Meaning And Purpose 101
Ten research facts about how to live a meaningful life
Meaning & Purpose Fact 1.
Develop existential compassion
for what truly matters
to yourself and others.
Meaning & Purpose Fact 2.
Meaning in life is like the totality
of the foundations beneath everyday life.
(Formal definitions of meaning include
motivations, values, worldviews,
self-worth, actions, flexibility, and commitment)
Meaning & Purpose Fact 3.
Don't build your life as a lone skyscraper
that one crisis can topple.
Instead, raise a mountain range
of at least six diverse meanings,
so you always have a peak to stand on.
Meaning & Purpose Fact 4.
Listen to your intuition and your body,
and be critical of what they tell.
Don't just conform to the crowd
or calculate your life like a machine.
You’ll find a well-being
that others can’t dictate and goals can’t define.
Meaning & Purpose Fact 5.
To flourish, focus on
social, large, and abstract types of meaning.
To suffer, focus on
materialistic, hedonistic, or self-oriented types.
Meaning & Purpose Fact 6.
Live meaningfully
by navigating life’s storms:
realize your meaning as your anchor,
envision new horizons,
and steady your emotions
with a realistic assessment of the sea.
Meaning & Purpose Fact 7.
Just as a plant needs
the right soil, sun, and rain to thrive,
people only flourish
when their social situation provides
the right stories, resources, and dynamics to grow.
Meaning & Purpose Fact 8.
Beware the McMeaning Burger:
influencers and pop psychology
serve up a flashy, tasty high,
but it’s just existential fast food that leaves you hollow.
For a life that actually sustains you,
seek authentic meaning from experts.
Meaning & Purpose Fact 9.
We are not given
an instruction manual at birth.
We need to
write and rewrite this ourselves.
Meaning & Purpose Fact 10.
Be a rebel
by living a meaningful life
in a meaningless world.
Explanations
Books
Lectures & interviews
Short videos
Self-help exercises to discover your meaning
Selection of short interactive exercise to discover your purpose and meaning in life
You can click on the link below to do several evidence-based exercises that will help you discover your sense of meaning in life.
These exercises use Microsoft Forms; we save any information only so that you can email the exercises at the end of the exercises to yourself; we will delete the data after a month.
Questionnaires
Meaning Sextet Questionnaire
Meaning Sextet Questionnaire:
What types of meaning are important to you?
What types of meaning are you actually realising in life?
Fill in the Meaning Sextet Questionnaire MSQ to discover which types of meaning are important to you, and which types you are (not) realising in your life.
The MSQ measures six types of meaning:
1. Materialistic type of meaning(material conditions, professional-educational success)
2. Hedonistic type of meaning (hedonistic/embodied experiences)
3. Self-oriented type of meaning (resilience, self-efficacy, self-acceptance, autonomy, creative self-expression, self-care)
4. Social type of meaning (social connections, belonging, conformism, altruism, and children)
5. Larger type of meaning (purposes, personal growth, temporality, justice/ethics, and spirituality/religion)
6. Existential-philosophical type of meaning (being-alive, unique, free, grateful, and responsible).
The MSQ was developed as the result via multiple studies: (1) a systematic literature review of 107 studies in 45.710 participants, (2) development by eight experts and Three-Step Test Interview with eight laypeople, (3) a survey in 1281 participants in 49 countries, (4) various replication studies. Vos, J. (2023). The Meaning Sextet: A Systematic Literature Review and Further Validation of a Universal Typology of Meaning in Life. Journal of Constructivist Psychology, 36(2), 204-231.
This questionnaire can be used for personal or clinical use, but not for commercial profit. Respect the copyright holders.
Meaning Approach Scale
How do you discover, make or intuit meaning in life?
How much are you using a traditional-conformist approach to life?
How much are you using a goal-oriented or mechanistic approach to life?
How much are you using a critical-intuitive or phenomenological approach to life?
Fill in the Meaning Approach Scale MAS to discover how you approach meaning in life.
The MAS measures three approaches to meaning in life:
1. Traditional-conformist approach to life
2. Goal-oriented, mechanistic or functionalistic approach to life
3. Critical-intuitive or phenomenological approach to life
The traditional-conformist approach to meaning, associated with the words ‘vocation’, ‘calling’ and ‘significance’, may be defined as ‘following what other people or Higher Powers communicate, signify or expect about your meaning in life’. This may include following a religion or religious calling, or conforming to social expectations. The resulting sense of meaning may be called a traditional meaning.
The goal-oriented/mechanistic/functionalistic approach, associated with the modern words ‘meaning’, ‘purpose’ and ‘goals’, may be defined as ‘determine your own meaning in life, like a mathematical function: do behaviour X, and you will get meaning Y’. This approach of a mechanistic self-direction in life seems to include individuals rationally and consciously decide their meaning in life, defining meaning as random, specific or large goals that they try to strive towards in the most linear-efficient and maximising ways possible. The resulting sense of meaning may be called a functionalistic meaning (or ‘McMeaning’, in Vos, 2019).
The phenomenological or critical-intuitive approach to meaning in life, associated with the word ‘Sinn’, may be defined as ‘listen critically to your intuition’. On the one hand, a critically-intuitive individual accepts the meanings that they intuitively perceive in their flow of experiences (e.g. perceiving what is meaningful via mindful, focused observing their daily-life, or via experiential exercises). On the other hand, a critically-intuitive individual uses their critical thinking skills to differentiate the more-meaningful from the less-meaningful (e.g. being-aware-of and critiqueing inauthenticity and social-economic or political conformism). The resulting sense of meaning may be called a critically-intuited or phenomenological meaning.
The questionnaire can be used for personal or clinical use, but not for commercial profit. Respect the copyright holders.
Lectures for practitioners
Academic publications
This is a selection. See Joel Vos’ profile on scholar.google.com for the most comprehensive list of publications
Also see the publications in the topic: Humanistic and existential therapies
Vos, J. (2022, December). Meaning in Life Across Cultures and Times: An Evidence-Based Overview. In Meaning in Life International Conference 2022-Cultivating, Promoting, and Enhancing Meaning in Life Across Cultures and Life Span (MIL 2022) (pp. 21-40). Atlantis Press.
Vos, J. (2024). The Development and Validation of the Meaning Approach Scale: Traditional, Functionalistic and Critical-Intuitive Approaches to Meaning in Life. Journal of Constructivist Psychology, 37(4), 491-513.
Vos, J. (2025). Chapter 25. Meaning in Life and Society. In: Louis Hoffman, L. Xochitl Vallejos, Dan Hocoy, Pratyusha Tummala-Narra, and Eugene DeRobertis (Eds.) APA Handbook of Humanistic and Existential Psychology.
Russo-Netzer, P. & Vos, J. (2025). Meaning Interventions: Working with Meaning in Life in Psychological Therapies. In: Louis Hoffman, L. Xochitl Vallejos, Dan Hocoy, Pratyusha Tummala-Narra, and Eugene DeRobertis (Eds.) APA Handbook of Humanistic and Existential Psychology.
Vos, J. (2023). The meaning sextet: A systematic literature review and further validation of a universal typology of meaning in Life. Journal of Constructivist Psychology, 36(2), 204-231.
Vos, J. (2024). The Development and Validation of the Meaning Approach Scale: Traditional, Functionalistic and Critical-Intuitive Approaches to Meaning in Life. Journal of Constructivist Psychology, 37(4), 491-513.
Vos, J., Russo-Netzer, P., & Schulenberg, S. E. (2023). Meaning in a world in crisis: Perspectives of societal resilience and growth: An introduction to the special section of the Journal of Constructivist Psychology. Journal of Constructivist Psychology, 36(2), 129-137.
Vos, J. (2023). Systematic Meaning in Life Psychotherapy: From systematic literature reviews to a systematic treatment manual.
Vos, J., & Vitali, D. (2018). The effects of psychological meaning-centered therapies on quality of life and psychological stress: A metaanalysis. Palliative & supportive care, 16(5), 608-632.
Vos, J. (2016). Working with meaning in life in mental health care: A systematic literature review of the practices and effectiveness of meaning-centred therapies. Clinical perspectives on meaning: Positive and existential psychotherapy, 59-87.
Vos, J. (2016). Working with meaning in life in chronic or life-threatening disease: A review of its relevance and the effectiveness of meaning-centred therapies. Clinical perspectives on meaning: Positive and existential psychotherapy, 171-200.
Academic publications
See Joel Vos’ profile on scholar.google.com for the most up to date list of publications
Vos, J. (2025) Chapter 2. Existential–Therapeutic Competencies. and Vos, J. (2025). Chapter 9. Working With Meaning in Life in Existential–Humanistic Psychotherapy. In: Louis Hoffman & Veronica Lac. (Eds.). The Evidence-Based Foundations of Existential–Humanistic Therapy. APA.
Vos, J. (2023). Existential psychological therapies: An overview of empirical research. Pratiques Psychologiques.
Vos, J. (2023). Phenomenology in the Bedroom: How Martin Heidegger and Michel Foucault Could Reinvigorate Your Sex Life. Chapter 1 in: Eros and Psyche. Philosophical and Theoretical Perspectives.
Vos, J. (2021). The existential therapeutic competences framework: Development and preliminary validation. International Journal of Psychotherapy, 25(1), 9-51.
Vos, J. (2019). A review of research on existential‐phenomenological therapies. The Wiley world handbook of existential therapy, 592-614.
Vos, J. (2018). Death in existential psychotherapies: A critical review. In: Menzies & Menzies. Curing the dread of death: theory, research and practice, 145.
van Bruggen, V., Ten Klooster, P., Westerhof, G., Vos, J., de Kleine, E., Bohlmeijer, E., & Glas, G. (2017). The Existential Concerns Questionnaire (ECQ)–development and initial validation of a new existential anxiety scale in a nonclinical and clinical sample. Journal of clinical psychology, 73(12), 1692-1703.
Craig, M., Vos, J., Cooper, M., & Correia, E. A. (2016). Existential psychotherapies. In D. J. Cain, K. Keenan, & S. Rubin (Eds.), Humanistic psychotherapies: Handbook of research and practice (2nd ed., pp. 283–317). American Psychological Association.
van Bruggen, V., Vos, J., Westerhof, G., Bohlmeijer, E., & Glas, G. (2015). Systematic review of existential anxiety instruments. Journal of humanistic psychology, 55(2), 173-201.
Vos, J., Craig, M., & Cooper, M. (2015). Existential therapies: a meta-analysis of their effects on psychological outcomes. Journal of consulting and clinical psychology, 83(1), 115.
Vos, J. (2015). Meaning and existential givens in the lives of cancer patients: A philosophical perspective on psycho-oncology. Palliative & supportive care, 13(4), 885-900.