Discover The Meaning In Your Life For Greater Happiness

One of the biggest factors in a happy, thriving life is meaning. Knowing your ‘why’, you can get through any ‘how.’ This show was previously aired in 2022, however it’s one of my all-time favorite episodes as the content is simple, actionable & significant.
Topics covered…
Why is meaning so important for us?
How do you discover your meaning in life?
Are there individual differences in terms of how much we need meaning?
Why is it important to be aware of your core beliefs or ‘givens’?
What are the 3 levels of core beliefs?
How do you identify your core beliefs?
Which core beliefs serve us best for success? For happiness?
Bio:
Dr. Michael F. Steger is Professor of Psychology and the Director for the Center for Meaning and Purpose at Colorado State University. He is an internationally recognized authority on the benefits of finding meaning in one’s life and in one’s work. Dr. Steger is a sought after speaker and enjoys providing keynotes, workshops, and retreats around the world on topics ranging from meaning and purpose, flourishing at work, positive education, effective leadership, expanding clinical practice by incorporating meaning and purpose assessment and interventions. He is the developer of the most widely-used measures of meaning and purpose in the world, including the Meaning in Life Questionnaire and the Work and Meaning Inventory. He has written three books, including Designing Positive Psychology, Purpose and Meaning in the Workplace, and the Handbook of Positivity and Strengths-Based Approaches at Work. Dr. Steger offers a number of online courses on elevating success in work and life, including his newest course, Meaning in the Moment, taught through the Wholebeing Institute.

If you’d like to listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts, click here.

If you’d rather read through the transcript, it has been included below for your ongoing growth, education and happiness.

Discover Your Meaning For More Happiness In Life w/ Dr. Michael Steger Transcript

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: [00:00:00] Hey everybody and welcome back to the Evolved Caveman podcast. This is Dr. John and it is my distinct privilege to have with me today Michael Steger. And Michael is professor of psychology and the director for the Center of Meaning and Purpose at Colorado State University. He’s an internationally recognized authority on the benefits of finding meaning in one’s life and in one’s work.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: Dr. Stager is a sought after speaker, enjoys providing keynotes, workshops, and retreats around the world on topics ranging from meaning and purpose, flourishing at work, positive education, effective leadership, and expanding clinical practice by incorporating meaning and purpose assessment and interventions.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: He is the developer of the most widely used measures of meaning and purpose in the world, including the Meaning in Life questionnaire and the Work and Meaning Inventory. He has been published in over 130 peer reviewed journal articles and book chapters. That’s quite a lot. [00:01:00] Dr. Steger offers a number of online courses on elevating success in work and life, including his newest course, Meaning in the Moment, taught through the Whole Being Institute.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: Michael, welcome aboard. Thank you for joining me. 

Dr. Michael Steger: Thanks, Dr. John. 

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: I appreciate you being here. So Tell me what you look like at your very best starting with that struggle and ending with overcoming it 

Dr. Michael Steger: Yeah so I think that coming to grips with who I am and what I’m good at and what I’m terrible at Is a lifelong process but it but that whole Reckoning with oneself seems, I think, is actually where I’m at my best, like just being brutally honest with myself, my flaws and where I’m not, in another sense, not making the most of the gifts and blessings I have in my life.

Dr. Michael Steger: So I think it’s really You know, messing up, thinking I can do something that I can’t getting out there, making mistakes in front of people, usually, which is more exciting in some sense, and then processing that. I have [00:02:00] a, I have high openness to experience and low conscientiousness to my personality.

Dr. Michael Steger: So I’m often just this will probably work. And then that’s not true often. But then the process that emerges after that, I think, cause I have a lot of. curiosity. I think I’m reasonably creative. I’m pretty comfortable, I think, now being vulnerable. So having that chance to, to just try something on the fly make a joke, backtrack from the joke.

Dr. Michael Steger: They’re always digestive. There’s nothing like particularly like blue about my comedy, but I do get fascinated by that digestive system. Like that, I think that process is me where I don’t have a lot of filters. I don’t have a lot of, I don’t have a lot of guard up.

Dr. Michael Steger: So when I’m there, people are getting, they’re getting me, they’re not getting a polished from the can speech. And I think I’ve I’ve tried really hard to have a good heart. So I’m not out there to try and hurt anybody, make them feel uncomfortable or stupid. So I think that works because I don’t want to feel uncomfortable or stupid either.

Dr. Michael Steger: So we all just feel like, [00:03:00] Oh, things happen. 

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: Yeah, that’s awesome. Thank you for sharing that. And so how did you get into studying meaning? 

Dr. Michael Steger: I think in some sense, it goes back to that. Me at my best. It just seems like a natural thing for me to want to be curious about. I grew up in an area that, man, it just seemed like everyone was playing from the same script, like growing up in the.

Dr. Michael Steger: In the 70s and 80s and in a rural area of the country, everyone just seemed to be on board with stuff even when there were big problems going on, like local farms are collapsing, Ford Ranger plant and St. Paul was shutting down, like all these sorts of things were happening.

Dr. Michael Steger: People were still weirdly on the same script about what we’re supposed to do when what people are like and That just rubbed me the wrong way, I just thought that this can’t be, we can’t be this smart that we figured out everything in the universe and everyone around me is right.

Dr. Michael Steger: So 

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: what’s the same script that you refer to? 

Dr. Michael Steger: The same script is so these are the keys to success, right? So you get your hair right, you get a giant esprit [00:04:00] sweater. This is hopefully bringing some folks back. You have your collar up. You grow a mullet if you’re where I’m from. And, if you can afford a Mustang at some point.

Dr. Michael Steger: That was 

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: not success where I came from. 

Dr. Michael Steger: The mullet in 

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: particular. 

Dr. Michael Steger: That’s exactly my point then, right? Because how could all these people think they’re doing the exact right thing all the time. And they’re doing things that are not the same as what other people are doing.

Dr. Michael Steger: What are the odds that this backwater place in rural Minnesota found the answers to life and didn’t ever have to question it. We just all had to conform to this thing. I was like that’s just weird, right? I had my mullet. I had my pastel sweater. I did not have a Ford Mustang. I had a really old farmer car.

Dr. Michael Steger: And I just I just thought this is, I don’t, A, I didn’t fit in particularly well. So then I’m either going to decide that I’m an idiot or everyone else is. And at that time in my life, I was much more comfortable deciding everyone else was an idiot instead of me. And so I was like I bet I can. I bet there’s other answers out there.

Dr. Michael Steger: And I was a nerdy kid. So I was reading a lot. I was reading a lot of sci fi, a lot about, like these entry [00:05:00] level religion books is it hard to buy Herman Hess? Yeah. Great 

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: classic. 

Dr. Michael Steger: Yeah. I, for whatever reason, I got really big into Dostoevsky in like sophomore year and was getting into that stuff.

Dr. Michael Steger: Boy, you were a nerd. Yeah. No, I embraced it. You were reading that in high school? I not only was reading that in high school, this is gonna, I’m never gonna get another job in my life, but this is where it came from. I actually had to practice my violin. Like every day for something like six weeks in order to earn crime and punishment by Dostoevsky.

Dr. Michael Steger: Oh my god. Yeah. Yeah. That started, that system broke down once I became more successful as a runner and a swimmer. But I had some other outlet. But yeah, that was that was my world. And I tried to engage people in conversations with it, which no one likes. Like no one wants to be like Who wants to talk 

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: about Dostoevsky?

Dr. Michael Steger: Seriously. Crime and 

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: punishment. 

Dr. Michael Steger: I know. They’re just lucky I wasn’t into my Camus phase, like I’ve been reading the play. Oh, yeah. I’ve been reading The Plague. Yeah. I’ve been reading The Plague during this pandemic. Waiting for Godot. That’s one [00:06:00] of my favorites, too, by Beckett. Yeah. Yeah. All these existential classics.

Dr. Michael Steger: Yeah. And there was just this idea that, so let’s just use Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. In a sense, this is an exploration of moral relativism, right? So if we decide that there isn’t a script to follow, then what? Like, how far would you push that? Would you kill an old woman? Would you think you can get away with it?

Dr. Michael Steger: Would there still be guilt? Is there something in us that drives us towards something that’s good and reasonable? Or are we really just unfettered, savage piranhas? And Yeah, the Hobbesian 

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: view of human nature. 

Dr. Michael Steger: Yeah, so I was really fascinated by that and I thought, there’s got to be a medium between Everyone conforming to the mullets and mustangs view of success And everyone being just in it for themselves.

Dr. Michael Steger: So so what is that? What would that look like? And where would you look for that? So I was I was an altar boy catholic trying to understand all this sort of stuff and also just very skeptical of almost everything that was handed to me. I was like everyone knows this is true.

Dr. Michael Steger: I would [00:07:00] automatically be like, this does not sound true then, it’s 

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: funny. Cause I thank you for sharing that because it’s, you kept mentioning this same script. And for me, the same script is, you go to school, you get good grades, you get in the best college that you can, you get good grades there, you get the best job that you can, you get married.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: You have kids, you make money, you make more money, you get promoted, and then you retire at 65, and then you’re happy. That’s the script I saw. And I was like, that is complete and utter bullshit. 

Dr. Michael Steger: Yeah, it just doesn’t work. I think that script was insane too. I never jumped on that one. It just, I think, it’s easy to look back in retrospect and say that, the good person in those scripts is fulfilling part of a bargain that The other side was no longer intending to fulfill, right?

Dr. Michael Steger: You work a job for 35 years, you get your watch, you get your pension, you retire. Yeah, fat chance, right? If you’re going into the workforce in the late 80s, early 90s, that’s [00:08:00] just not a thing. It’s easy to look back and say yeah, I was just picking up on these massive, socioeconomic trends.

Dr. Michael Steger: But I think I was just aggravated by annoying people. And they were aggravated by me because I was annoying too. It was just like you’re dumb. I was, I’m going to find a different way. And just because I was really after, in a sense what is this really all about?

Dr. Michael Steger: Not as, not what is high school all about, not what is, the corn processing plant or the plate glass factory in my town all about. What is the mullet all about? It’s a, all business up in front and then a party in the back. So that’s what it’s all about. Yeah. So I had one of those and then, as an act of ultimate rebellion, revealing the fact that I was, again, This is killing my career, but I was a Rush fan in high school, so I turned that Oh, wait, how does that kill your career?

Dr. Michael Steger: Rush is awesome. Oh, I don’t know. They were Not always the coolest, but, No, not always the coolest. And here’s a It 

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: was a geek band, but amazing. 2112, great album. 

Dr. Michael Steger: Absolutely. Yeah. You want to, you don’t want to be at the happy hours I have with my brother where we debate all of the [00:09:00] Rush albums prior to 1986.

Dr. Michael Steger: But, it’s like that sort of thing. So I turned my mullet into a rat tail in honor of Neil Peart. And this is, and then, and the next hairstyle I had was like full on as long as I could get my hair, which it gets curly. Now I’m 

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: jealous. Cause you could grow hair. 

Dr. Michael Steger: When I was 20, who knows what could happen.

Dr. Michael Steger: And even when I was 20, I couldn’t. Maybe one of those, like You could have maybe done something with some braids, maybe, John, I think, I could have been, I don’t know, West Coast. No, 

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: well, West Coast. Yes. German family. Yes. It was genetic, I think, 

Dr. Michael Steger: but I think, so if I’m really going to try and connect all the dots it’s essentially this idea that is a super ancient idea.

Dr. Michael Steger: Like you have to know yourself. And the only why the only path to wisdom is thinking is realizing you don’t really know anything. Yeah. So those are his mind. Yeah. Yeah, it’s just like a quest, right? You just have your eyes open and try to process with fidelity what you’re experiencing and seeing and then Try to develop that moral compass so that when you [00:10:00] have a choice about rejecting or accepting some kind of truth you accept the ones that will Make you better for your own sake and for others sake and you reject the ones that make it worse 

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: It’s funny to me because I remember, I majored in philosophy in undergrad and I thought for many years that was a complete waste of time, other than I enjoyed it.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: And then, it’s funny how it comes full circle 20 years later to positive psychology with, I think it was Aristotle’s question of what is the good life and eudaimonia. Yeah. Yeah. I think there’s this intersection of, morals, virtues, ethics, and meaning that really does lead to a good life.

Dr. Michael Steger: Yeah, and it’s particularly important, I think, at this time in our history because so your podcast is the Evolved Caveman. And, if you think about what the meaningful life would have been a hundred thousand years ago, or, even a million years ago when our sort of like tiniest little hominid ancestors were apparently.

Dr. Michael Steger: [00:11:00] Scraping patterns into rocks, right? Like just crazy stuff was going on forever. And what is the impulse that makes someone a million years ago create a crosshatch on a stone pulping tool or scraping tool? What is the impulse a hundred thousand years ago that is going to have people carving holes into the art, the leg bone of a, I don’t even know what they’re hiding.

Dr. Michael Steger: Old bison, giant bison. And, what is the impulse that we had? a thousand years ago to create gothic cathedrals and romanesque cathedrals and all these sorts of things and now what’s our impulse to make a life that seems like it has that extra step beyond just surviving and when we’re at a time now when so much is changing so much is falling by the wayside i’d like to think about the idea that You know, we’re, we’ve honed whatever social abilities that we have to become extremely effective at just destroying and plowing under like ancient millennia old paths to meaning or [00:12:00] supports for meaning.

Dr. Michael Steger: And we’re coming up with not that much to replace it. So we look to philosophy. 

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: So well, let’s move forward a little bit in history and let’s talk about how the work of like Viktor Frankl and Irv Yellam enter into your. 

Dr. Michael Steger: Yeah, so these are two giants in existential thinking. We’ve mentioned a couple others.

Dr. Michael Steger: You’ve mentioned Sarsha, I mentioned Camus, and in a sense, a hundred years ago, folks were looking at a world that seems really eerily similar to what we’re facing now, right? A global pandemic, raging out of control in some parts of the world, violence and armed conflict, economic depression, and just like Audacious economic inequalities, right?

Dr. Michael Steger: Gaps between the middle and the top and at that time, in the aftermath of World War I, folks couldn’t really come to grips with what they’d just seen like the trance warfare, the people dying suffocating in the mud in Belgium, the just [00:13:00] endless destruction the use, the widespread use of, gas mustard gas, poisons, indiscriminate killings over, no one could really articulate exactly what was at stake in that war too.

Dr. Michael Steger: So you had this experience of Seeing so clearly that the established systems were not providing the type of outcomes you would anticipate they ought to have. And that sort of birthed these folks like Camus and Sartre what the hell, right? What, if we can’t rely on government, we can’t rely on religious institutions, we can’t rely on mayors and social groups and armies and politicians to figure out what’s going on, we’re really on our own.

Dr. Michael Steger: And this is a, this is a, an alarming idea. So anytime you choose to believe that one particular way of doing things is correct, let’s, let’s take religions, right? You just, you choose that your religion has the view of truth. And if it doesn’t match another religion, then they’re wrong.

Dr. Michael Steger: To recognize someone else could be wrong in this question is to also recognize that [00:14:00] you yourself might be wrong in this question. So where do you start in trying to create this idea of enough certainty to keep getting up in the morning? Or as Camus said, the biggest problem facing philosophy is why don’t we just all kill ourselves?

Dr. Michael Steger: What keeps us going? If yeah, one of the classic questions, yeah, if there’s no it’s a really good question actually as a practical question in a sense side of 

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: it 

Dr. Michael Steger: is good too. Why should we live for? What should we live for? What? Yeah. So that’s, you already answered part of the question, right? So we assume that we should live for something and recognizing that’s in us, that desire is in us is essentially where Frankel started with his view of the human being.

Dr. Michael Steger: So this, he was part of the sort of second wave of Freud’s circle arguing with Adler over what the central motivations of a human are. Is it pleasure, as Freud says, or is it power, social power, as Adler says? And he said, no, the central motivating force within a human is meaning, a will.

Dr. Michael Steger: To meaning a will to have that. What am I living for? And he was super [00:15:00] inspired by Nietzsche’s work, that which does not can we makes me stronger was big in his mind and Frankel’s mind, but also if you have a why you can get through anyhow. This idea that if you have a what for, you can get up that morning, you can get through your day.

Dr. Michael Steger: And so that was his perspective, which was beginning to be articulated as a psychological idea instead of a philosophical or a theological idea, which ended up being really. really powerful because his interest eventually was in helping people discover or uncover, in his view, what that purpose for them was.

Dr. Michael Steger: And then, of course, World War II came along, and the Nazis came to power, and they began to launch anti Semitic campaigns and, of course, accelerate into the Holocaust, where, millions of folks were killed, and in particular Jews, and particularly Jewish intellectuals like Viktor Frankl himself.

Dr. Michael Steger: So the Holocaust occurs, he goes, he travels between four different concentration camps. [00:16:00] He never sees his family members again, the rest of his life. And he goes into that experience with the idea that if I have a why for this, I can get through any how. So this is if you have a tattoo on your body, pain is weakness leaving the body or something like that.

Dr. Michael Steger: Take it to the maximum. That’s what essentially Frankel had to do. And he came through that experience with this incredible book that everyone ought to read. It’s called Man’s Search for Meaning. You could at least read the first half, which is his autobiographical observations of life in the concentration camps and what separated those who couldn’t make it from those who somehow pulled through in his mind and in his observations.

Dr. Michael Steger: It was the people who had something on the other side of this experience that was worth getting through this experience. So it really was that idea from Nietzsche. And then he became this incredibly inspirational figure. His book is still I think it’s like in the top 50 on Amazon today.

Dr. Michael Steger: It was originally scribbled as a manuscript in the thirties, right? So just super inspiring. And he did endless lectures, some of which are on YouTube and they’re just fascinating to watch. [00:17:00] And this idea that. Yeah, we’re really creatures of meaning. That is what makes us different from, even other noble apes or other animals or people in their worst cases.

Dr. Michael Steger: We are struggling for this sense that our life will be about something, that our life will matter, that our life will be, glorious in some abstract way. And so that was this essential idea. And if you can tap into that, a lot of other things fade into perspective. 

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: Okay, so pretend I’m a, an obtuse 15 year old.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: With a mullet. And I am trying to make sense of life. How would you help me to understand what meaning is and why it’s important? First I’d say, hello, stylish young 

Dr. Michael Steger: man. I think you’ve got a successful life ahead of you.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: Was that a sex cessful life? I’m, there’s a I’m not 

Dr. Michael Steger: touching down that. That’s a This is, I assume this is 

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: The mullet was the hairdo of choice to get women back in the day.

Dr. Michael Steger: It works better if you have a Mustang than if you have an [00:18:00] ancient Oldsmobile. But, still it’s a wise choice, even in today’s world. But, so I did do this. This was my job. So my first job outside of, so I had a roundabout path to where I’m at now. I’ve never really had a career plan.

Dr. Michael Steger: I’ve just gone with what seemed like it was the right choice in life. And that led me at one point to being a drug and alcohol counselor in high school, doing family therapy and drug and alcohol screening. And I really wanted to say that exact, I really wanted to talk about meaning in life.

Dr. Michael Steger: I didn’t want to talk about gossip and, who’s trashing. Is the phrase back then was like talking schmack? Like I can’t even tell you how many times it was just talking schmack was going on So that was driving me nuts and I would try to engage folks in conversations about meaning And I think it is a much different landscape now than it was in the mid 90s even late 90s in terms of that question with teenagers because I can have those conversations with my kids and their friends now that I couldn’t have and maybe i’m just better at that but I think that they’re attuned to this idea that It’s, we have to confront on some level whether life has [00:19:00] a purpose and what is worth sacrificing to that.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: And I’ve heard that with millennials, that they want meaningful work on the whole. Yeah. I think there is this turning towards meaning and a need for meaning because I think we do have to offset that anxiety of meaninglessness. 

Dr. Michael Steger: Yeah, so having these conversations with teens is really, I think right now, it’s a great time to do it.

Dr. Michael Steger: You can start earlier. I’ve had, I’ve gone and talked to schools that are trying to launch positive education programs, primarily in Australia, but in other places, and one of the big in there is where do you start? And how do you have these conversations without talking about Heidegger and, Wittgenstein and all these other weird, super grouchy looking.

Dr. Michael Steger: Two of my favorites. Yeah. Yeah, they don’t look like they’re fun at parties. One of the webinars I had I explained one of the problems with meeting in life is grouchy philosopher syndrome. And I tried to find like a frisky looking picture of. Albert Camus or Simone de Beauvoir and [00:20:00] frisky.

Dr. Michael Steger: Yeah. Just let’s see. Let’s see what You got there Simone and like the lampshade on his head kind of a thing or even us leaving like one corner of the mouth smiling That would be frisky for these folks. So there is this sort of stench of seriousness and ostentatiousness and irrelevant adult time wasting this about meaning if it’s Talked about in that fashion like we’ve done so far all my fault so if we get really practical about it, though, like the there’s three dimensions that the Researchers seem to be really fixated on and in agreement about and maybe there’s more maybe we can parse them into little smaller boxes But right now you can get pretty far thinking about just three ideas.

Dr. Michael Steger: So the first idea is Coherence, right? Does life make sense? Can I create like a mental map or a mental model or a like a core belief system from cognitive therapy or a schema from cognitive psychology? Do I have something that helps the world feel [00:21:00] predictable and somewhat consistent and controllable?

Dr. Michael Steger: So there’s that idea, like life is meaningful if it makes sense. Then the second idea is purpose, right? Am I, pursuing something worthy of this sort of experience of life that I have. What’s this overarching, centrally organizing set of long term goal or goals that I’m willing to throw my effort at, whether I get there or not.

Dr. Michael Steger: And then the third idea is significance. Does life have value? Is my own life worthwhile? Do I matter? And if you start thinking about those as maybe being able to build on each other, then you look back at this, at these ideas of Carl Rogers, positive regard, unconditional positive regard, and the idea of like parental love.

Dr. Michael Steger: That’s really building a sense of significance, right? So 15 year old mullet guy hopefully has a, or mullet woman, I’m not, I don’t, it doesn’t have to be a particular stereotype here, like 15 year old, hope ideally feels Their lives matter. It matters that they’re there and not that they’re not there.

Dr. Michael Steger: That there’s [00:22:00] something worthwhile about this experience and that there’s something of value in their own lives. So that’s actually a core part of meaning and how do you express that? Express that with helping people find a sense of belonging, helping people find a sense that they have capabilities within themselves.

Dr. Michael Steger: There’s a lot of different ways like just bonding is really important. You can also look at that 15 year old and folks younger and say so help me understand what your life path has been like what’s your story? Like where who’s in your life? What’s the world look like to you? Like this idea that what have you formed in terms of your mental model about life and where you fit in with that and getting a positive version of that.

Dr. Michael Steger: So a lot of folks these days, it’s shocking. I’ll be picking up, usually it’s my daughter from school. And like the teenage will just like. stroll into the street in front of oncoming traffic, looking at their phones, blah, blah, blah. I’m like, of course because I’m a grouchy old man.

Dr. Michael Steger: I was a grouchy old man when I had a mullet. So I’ve been a grouchy old man for a long time. And I’m like, what is, what are these people [00:23:00] thinking? What is wrong with them? And my daughter’s yeah, kids from our generation, we don’t really care if we live or we die. It’s just, the world’s gonna end and it’s gonna be horrible.

Dr. Michael Steger: Like she, she constantly talks about the fact that if a zombie apocalypse comes, she’s really not gonna, she’s not gonna waste her time trying to survive any longer. She’ll just be like, bite me, or who knows? Like this idea that that’s actually a world model, isn’t it? That’s like a mental model of the world that it’s so bad out there.

Dr. Michael Steger: And folks like Gen X and the Boomers have so badly bungled it that It’s almost not worth going through the trouble of fixing it anymore. Might as well just Bungled it. 

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: That’s a nice phrase. I think, it’s funny because I’ve got some depressed 20 somethings that would be happy in the event of a nuclear war.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: Yeah. Because they don’t have to take their own lives, but they’d 

Dr. Michael Steger: be dead. Yeah, from a moral perspective, they did what was asked of them. And they never gave up, but they don’t have to keep not giving up. It’s really hard, right? And then purpose, of course, for a [00:24:00] 15 year old or a 20 year old in those cases is what do you essentially that old if you think about twisted sister I want to rock the old video that I’m sure shocked.

Dr. Michael Steger: A lot of us with mullets back in those days. What do you want to do with your life? What are you living your life for? And trying to find something that feels. Both personal enough and important enough that it’s worth kind of dedicating some of what you do to that’s a challenge too for folks.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: It’s interesting. It makes me think of one of the gifts that my parents gave me, which was this. They instilled this belief in me from a young age that you are to leave the world a better place than you found it. Yeah, right on. And it’s broad enough to find your own meaning and purpose.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: And it also was narrow enough to keep me going. During difficult times in high school, right? Like I knew that there was something bigger for me on the other side, but I had to get through this, at the time, difficult time. 

Dr. Michael Steger: Yeah. Yeah it’s a balancing act, right? Because on one hand, to have a meaningful life, you’re supposed to be very authentic and honest about what and experience.[00:25:00] 

Dr. Michael Steger: And at the same time, you’re supposed to be able to say yeah, that looks pretty bad. And I just really screwed that up. Or I can’t believe I can’t get control of my anger yet and yet at the same time you’re supposed to say and with all that life is still both precious and worth investing in and worth going through the hardship for the cause of, it’s what’s surprising about all this.

Dr. Michael Steger: I know that it feels like I’m starting to load up a lot of chores on people in order to have a meaningful life. But what’s really surprising is that. Most people think that their lives are meaningful around the world. That is the norm, despite everything that’s going on, despite how tricky it can be to navigate this question once you open the box.

Dr. Michael Steger: Once you open the box, you’re like, hey, what is, what does make my life meaningful? You’re like and that uncomfortable pause starts to freak you out a little bit. We’re still pretty good at that. And actually I’m gonna say John that this is part of our evolution that this is [00:26:00] you know as much as I think this is a personally a spiritual or a Very personal or even like like an inspiring journey, I think that meaning in some ways is It’s one of those things that we evolved accidentally to do, like math or, calculus, right?

Dr. Michael Steger: So we evolved cognitive capacity to understand a world and importantly, important to that was understanding other people, right? We wanted to know what they thought what they were going to do, if their eyebrows went down, if they went up, what’s going to happen next. So we were able to predict the world based on little cues and why wouldn’t we go from trying to predict what the biggest and strongest caveman in our group was going to do to what that storm cloud’s going to do or to what the sun’s going to do next year.

Dr. Michael Steger: And we, so we started like extrapolating this idea that we can begin to. Not only just understand who’s right in front of us, but we can understand everything that’s around us. And so I think that it’s ingrained in us to create these [00:27:00] models of the world that have a place for us in it somewhere. So I think it is really just a natural thing to strive for.

Dr. Michael Steger: And we really just want to know how to use that is the key for everybody. And we want to know how to rebuild that. is the key for people who are really suffering. 

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: Yeah, and one of the things that crosses my mind, you were talking about grouchy old man and the seriousness of some of these philosophers like Wittgenstein.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: Where is there a place for things like humor and laughter in meaning? This is just a question for me. 

Dr. Michael Steger: Yeah. I think so. So this kind of goes to the idea of how I make sense of the world, right? So part of it is I need to understand myself. Part of it is I need to understand other people. You need to understand other people at different scales, right?

Dr. Michael Steger: From you and me talking. But I also have to have in the back of my mind that other people will be listening. So I can’t reveal all the dark secrets you told me earlier and all this sort of stuff. So we understand the world and our place in it, [00:28:00] how to interact, how to transact, how to move through that space.

Dr. Michael Steger: And part of it is for me to feel like life is going in the right direction. I feel like I have to be, I gotta be me, right? I want to be free to me, and I want you to be free to you, be you, as long as the you, you’re being, and the me I’m being isn’t a huge jerk. Then of course, I want you to express that which is unique and wonderful about you and whatever it is, like there’s something about me that I’ve.

Dr. Michael Steger: Always just had to try to make things funny or at least funny ish, right? Like it’s like any to make to take the shot 

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: You 

Dr. Michael Steger: got it. 

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: Those shots aren’t always gonna fall which is fascinating to me, too. 

Dr. Michael Steger: Yeah. No, I know that I’ve know that with a lot of first hand experience. Yeah, especially with my kids they Teenagers 

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: will grill 

Dr. Michael Steger: you they sweat.

Dr. Michael Steger: These are like I’ve got more than a decade of my kids telling me I, I don’t understand why people think you’re funny, dad. But I think for me that’s where it’s at. Because in a sense, you can get super philosophical about the philosophy of humor.

Dr. Michael Steger: Like why are things funny? Which is interesting, right? Because [00:29:00] it’s usually about insight. And it’s about juxtaposition, which are all very existential therapeutic things, right? It’s to get insight into where you’re at, to juxtapose, like absurdities, or you say you want to do this, but instead you do that, and blah, blah, blah, blah.

Dr. Michael Steger: So humor is a naturally meaningful thing, and actually, if you think about it, humor might be the most meaning filled thing that we do, other than abstract expressionist art or something or emotional music because it does have nothing in it other than this Concoction I have in my head that I abstractly reason will land At a similarly shaped concoction in your head and then we all just make this weird gasping noise and it’s like a big party just think about that without meaning it’s literally impossible to do that So I think that’s really great and I think that the new Approach to it is a lot.

Dr. Michael Steger: A new approach to me is a lot less like you must understand that life is meaningless and it is your [00:30:00] job to find meaning while you are alone in the universe and no one understands you and you will die, right? There’s a little bit less of that. I think a lot more of yeah. That turns some people off.

Dr. Michael Steger: I don’t know why, but it’s an exciting proposition to me, like instead It’s, I like to start with the little stuff. I like to start with the meaning. I think humor is an amazing example of how meaning just pops out of nothing, right into existence. There was nothing there and then there’s something funny.

Dr. Michael Steger: So like this idea of like. How do I travel through life without the incredible burden of Being the next Nelson Mandela or Martin Luther King jr. How do I go through life and just have a me sized purpose and still be okay with that? I think that’s built out of like I’m seeing how your dreams and aspirations for the life that you can live and the person you can become Actually finds root in how you do things today and the next day and in this moment and it’s it can be very light hearted Like I use I expand on this idea of [00:31:00] savoring like a very like what can start with Mindful eating and then I like I spend an entire hour in one of my classes I teach just on this idea of how savoring can be an inherently meaning filled and meaning giving Act if we just turn it if we just turn it inside out a little bit so it doesn’t have to be so serious 

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: It’s fascinating to me because I think of humor as often the violation of social norms or the violation of expectations which kind of speaks to or gets to the violation of those mental maps that we’ve created to make sense of the world.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: And in so doing, it causes us to question those mental maps. Is this accurate? Is this true for me? But I think that, to me, life is meaningless without humor. 

Dr. Michael Steger: Yeah. Yeah, totally. I think so too. And let me just push a little bit, because I think you’re onto something really important. If events cause us to question our mental maps or our meaning systems, we typically We’ll feel pretty annoyed by that, or agitated, [00:32:00] or anxious, or overwhelmed.

Dr. Michael Steger: Defensive, we push back, we’re like, no way, that’s not happening, that’s not real. I read a conspiracy on the internet. And then you don’t 

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: take in the new information. 

Dr. Michael Steger: You don’t take in the new information. But if you can get to the point where you actually do question the mental map you’re using, if it’s uncomfortable, okay.

Dr. Michael Steger: If it’s not uncomfortable, okay. But you’re going to build the skills. That you need in order to create a version of that model, that meaning system, that fits the life you are actually in, as well as the life that you want to be in. So you’re building those skills. It’s not just an accident, the way that you view life.

Dr. Michael Steger: It’s the way that you have chosen to view life.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: I need to breathe . That’s very deep. Okay, so you didn’t imagine Rhoda saying that 15-year-old with a mullet. I imagine so let me get to, I, one of the questions that I really wanted to get to, ’cause [00:33:00] I imagine people out there, if they’re listening and they don’t have a purpose or they lack meaning or they wanna find more purpose and meaning in their life.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: How would I go about doing that? How do I identify my purpose? 

Dr. Michael Steger: Yeah, so I would say that you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. There’s thousands of years of human per persevere, perseveration, . I dunno if that sounds quite right, right now. But on, on this very question what is life for?

Dr. Michael Steger: So you don’t have to, you don’t have to create it from nothing. So I would say that there’s just a couple, there’s just a couple ideas. The first thing is shift away from. Mentally solving the problem of life and shift towards doing things in life. So shift away from thinking about life and move towards living life.

Dr. Michael Steger: And then if you’re, yeah, if you’re curious about what you’re supposed to do, start with something good. Seems, this should be pretty straightforward, right? So if that gets back to the values, ethics, morals. Yeah. You [00:34:00] want to practice being a good person, living a good life. Why would you practice something that’s a pointless person living a dumb life?

Dr. Michael Steger: That doesn’t make sense to me. What is good? What is a good thing? What makes you a better person? What helps people? Just find something to do in those realms. And this isn’t a, this isn’t an idea unique to me. I think maybe I try to make it a little bit more straightforward, but, Franco was like, essentially, happy, you cannot pursue happiness.

Dr. Michael Steger: Happiness can only ensue, right? Like meaning, and it comes out of doing things, good things for the right reasons, right? Helping people or trying to expand your moral worth. And so if we just, if we decide we’re just right now going to set aside the big task of. Figuring all of life and existence out once and for all.

Dr. Michael Steger: We’re not going to do that 

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: right now? 

Dr. Michael Steger: You wouldn’t like the answer, John. I’m sorry, I got to go. It is actually grow a mullet, and you’ve told me that’s difficult for you. So I was going to shield you from the truth there. But yeah. So [00:35:00] what you were really striving for is, I think, not to try to Invent something that no one’s ever thought of before because ultimately that’s going to be in the error band of what’s true about life, I think, but it’s to find your own path through stuff that probably other folks have decided is true before honesty, fidelity, integrity, love, caring, generosity, authenticity, giving of yourself.

Dr. Michael Steger: Being able to think of others before you think of yourself at times, but yet still being responsible so that you’re not a burden on other people. These are not brand new ideas. I have rarely met a person who didn’t have a little bit more room to live out something on a given day or in a given moment towards that.

Dr. Michael Steger: And then I think, we celebrate a lot of weird stuff in our culture, right? Like we have slam dunk contests but we don’t have, which are great. Although I can’t dunk anymore. So maybe I’ll stop watching this altogether, but we don’t [00:36:00] really have contests of people feeling good about good things that they did, right?

Dr. Michael Steger: We want to distrust someone if they feel good about helping another person. But if that’s part of what’s going to make your life be better and more meaningful, And you did something that’s worthy and worthwhile. Why would you immediately discount that? Take a little moment and say okay life felt purposeless.

Dr. Michael Steger: Life felt pointless. Life felt meaningless. But I did this thing. I don’t know how you can tell someone like, yeah, and make sure you’re completely apathetic about the fact that you took that risk and did that at a time when you’re struggling and vulnerable. I think that’s well, the, 

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: the, that.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: The argument in the academic literature over altruism comes to mind, and this always cracked me up, is altruism actually altruistic? Because we get something from giving something to someone else or doing something for someone else, so they win, but we win too because we get a positive emotional boost.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: To which my response is, I don’t give a rat’s ass. Do what’s good for other people anyway. It doesn’t [00:37:00] matter. 

Dr. Michael Steger: Yeah, we don’t have to annihilate ourselves to be good people. I mean I think 

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: we’re overthinking it sometimes, which is what we do in Ivory Towers. 

Dr. Michael Steger: Yeah, the intellectual question of is how do we define altruism such that no one ever benefits from it?

Dr. Michael Steger: Or no one ever does it? 

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: Yeah, so let’s extinguish altruism. 

Dr. Michael Steger: Yeah, I will say though and I know that you do a lot of work around emotions, John. So one of the counter hypotheses for, you probably know this but for your listeners, one of the counter hypotheses to that idea of altruism is all about self benefit.

Dr. Michael Steger: is the fact that we seem to be universally wired to experience empathy, right? And yeah, acting in a good way can relieve the sense of empathy, but empathy itself feels both good and bad. It’s not, like pain. It’s not like guilt or shame. Empathy arises naturally to attune us to moments when someone could benefit from our intervention.[00:38:00] 

Dr. Michael Steger: And that is an inherently outward looking Emotion, right? It tells us something about ourselves and it gives us this sort of like really grand experience of what it means to be alive. But they would say that the emotion of empathy is one of the ways of running around the necessity that you’re supposed to feel proud or you’re supposed to gain social capital by helping other people.

Dr. Michael Steger: That we’re just actually, if we’re wired to do this, of course, we’re going to be wired to feel good about doing it afterwards or else we would have stopped. Helping each other and we would, there’d be six people left in the world, maybe one on each continent. So I think that I love the idea that emotions like empathy that are generated by and directed towards experience outside of ourselves.

Dr. Michael Steger: That we can access those and that we can actually listen to those. And that’s a way of getting out of this. Because I think it’s actually, it’s not just a trap for ivory tower theoreticians. It’s a trap for all of us getting caught up in the what’s in it for me. It’s the, it’s maybe the worst thing about being a human is like evaluating [00:39:00] everything about through the lens of what’s in it for me right now.

Dr. Michael Steger: It’s just you can see what happens when we run a world like that after a while. So 

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: I’ve got one other, I’ve got, I could. Talk to you forever. I have greatly enjoyed this. We got about 10 15 minutes left. One of the things that I really wanted to get into, and I imagine this is under the dimension of coherence, of making sense of the world and making it predictable, but you talked about some of the rules of these frameworks as givens.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: And I think, I think of them as core beliefs. You mentioned schemas. Let’s, why are these understandings of how things work important? And Yeah, let’s just go to the core beliefs and these givens for a little bit, because these fascinate me lately. I just see the difference between people thinking, and I think there’s three levels.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: There’s, self, beliefs about self, beliefs about people in general, and beliefs about the world, and to me, It’s a fascinating difference if you run through a day in your life with a core belief of People are generally bad or mostly bad versus people are generally good or mostly good and you can [00:40:00] dice that up different ways but it dramatically impacts every interaction you have with every person throughout the day and if you multiply that by 365 days of the year over years It’s going to radically influence how you view the world and people.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: It’s self fulfilling. 

Dr. Michael Steger: Yeah. It’s interesting, right? Because we have touched on this idea that existential philosophers have said we can’t really know what’s true, right? We have our own little limited experience and maybe nothing’s true. But I think that these core beliefs can become the story that comes, that we make come true for ourselves.

Dr. Michael Steger: So if, I’ll just give an example that I like to talk about sometimes, and I in my immediately post mullet giant hippie hair, but pre ball shaved head days I was struggling to connect with people romantically. I ended up being I was a little bit of a disaster.

Dr. Michael Steger: I was drinking too much. I was pretty quick to get sarcastic and insulting towards people. I was lashing out, right? And I [00:41:00] felt like the world treated me wrong and It owed me somehow, and being a kid of the 80s, and Princess Bride, and Say Anything, and all these 80s movies, even 16 Candles, where love redeems everything in the end the love, romantic love will wash away all your sins I realize, in retrospect, I, my core belief was, the world’s been kicking me so hard and it owed me now and the way it was going to pay me back was by one of, by, by a woman that I ended up being infatuated with loving me back.

Dr. Michael Steger: So I’d make these like weird declarations of love and in the midst of, I don’t know, third bottle of malt liquor or whatever it was at the time. And like I would be shocked when it didn’t happen. I only did this four times, same person? No. Different people. Oh, okay. Multiple utterances of, I just love you to each of those four poor women.

Dr. Michael Steger: And so is this, I realized that was the I had to come to grips with a lot of things at the time, but the core belief that the world owed me and it was going to pay me back by giving me love [00:42:00] that would show that I’m worthy of a different fate in some ways was. Super toxic to me. But if I could have continued to go on those routes, I would have sunk lower and lower.

Dr. Michael Steger: You know what I mean? I would have been around with, you’re going to find people who can tolerate almost any awful behavior. Now, do you want to spend your life surrounded by those people? I don’t. But that was the course. And if I’d done, if I kept acting on that core belief, like I can lash out as much as I want, and eventually I’ll get what I want from, and someone will love me back, and everything’s going to be okay.

Dr. Michael Steger: I could have made that come true. In some form a horrible form for everyone involved, right? 

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: Yeah, 

Dr. Michael Steger: but I Realized that what the real message was is that I wasn’t worthy of the love I was seeking I need to actually be a person who someone I was these are great women that I was really into they weren’t you know and I just was way out of their league for all the reasons you could think of and I just needed [00:43:00] to be I didn’t need to take seriously the idea that I need to be a better person.

Dr. Michael Steger: So that became my core belief like how to become a better person and it just came naturally Like weirdly four years after the first time I said, I love you to one of these women through the ups and downs of The weird friend zone where you’re just like hyper intense and freaking everybody out for a while I’m married to that person now like years and years later and it was way after I was like You know what?

Dr. Michael Steger: I’m done with this this isn’t for me. I just need to focus on Not being a jerk all the time, like that core belief actually then be, that’s what came true. So I think that’s what starts happening because you anticipate the world responding to you the way your core belief says it will. And you can trigger that a lot of times.

Dr. Michael Steger: And you can shy away from times when a different response might be inviting you to a better future. So those, these givens, that’s an Erv Yalom phrase for all of this. It comes from like geometry, right? Given that right angles, do something. I can’t remember geometry, right? You can solve all sorts of [00:44:00] problems, right?

Dr. Michael Steger: So given that the way to have a life that I will enjoy and find fulfilling is to become a better person without expecting anything back. Then I can solve all sorts of problems going forward. So for me, that’s how it works. And understanding the core beliefs that have been shaping you through your life is not always easy.

Dr. Michael Steger: If your life is, if you feel bummed about your life, then probably some of those core beliefs are going to be really hard to confront and can take a while to practice your way out of. 

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: Yeah. But that’s, yeah, you mentioned that, life owes me and making me think one of the, one of the big core beliefs about the world and how it operates that I see in dealing with people that are angry is life should be fair.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: And I, we all seem to be born with that one. It’s really odd to me that we expect life to be fair and it’s so much easier when you realize it isn’t. Bad things happen to good people. [00:45:00] Yeah. 

Dr. Michael Steger: Yeah. I also noticed the other caveat to that I is, life should be fair in this specific way. I have in my mind, life should be fair right 

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: now for me.

Dr. Michael Steger: Yeah. So if you’re talking to folks in the Bay Area life is not fair for them in the most case, right? Yeah. If you compare, if that person had been born somewhere else in the world. At a different time, like it, you can always find someone who seems to get away with crap that you can’t get away with.

Dr. Michael Steger: You can always find unjust harms that have been done to you. And then you, and then it’s natural to want that not to be true. We don’t want, we want to get the things that we want in life, and we don’t want to take the crap that we don’t want in life. That’s very normal. But to try to turn that into a universal rule that everyone else is supposed to follow too, and whatever specific way it happens to pop into our heads.

Dr. Michael Steger: That’s not helpful. It’s not true. It’s not accurate. It’s not enforceable. 

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: I only do that on the [00:46:00] freeway when I’m driving, when I’m enforcing traffic laws for other people in my mind. 

Dr. Michael Steger: I’m going to admit that I, and when I was in high school, not just for traffic, but for literally everything in the world, I was pretty sure I was perfectly positioned to be the best ever benevolent dictator of everything in the world.

Dr. Michael Steger: I just knew how to and I should 

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: work I didn’t realize they hired me as traffic cop, but apparently I am 

Dr. Michael Steger: it’s a rough job. It’s not paid very well You’ve earned a lot of frustration with your employees, but the right you’re the right man for the job. I’m sure of it 

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: No, that is a job that I’ve tried to give up in the past, five or six years Because the 

Dr. Michael Steger: pay sucks.

Dr. Michael Steger: The pay sucks. You take it home with you. It affects the family life. It’s not good. It just isn’t worth it. 

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: Yeah, for sure. So let me ask you this in wrapping up. Is there anything that I didn’t ask you that I should have? 

Dr. Michael Steger: I’d like to just put a thought in folks head about something you can do right now that’s pretty easy [00:47:00] and then how you can take it to a deeper level if you want.

Dr. Michael Steger: Make meaning more tangible for you right now this abstract cookie thing that grouchy philosophers and people with mullets like to talk about so It’s got a corny name I haven’t found a better one, but essentially gonna go on a meaning safari a quick meeting safari You can do this even in lockdown You know in a quarantine you’ve got a cell phone or something that takes a picture Take the next week or so, but at least the next hour to take a few pictures I would like to limit people to about eight pictures But start right now, take two, of things that you feel, in whatever format, make your life meaningful.

Dr. Michael Steger: It can be a picture of a picture, like if you love Paris, and you can’t go to Paris tomorrow, which if you’re American, you cannot go to Paris tomorrow take a picture of something that you brought back with you from Paris, or something that inspired you to want to go to Paris in the first place, right?

Dr. Michael Steger: So just do that. And you’re saying to your own brain and your body that [00:48:00] you can see meaning in the world around you. And you’re also like almost like creating talismans that you can use to remind yourself that your life exists in a meaningful world. And that’s the easy level. Like just go around and recognize the stuff in your life that can really inspire you personally and bolster you personally.

Dr. Michael Steger: And direct your attention, your love, and your big heart, and your big brain out into the world outside of you as well. To take it to another level, sit down with somebody that you don’t think will laugh at you too much and just tell that person like, What that picture is and what makes it meaningful to you.

Dr. Michael Steger: Invite them to touch bases with you and do the same thing for you too. Easy, free and makes meaning tangible and also endows some of the things you’re already surrounded by with the meaning that’s already in your life. 

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: That’s a fantastic suggestion. And I have to say a heartfelt thank you because this conversation has been fantastic, enjoyable.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: And [00:49:00] poignant. So thank you so much for joining me. I greatly appreciate it. 

Dr. Michael Steger: Thanks, Dr. John. I really appreciate it. And thanks for your time. 

Dr. John Schinnerer, Couples Counselor: All right. Thank you listeners for joining us. That’s it for this episode of the Evolved Caveman until next time. Bye bye.