sensibility but it used to be that a lot more people did and that and now as you know the science is kind of disenchanted life and religion is no longer central to people's lives as it once was all of these ways that transcendence was programmed into our life are no longer there and i think this yearning is really uh is reflected by the growth of what we we see this kind of growing population who identifies as spiritual but not religious which is like a really interesting phenomenon in itself and at the same time people are finding ways to kind of satisfy this piece of of of you know the human condition and so i think the growth of meditation is a really is actually an indicator of this yearning for transcendence and it being satisfied today um i think the growth of kind of exercise and the fitness industry is another because you know one way to experience transcendence is in spiritual practice whether it's meditation or prayer or you know singing any kind of thing that takes you beyond yourself but another way is through states of flow which you get in uh you know exercise oftentimes people experience it in their work as well and what these two different modes of transcendence share in common is this loss of self that comes by being totally immersed in another type of experience whether it's an experience with a sacred or an experience of moving your body in sync with another person's um or an experience of being so absorbed in in your work that you lose all sense of time and place and what's really interesting about these experiences too is that when people have them they say that they are among the most meaningful experiences of their lives and they don't have to even be very long experiences oftentimes they're really short and fleeting and yet they kind of fill people with this sense of of peacefulness you hear people say all of my you know anxieties and worries that were you know filling up my mind before have dissipated and i feel more at peace with the world more at one with the world i have a deeper perspective i'm more in touch with my values so there's something about them that really that transforms our perspective and uh leaves us with this deeper sense of peace that is what i appreciated so much about your work in theological circles and even on an interfaith basis transcendence is so often put on the other side of a spectrum from imminence or basically an escapist encounter with the divine versus a present experience in the body and what i appreciated about your framing of transcendence it was like anything that draws drew us to a sense that there is there's more to life um and that can happen in kind of a an expansive way or a very intimate and close way i love the way that you included a meditative experience and embodied experience as examples of transcendence and it made me think about how often we as people attach our belonging to the ways in which we permit ourselves to experience transcendence you know when i was a religious fundamentalist for me uh transcendence only meant like uh worship music and worship experiences in the church and then i lost my faith and i became an atheist and so suddenly i could find my transcendence through amateur astronomy and stargazing something that my community approved of and then another belonging click and i moved a little bit toward mysticism and i got really into meditation and i got a lot of joy in this kind of personal pursuit of the sacred without naming it specifically and then i've gone uh kind of full circle without actually landing where i was and today uh in addition to all those things i also find a great enjoyment with liturgical traditions in a variety of faith settings and what i've been learning is i don't have to attach my belonging to the ways in which i experience transcendence in fact if there's some particular ritual that i enjoy that doesn't actually fit within my sociocultural belonging it doesn't matter if it brings me that sense of of meaning and purpose i don't have to define it and i don't have to master it and um the power of meaning helped give me permission to do that yeah i'm so glad to hear that and i think i think you're right i mean transcendence adds kind of a third dimension to life this depth that we wouldn't otherwise experience as we just kind of go through day-to-day life you know dealing with what we're dealing with as we go through day-to-day life and you know even if it's just for a few moments every day to pause to get in touch with something in the present that's sacred or beyond us that's sacred i think it can make a big difference emily i just i can't tell you how honored i am that you joined us today i i so respect your work and i don't know you but what i see from your work and from your public experiences i just admire and respect you so deeply for my friends listening right now i just want you to know that in 43 minutes of a podcast we have just barely scratched not even the surface of this body of work and so i'd like to invite you to go deeper i'd like to encourage you to head to ask sciencemike.com and go to the show notes where you will find a link to emily esfani smith's website from there you can not only watch the ted talk if you want to go a little deeper and then i would encourage you from there to click over and the power of meaning is available not only as a printed book but as an ebook and as an audiobook if you're an audible user you can use audible credits to get the book at no additional cost as well i can tell you that this book and the person who wrote it has been instrumental in my growth and transformation recently and i believe that the same could happen for you emily again thank you for joining us today thank you so much for having me it was really such a wonderful conversation and i'm i i likewise really respect and admire you and your work so really it's been an honor for me as well thanks so much well my friends i hope you enjoyed that conversation as much as i did uh it was a delight for me to speak with emily about her work and a real privilege and i hope that it was a worthwhile use of your time today as i said at the beginning of the program we're going to do more of these more these conversations with the thinkers and researchers and authors and communicators whose work has so deeply impacted and influenced my work and my life over the last few years as always ask science mike was brought to you by an amazing team of people starting with my patrons those are the people who not only donate money every month to make this show financially possible but they also work how do they work they vote on the questions that go on the show they give me feedback on overall ideas and direction for the program and if you'd like to join them you can visit ask sciencemic.com and learn all about how to do so in addition to my wonderful patrons i'd like to thank caitlin hermstad for producing ass science mike greg northeam uh for production and sound design andrew golucky for pre-production brent cradle for management services and as always jeb boniford for writing and recording the ask science mic theme song thank you all so much for listening and i'll talk to you again next week