Feeling Lost or Behind in Life? The #1 Happiness Expert Explains How to Find Your Purpose

Dr. Dacher Keltner, PhD (00:00:18):

Purposeful is you have a really sharp focus mentally. Purposelessness is really diffuse and vague. We feel a deep sense of purpose when we feel like the things we do are connected to things that are larger than the cell.

 

Mel Robbins (00:00:34):

Our guest today is Dr. Dacher Keltner. Dr. Keltner is one of the world's leading experts on the science of meaning and purpose. Do you have any guidance for us on how you can begin to find your calling?

 

Dr. Dacher Keltner, PhD (00:00:48):

I think this is going to be one of the central challenges of the next 40 years. It begins with like...

 

Mel Robbins (00:00:56):

What is your definition of happiness?

 

Dr. Dacher Keltner, PhD (00:00:58):

Happiness is if you feel like you're doing the things in the world that you're supposed to do.

 

Mel Robbins (00:01:04):

If you're feeling a lack of purpose and meaning right now, what's the first step you can take?

 

Dr. Dacher Keltner, PhD (00:01:09):

It begins with asking yourself questions like, what really inspired me as a child? What are your core strengths? This isn't about your career. This isn't about what you do. This is where you come alive.

 

Mel Robbins (00:01:20):

I'd love to dig into your incredible research around awe.

 

Dr. Dacher Keltner, PhD (00:01:26):

Awe is an emotion you feel when you encounter things that are most typically vast and you don't understand. There's nothing better if your mind and body than a minute of awe a day. Reduces depression, reduces anxiety, reduces the daily stresses, makes you feel more connected, less lonely, more purposeful.

 

Mel Robbins (00:01:45):

I know the person who's listening wants that, so how do we do it? Before we jump into this remarkable episode, you're going to love this, on how to create a good life filled with purpose and meaning, you deserve that. My team was showing me something. 57% of you who watch the Mel Robbins podcast here on YouTube are not subscribers. It's my goal that we get that number to 50%. I know you're the kind of person that loves supporting people who support you. So if that subscribe button is lit up, it means you're not a subscriber. Could you please hit subscribe? That's how you can show your support to your friend Mel Robbins, to the team here, to all these amazing experts that are showing up for you. It's free. And that way you don't miss a thing and that way we also know that you love the guests that we're bringing you and the content that we're putting here and attempt to help you live a better life.

 

(00:02:31):

Alrighty, thank you, thank you, thank you for doing that. Holy cow, you're going to love this episode about purpose so let's jump in. Dr. Dacher Keltner, welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast.

 

Dr. Dacher Keltner, PhD (00:02:41):

It's good to be with you, Mel.

 

Mel Robbins (00:02:42):

It is so good to be with you and I'm really excited for our conversation because I'm very, very familiar with your work and I use it and it's exciting to be with you because your energy is extremely grounding. I'd love to have you speak to the person who's here with us and just share a little bit about what your extraordinary research might change in their life if they were to take it and apply it just day-to-day in the simplest ways.

 

Dr. Dacher Keltner, PhD (00:03:17):

Yeah, I think that the central message of today, hard one by science, we have such strength inside of us. We have such a sense of how to make the world better. We can find beauty around us. We have a sense of calling and a way to improve the lives of people and we just need to feel that and to sense that in ourselves. This is free. It's in us. It just takes a little bit of inquiry and then we just have to put it into a practice a few minutes a day and it will lead you in good directions.

 

Mel Robbins (00:03:48):

I'm going to feel better despite the state of the world after everything you're going to...

 

Dr. Dacher Keltner, PhD (00:03:52):

Yeah, I mean this is a time of crisis for a lot of people. A lot of people are struggling. A lot of people are very tired. So grounded in that, what we're going to be talking about today is how do we find purpose? How do you find a sense of calling no matter what you're doing? How do you find the simple beauties in people around you in awe?

 

Mel Robbins (00:04:11):

It's the perfect thing that we all need to be talking about and learning about right now. So I'm grateful that you're here.

 

Dr. Dacher Keltner, PhD (00:04:17):

Thank you.

Dr. Dacher Keltner, PhD (00:04:43):

I mean, the science of happiness just exploded the past 30, 40 years and I got swept up into it as a young scientist and we have learned a lot. We've learned that money matters a little, so your context matters. It's great to be in a democracy as opposed to an authoritarian culture. It's good to have a healthy body. But what my field psychological science is really interested in is what can we do in our minds? What can we do right now? What can we do with the people around us? And we know one thing that really matters is just little moments of joy and beauty and laughter and gratitude and awe and love, kindness. Just find those little moments five minutes a week where you're savoring a moment of beauty or thinking what you're grateful for. It's a time of hardship right now. There's no doubt about it.

 

(00:05:40):

I've been following data for 35, 40 years and stress is higher, younger people are struggling. It's hard to know where we find meaning in life, the climate crisis, the political crisis, et cetera. So you got to figure out a moment or two each day where you just pause and slow down and find some peace. It might be the sunset, it might be piece of music, it might be how you journal. It might be listening to your show, find a little peace in face of stress. And then I'm an introvert and I always struggled with the, connect to everybody. I was like, ah, I like solitude. But alongside moments of joy and just finding peace is just find little moments where you're connected to people. I love this new literature on microsocial interactions, little bit of eye contact, saying hi to somebody, going to a farmer's market, just little moments where you're like, I'm part of humanity.

 

(00:06:39):

So that's what I teach students. Little bit of joy, find a way to get calm and then just connect a little and you'll be on your way.

 

Mel Robbins (00:06:48):

I'm just speaking on behalf of the person who is with us and maybe they're exhausted. And as you just said, there's a lot of reasons to feel beaten up by life right now, a bit resigned and sad about the state of the world or the state of your family or your job or bank account. So if they heard you say, just find five minutes little moment of joy or kindness or micro connection. And I can almost feel them rolling their eyes like, oh, for God's sakes, Dr. Keltner, seriously? Ive minutes a week is going to... What does it do? When you look at the research, because I believe this, but you also have decades of research about why these micro moments of peace can actually help see you through very challenging periods in your life.

 

Dr. Dacher Keltner, PhD (00:07:45):

We have worked with high schoolers in really under-resourced high schools where it's tough and there's not a lot of hope and they're looking at a different kind of job market. And if they feel a little bit of hope or find a little bit of awe, they enjoy their studies more. We have worked with veterans who twice the rates of PTSD as the average civilian in the United States and little moments of awe reduce PTSD 32%. We work with healthcare providers, doctors and nurses during COVID, chaos, under-resourced, understaffed. And we just asked them, find one minute right now of what's wonderful or awesome about life. And they're in a hospital, fluorescent lights, people are dying. They're working 14 hours a day and they're like, "That woman who had a terminal diagnosis was so gracious and grateful to me and gave me a big hug and that was remarkable human character." So what this tells us is this stuff is deep in us.

 

(00:08:49):

We've lost sight of it. Our culture is making it hard to get to, so we got to take action and just find a couple of minutes of it each day.

 

Mel Robbins (00:08:57):

Why do you think it buoys you up so much, particularly in a moment like this? Because I know how resigned and discouraged people feel because I read it, comments online. I feel it when I look at the state of the world or the headlines, this weariness. But why do you think this does not only give you a sense of hope, but it's a very important thing to be proactive about, especially right now?

 

Dr. Dacher Keltner, PhD (00:09:29):

When you're stressed, a part of your brain, the amygdala is activated, you're seeing threat everywhere. You are overestimating uncertainty, cortisol, the stress hormone is pulsing through your veins. Your body is acting as if you are being chased by a big predator. That's exhausting. And even if you have all the resources in the world, that stress exhausts you and you wake up tired, you don't feel like you have the energy to take on the things that face you. What's amazing, Mel, is these emotions of gratitude and beauty and practicing a bit of kindness activate an energizing part of your nervous system.

 

(00:10:10):

The vagus nerve, which calms your body and makes you feel strong and makes you feel open. It regulates your immune system in a healthy way. It activates dopamine. So you get this dopamine, which is like energy and purpose. Yo practice a little love or you give some resources, you volunteer for someone and you help them out and suddenly it's like, "I feel powerful. I feel like this is who I should be. " And that's why we should be practicing this stuff just a few minutes a day. It doesn't cost you anything. And man, is it good for your body and good for the exhaustion that so many of us feel today.

 

Mel Robbins (00:10:49):

I think oftentimes you can go through extremely challenging periods in life. We all do. And we have words like, "I feel lost. I feel stuck. I feel frustrated. I feel sad. Things feel heavy." The sense of despair. But when you look at the research that you've done,

Dr. Dacher Keltner, PhD (00:11:18):

Purposeful is you have a really sharp focus mentally. Your mind is, "I know the 12 things I need to do to get this task done or to help my teenager think effectively about what to do next." So you have a sharp focus. Purposelessness is really diffuse and vague and your mind feels kind of unfocused. And when you're feeling purposeful, you're moving forward, you've got that dopamine energy. It's core to purposeful behavior. You're feeling empowered and purposelessness is feeling sort of listless and you don't have a lot of energy. We feel a deep sense of purpose when we feel like the things we do are connected to things that are larger than the self.

 

(00:12:06):

I remember interviewing Yumi Kendall, who's this cellist for the Philadelphia Symphony, one of the great cellists and a friend of mine. And I was like, "Man, I mean, being a musician's hard. Make a lot of money, work all the time. It's super competitive. There was sexism in the field and so forth." And she said, "Every time I play my cello, as the notes go out, I feel connected to the audience and I feel like I'm connected to the history of music. And that's purpose. What I'm doing right now is connected to something larger than the self. And when you feel purposeless, you're unaware of how you are part of a bigger story and we need that.

 

Mel Robbins (00:12:48):

Dr. Keltner, I just want to pause right there. Because here's what I found to be insanely helpful. Well, because you hear the word purpose. And for decades of my life, I always thought that purpose was a thing outside of me and it was something to find. And what I love about your distinction between this feeling of purposelessness versus waking up and living in a purposeful way is you just located all the power within us. And I've never heard anybody describe it that way, that purposeful is a way you can move through your day. And purposelessness is a way that you can move through not only your day and your weeks and your months and your years, but it's very helpful to think about it that way because it somehow demystifies that there's some magical thing that is going to change all of this that's outside of me that I somehow have to find versus actually I could access being more purposeful today and that might change things.

 

(00:14:06):

Am I tracking correctly?

 

Dr. Dacher Keltner, PhD (00:14:07):

And it's so important and you're getting it exactly right and it's for any age person.

 

Mel Robbins (00:14:13):

You

 

Dr. Dacher Keltner, PhD (00:14:13):

Think about a person in the middle of their career and they're a nurse and they're working long hours and it's exhausting

 

Mel Robbins (00:14:22):

That

 

Dr. Dacher Keltner, PhD (00:14:22):

Kind of work. High pressure. You think about a teenager facing our world today. What their purpose going to be for the next generation? You think about somebody in the last quarter of their life. And Amy Wisniewski at Yale had this idea called calling. And she said, as long as you locate within you, this is who I am and this is what I want to serve in the world, some larger thing. If you can figure that out, you might be a carpenter on a project or a roofer or a nurse in a hospital or a school teacher. If you start to see that in yourself, for me, when I realized my purpose is to teach. I come from a long line of teachers. I didn't know that. Once you realize this is in me and I'm serving some part of the world through this action, you'll find purpose.

 

(00:15:15):

And it gives us a lot of power in some sense and agency to find that.

 

Mel Robbins (00:15:22):

Could you, for the person listening, give some examples of how you might flip your mindset to this moment and today? And what would be an example of flipping from feeling purposelessness to saying, okay, I know I'm tired, but I'm going to be more purposeful for the rest of the day. What would that look like? Yeah,

 

Dr. Dacher Keltner, PhD (00:15:47):

I mean I had a very poignant experience of that, which is when I lost my younger brother. I am a hardworking person, like a lot of people listening and had a lot of purpose. And then somehow the grief kind of dislocated me and I felt just profoundly exhausted and without this sense of inspiration that he provided me and purposeless how it felt. And I think that what you really need to do is you need to just pause and reflect and think about what are the moments of purpose in this day? And for me, what was clear is I have a commitment to orienting with kindness to other people. That's not a radical idea. Almost every great ethical tradition thinks that's where we should begin from Confucianism to the Abrahamic traditions to contemporary philosophy. It's like practice kindness, practice it when you're walking through a city, practice it when you're helping somebody get across the street, practice it in your daily work life.

 

(00:16:56):

And then 30 to 40% of Americans volunteer. It's really good when you're really exhausted to return to this great tradition of our culture. Who can I volunteer for right now? And so those little moments, those little small steps of purposefulness really matter.

Dr. Dacher Keltner, PhD (00:17:23):

I think this is going to be one of the central challenges of the next 40 years. It begins with having people think about what their core strengths are. Think about what you really care about. Think about the communities you want to be with. You want to think about who you want to serve as calling. And once Amy Wisnuska at Yale has this famous example of one of the people who's literally cleaning out bedpans in a hospital said, "This is such vital work because I keep the place clean." And he knew he was serving people. So you start asking those questions, I think things will clarify. Could

 

Mel Robbins (00:18:03):

You speak directly to the person who's listening who is really struggling with trying to figure out their path in this really confusing moment in time?

 

Dr. Dacher Keltner, PhD (00:18:16):

This is in some sense the biggest question in life is what will my philosophy of life be? How will I find meaning? I think you have to think about your core concerns, what you really care about in life, and really think about the ways they present opportunities in your daily living. It might be that you really love taking care of nature and then build that into as much you can, your off hours, your work and so forth. People have moved out of the church and are finding spirit and a sense of higher purpose in yoga, meditation. 40% of Americans find it in nature. So you want to be thinking about what is my soul? What is a higher source, if you will, or source of meaning? I love the work on what's called the social biome.

 

Mel Robbins (00:19:12):

What is that? Social biome? Social

 

Dr. Dacher Keltner, PhD (00:19:13):

Biome is just like, we know connection matters, but it can be exhausting and hard and I'm getting all these texts and what do I do? And it just offers some simple ways to say hi to some strangers and strike up a conversation and make sure you got one good friend you can talk to. And that's about all you need. And so think about what your ideal social environment is. So this is a challenge of our times in this time of crisis to figure out how to find meaning again.

 

Mel Robbins (00:19:49):

Well, it ties back to all of your research and your guidance telling us that you need to, or the opportunity is to develop a mindset and an attitude about your own life where you're more purposeful. And it's very clear based on what you just shared and based on all this research that it begins with an inquiry.

 

Dr. Dacher Keltner, PhD (00:20:09):

It does. You think about 60, 70 years ago, 90% of Americans went to church and you go or synagogue or whatever your practice is, and you would go in and that's inquiry. How do we think about these big questions about life and existence, life and death and what's divinity, et cetera? And we have in some sense lost that and it really needs to be reintroduced. And I tell the thousands of students I teach each year, this is the central question in life, your philosophy of life. There are a lot of tools out there. I can't package something to you and give it to you. You got to discover it. And then there are some great forms of guidance to follow to get there.

 

Mel Robbins (00:20:56):

It's magical that you're sitting here because as we were driving over this morning, my sister-in-law, Christine, who's also our chief operating officer, we were just kind of chatting about what we were doing this weekend because I live in Vermont, she lives outside of Chicago. And she was saying, "I went to church and I just love going to church." And she said, "I love going because it just gives me a chance to step out of the busyness of life and to sit quietly and to contemplate bigger themes and to be reminded that there is something much larger in life than the things that are going on in my life." She said, "It makes me very sad that so many people have left places of worship for good reason. A lot of people leave and don't have the ritual of being in contemplation and being in community and really reflecting on larger themes about life that remind you that it's not about you, that there's something bigger going on that connects us all.

 

(00:22:11):

And I know we're going to get into the research around this, but you do keep bringing up church. But I know that you're not bringing it up to say that you need to go to church. I don't go to church. You're basically saying there are places and structures that used to be in our day-to-day life that got weeded out because of productivity and work and travel sports and

 

(00:22:37):

Disenfranchisement with what was happening in the leadership in some of these places. But we've lost something. So if you take the church or the synagogue or the mosque or the actual kind of secular nature out of it, what is it that we've lost that you want the person listening to really get purposeful about?

 

Dr. Dacher Keltner, PhD (00:22:57):

Oh, Mel, what a wonderful summary. And every now and then you're just awestruck by an observation or an insight. And Jane Goodall, who's one of my heroes who studied the chimpanzees and fought for their protection. And she said she really felt, as Charles Darwin did, that chimps had a sense of wonder and awe. And she even said spirituality. She said, which is really very simply being amazed at things outside of yourself. And that's where purpose comes from is I have this self and I'm going to navigate the world and meet my needs. But as humans and as mammals, I am able to connect to things in a service-filled way that are outside of me. And we used to find that in church and that is one of the fundamental strengths and forms of empowerment in church. And now we're adrift of that. And like you said, the productivity emphasis and the emphasis on writing code as opposed to reading a novel and thinking about what does it mean to fall in love or how do I think about life and death has really, we've lost it.

 

(00:24:10):

And I think it'll return. I think people are starting to wonder about that. And I don't bring up the yoga example as sort of a silly example. It's very serious, which is it has this structure that you talked about of I'm with people, we're breathing together, we're quiet together, we're reflecting together, we're doing these ancient practices. And there's a lot of that that we can find in our lives.

 

Mel Robbins (00:24:37):

So Dr. Keltner, I can tell, especially given that you've been a professor for decades, that you're very worried about the state of the world and you're worried in what you are seeing and what the research shows, which is when I think back, I'm 57, when I think back however many decades that I was in college, you were like a little acorn ready to crack open and grow into a mighty oak and full of wonder and oh my gosh. And it's discouraging to hear your observation that you're not seeing that. So what is it that you think every 20-something needs to hear?

 

Dr. Dacher Keltner, PhD (00:25:15):

What I really started to emphasize in my teaching, I teach happiness to 500 students each year is the most important thing that I want you to get out of this class is for you to inquire, figure out what's meaningful to you and start to develop a philosophy of living that what do you care about? What's your sense of ethics? What are your core moral passions in you that you want to be alive at every step of the way in life? At the end of life, what do you want to have given to the world? What will that look like? Those are all questions about what's a philosophy of life. We have had millennia of efforts to teach this. This used to be the core of an education. Who are you and what do you want to give to the world? And we've lost it. I also use the word soul a lot.

 

(00:26:04):

I'm a scientist. I couldn't measure the soul. I don't know what it is, but it's intuitive. It's like there's something sacred in me that is what life is about for me here on earth. And they should feel that in their youth and find it. And that's what I asked them to do. And then the rest is easier. Once you figure out, I love serving young kids, then your job's going to come. You'll know how to sort of volunteer. Things come more easily once you ask those big questions.

Dr. Dacher Keltner, PhD (00:26:42):

Happiness is if you feel like you're doing the things in the world that you're supposed to do that give you a sense of purpose, give you the goosebumps as you're approaching the day. If you see it in other people and they're doing it with you, you tear up. That's why I'm here and that's what I would say. And within the scientific literature on happiness, we call that meaning. Right now I think we're in an era of meaning that you've been pushing me on Mel. Hey, put aside this pleasure and ease and stuff. How do we really handle the exhaustion and purposelessness of our times? And it really is finding meaning. And that's when you feel like I'm doing what I'm here on earth to do.

 

Mel Robbins (00:27:26):

I want to make sure as you're listening, you're picking up on this in what Dr. Keltner's teaching us. You have not attached career, job and money to the thing that is your calling or your meaning.

 

Dr. Dacher Keltner, PhD (00:27:41):

Yeah. Yeah. And you just gave me goosebumps. Thank you for saying that. Goosebumps are a source of awe and a recognition of what's important in an idea, a big idea that you just floated. Yeah, there is no doubt it's harder to pay bills for young people. They're looking at affordability issues, new kinds of salary structure. We know AI now is going to hurt younger jobs, which is not a surprise. So it's stressful. No doubt. But I think we're going to be in this era and the upside AI is it could enable this, which is to find your calling, your purpose, what you care about and express it out there. And I think we're going to move out of this era of perfectionism that you may have seen it around you. And man, it's tough. And allow young people, if they want to be a struggling actress, that's a good thing.

 

(00:28:41):

That's where their purpose is. If they want to be a carpenter like my dad was, that's a wonderful career. We want to encourage all of the kinds of work and not just the perfectionistic type work. And then to really broaden out and think about what's your service, what's your form of creativity and see if we can cultivate that.

Dr. Dacher Keltner, PhD (00:29:11):

It begins with asking yourself questions like, what really inspired me as a child? And for me, it was like encountering dinosaurs when I was five. I was like, "I love evolution and dinosaurs. What inspired you as a child? Who inspired you in your life?" And you think about those people. And Mel, what those questions get to is what's inside of you? What are your core strengths? And we know from this really interesting, inspiring science and practice of virtue that's age old is there's six or seven core strengths that we can be thinking about. Each of us is different and they speak to us in different ways. So it might be knowledge. You might love crossword puzzles and studying things and learning about music or birding or the like. It might be cur. You might just find great inspiration and sort of a sense of purpose in doing courageous things and getting out and taking chances.

 

(00:30:09):

Kindness is just a universal tending to people volunteering who need help. There are a lot of people today who could use, you're 90 years old and you could use that drive to the supermarket. There are the justice people and they're around us and man, they will find their purpose if they get a chance to fight for what they think is fair. There's a kind of strength that's more transcendent like meditation and spirituality and just finding the questions about divinity or whatever form it takes. And one of my favorites is the creativity types and they love humor and standup comedy and they're going to do spoken word or write their short story or join the book club or whatever. And there it's just like creating. And what I love about these ideas is this isn't about your career or how you make money. This is just what you're going to enjoy on the weekend and what you should prioritize in your life to find a little bit more purpose during these times.

 

Mel Robbins (00:31:17):

What I love about those core strengths that you just listed off and you said knowledge, courage, kindness, justice, transcendence, which to me felt like just seeking deeper connection

 

(00:31:34):

And creativity is as you were talking Dr. Keltner, and I'm glad you said this isn't like what you do for a job. I almost thought to myself, if this is your core strength, it doesn't mean you're good at it. What it means is you come alive. You cannot help but feel like yourself when you are either doing something that's creative or you get lost in some sort of poem you're reading or you are arguing with people because fairness is just something that you just get... It's almost like this is so core to who you are that you are the only one that can block yourself from this. Is that a fair thing to say?

 

Dr. Dacher Keltner, PhD (00:32:23):

Yeah. And you just gave me goosebumps because what you said is so important. This isn't about your career, this isn't about what you do. This isn't about how you label yourself. This is where you come alive. This may not even be the thing you do most of the time, but it gives you so much meaning. And your wonderful description made me think about my own life personally. I was raised by my mom taught literature. My dad was a visual artist and I was no good at the arts and I couldn't write fiction to save my life even though I wanted to. But I will tell you, Mel, being in a museum, seeing plays, reading fiction, hearing fiction, I am most alive in the arts, creativity and beauty. And yet it's not how I make my living. It's not what I'm necessarily great at, but how do I come alive for reasons I can't describe to you?

 

(00:33:20):

And just knowing that it's like if I want a sense of purpose, I go see a movie. If I want a sense of purpose, I will go to a play and just take it in. It'll give me all this insight about life as art does because that's something core to me that is what really matters.