Searching for Meaning? Look to Your Most Extreme Experiences

By Jamie Friedlander  April 3, 2020

In the past two years, my life has been hit with a series of difficult experiences. My grandmother died, I underwent an unexpectedly difficult shoulder surgery, my parents got divorced, and my father-in-law had a stroke. It felt like major challenges were hitting me left and right. A few months of calm would go by, and then bam, life would smack me right back in the face.

Despite how trying some of these experiences were, I found myself to be surprisingly calm, contemplative and resilient throughout each and every one. 

The tough circumstances brought my husband and I closer. I grew more emotionally than I ever had, which led me to make better decisions and protect my boundaries. Plus, I began thinking more introspectively about life, which allowed me to connect more deeply with my writing.

It turns out my feelings are backed by science.

A 2019 study by Sean Murphy and Brock Bastian published in The Journal of Positive Psychology, “Emotionally extreme life experiences are more meaningful,” found that when it comes to creating a meaningful life, the intensity of an experience matters more than how positive or negative it was.

Prior to this study, ample research supported the theory that the valence of events, meaning how positive or negative they were, mattered most when considering which events in our lives were most meaningful. Some research supported the idea that positive events mattered most, while other research theorized that traumatic events were most significant in that they altered our understanding of the world and forced us to search for meaning.

This study attempted to determine whether it wasn’t the valence of an experience that mattered, but rather the emotional extremity of it. The authors conducted three studies, most of which asked participants to rate several things regarding significant life events:

How meaningful an experience was;

How pleasant or painful the experience was;

How emotionally intense the experience was;

Social connection, or how much the experience was shared with others;

How much contemplation the event stimulated;

How unique the experience was to the individual;

Whether participants thought fate was involved, meaning the event happened for a reason; and

How much personal growth the event inspired, which was measured by whether they felt the experience made them a better person.

To continue reading, please go to the original article here:

 https://www.success.com/searching-for-meaning-emotionally-extreme-experiences/