Research by social and cognitive psychologists suggests additional ways to help clients enhance their meaning in life, including:
- Mentally distancing oneself from an event. Inducing people to think about the past or future versus the present, or to think specifically about a location different from the one they're in, enhances their self-reported meaning in life, according to research by psychologists Adam Waytz, PhD, of Northwestern University, Hal E. Hershfield, PhD, of the University of California, Los Angeles, and Diana I. Tamir, PhD, of Princeton. The reason, it seems, is that people tend to imagine more profound or meaningful events the more removed they are from the present reality, which they assess as more mundane than events beyond the here and now, say the authors (Journal of Personality and Social Psychologyopens in new window, Vol. 108, No. 2, 2015).
- Thinking nostalgically about the past. Priming people's sentimental affection for the past helps them access their most authentic selves, also known as the "true self," a concept that is associated with higher reported meaning in life, finds a series of studies by Matthew Baldwin, PhD, of the University of Cologne, and Monica R. Biernat, PhD, and Mark J. Landau, PhD, of the University of Kansas (Journal of Personality and Social Psychologyopens in new window, Vol. 108, No. 1, 2015).
- Using counterfactual thinking. The term "counterfactual thinking" refers to people's "what if?" tendency to imagine alternate paths to a particular life event or choice. In a study by Samantha J. Heintzelman, PhD, of the University of Virginia, and colleagues, people who wrote about their birth by imagining it took place differently than it actually did evaluated their lives more favorably than people who did so in a factual manner (The Journal of Positive Psychologyopens in new window, Vol. 8, No. 1, 2013).
- Creating more order in your life. Seeing beautiful pictures of trees in seasonal order prompts a greater sense of meaning than viewing the same pictures in random order, finds research by Heintzelman, Laura A. King, PhD, of the University of Missouri, and Jason Trent, PhD, of Marist College in Poughkeepsie, New York (Psychological Scienceopens in new window, Vol. 24, No. 6, 2013).
"Stability and regularity in life are often ignored when we think about a meaningful life," says Heintzelman. "But our ability to make sense of the things going on around us is really important for the experience of meaning." —Tori DeAngelis
