#296： How to Find Your Life's Purpose
Episode Stats
Summary
After conducting a landmark 25-year study, my guest argues that a major factor in young adults' failure to launch is actually rooted in their difficulty in finding a purpose for their life. His name is William Damon, and he's a professor of education at Stanford University. In this episode, we discuss the results of his study and the importance of having an overarching aim in life.
Transcript
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brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast there's been a lot
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of ink spilt in the past decade about young adults quote-unquote failure to launch wherein
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20-somethings who should be progressing into independent adulthood end up spending that
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decade of their life in a sort of extended adolescence several reasons have been given
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for this phenomenon from the economy to helicopter parenting after conducting a landmark 25-year
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study my guest today argues that a major factor in young adults failure to launch is actually rooted
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in their difficulty in finding a purpose for their life his name is william damon he's a professor of
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education at stanford university and today on the show we discuss the results of his study and the
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importance of having an overarching aim in life these are themes of his book the path to purpose
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begin our conversation discussing the criteria of a good life's purpose and why fewer young people
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have one today we then discuss why more young people are prioritizing fame and fortune over
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public service compared to their peers a half century ago the new places many young people are
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finding purpose today and why that's led to a decrease in civic engagement and the benefits that
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come from having a clear purpose in life we end by talking about how a young person even those longer
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in the tooth who still feel adrift can find a life's purpose and what parents can do to help their
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children find theirs after the show's over check out the show notes at aom.is slash path to purpose
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professor william damon welcome to the show thank you so you wrote a book called the path to purpose
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and it was the capstone of this 25-year study that you did on how young people find fulfilling
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purposes in their life i'm curious what was the impetus behind that 25-year study why did you think
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it had to be done when i realized that the studies that i'd been doing on young people's identity and
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their values and how they succeed in life and the kind of commitments they make that the real master
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concept that i was groping towards at the time and not really understanding what was bringing all this
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together that that master concept really was the kinds of goals long-term goals that some young
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people develop uh and when they do they get a sense of direction that brings them through the hard times
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the uncertainties especially in adolescence and early adulthood when you don't really know what your
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future is going to be and i had a realization that what was really driving the successful young people
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was that they had found something that they could dedicate their lives to something that they believed in
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that was beyond the self that was something larger than their own immediate short-term desires to get
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into a good college or get a job or have fun or any of the kinds of things that normally drive young
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people and all those things are fine and they're part of growing up but what really made a difference
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for the young people that seemed to have a great sense of certainty and satisfaction and fulfillment about
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their lives was that they had found something to commit themselves to and that concept was purpose and
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i think that some of the things that i read at the time i was reading for example victor frankl's
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wonderful book about man's search for meaning and his own struggles and trials and how he found
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purpose and that got him through a terrible time when he was imprisoned in germany i read some theology
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uh rick warren's book on the purpose-driven life which of course was a religious book that was very
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inspiring to me and a number of other sources that i realized finally that this was the idea that pulled
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together all of the insights that i'd had previously about identity and goal directedness and moral
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commitment and all of the all of the many related things that i've been interested in purpose brought
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it all together i think you've kind of alluded to the definition of purpose through that answer you
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just gave so first it's it's something outside of yourself but how else what are the other factors
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that you found that make for a purpose in life right and this is a really good question because
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of course people use purpose in the common language in a million different ways
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and sometimes they use it as if it's synonymous with words like passion for example or meaning
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and all of these other words are related in some way but purpose has its own particular meaning if it
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didn't you wouldn't even need the word what my group did my research team did for it actually took
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about a year uh was to do a an examination of how philosophers and theologians and other people
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had been using the word in a particular way and so we came up with a definition that i think is now
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being used in a lot of scientific studies beyond our own which relies on a number of criteria that are
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and they're all important and one of the important aspects of purpose is that it is a long-term goal
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it's a long-term intention it's not a short it's not going to town and trying to find a parking place
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or trying to go to a good movie or get a date on saturday night or earn some money or or get into a
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college it's it's not a finite short-term goal it's a long-term future horizon kind of perspective
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and it's enduring so that's number one number two it's something that is meaningful that's an
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important part of it so nobody can give you your purpose and say you've got to do it that's not a
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purpose if you're just carrying out somebody's orders it's something that you own yourself that
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you buy into that you believe in so it has to be meaningful to you and then third and this is an
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important distinction between other things that are meaningful to you is that it's something beyond
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the self it's not just all about me all about my own interests my own development my own protection
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and again there's nothing wrong with being concerned about meaningfulness to yourself but
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this purpose is something more than that it's a desire to have consequence on the world beyond the
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self in some way it could be something altruistic contributing to the welfare of others it could be
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something aesthetic creating something beautiful or something interesting lasting in the world it could be
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scientific learning or discovering something about the world there are lots of forms of going beyond the
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self but it's not all about my own fulfillment my own satisfaction my own happiness it's something that
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engages you in the broader universe so when you put all of these criteria together that gives you the
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unique definition of the word purpose and it's consistent as i said with the way a lot of previous
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philosophers and other scholars and other people have written about it but we wanted to make it really
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clear because we do scientific work and when you do scientific work every word has to be defined in a way that
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so in this 25 year study that you did did you follow like the same cohort of individuals or were you
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interviewing lots of people different people within that 25 years well we do not have a 25 year study of any one
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cohort we've we have actually it's a program of research it's a 25 year program of research which consists of
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a number of different studies we have one longitudinal data set that we began in the early 2000s which would
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be about 15 years ago and we've been following those young people i think remembering right our most recent
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follow-up was maybe 2010 and we have plans to go back if we can but generally we do longitudinal work and we
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follow young people or for a few years and as long as we have an opportunity to do that i will say that we have
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a study now of people at midlife begins when people are 50 or above and we're very interested in purpose as
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as folks age and as they even retire from their initial job or their children leave home and they
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have to search for new purposes in life what we call encore purposes and so we're very interested in
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purpose as a lifelong capacity that is important all through life not just when you're a young adult but
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when when you're in midlife and when you're an older person this research you've done on young
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people did you find that a lot of young people didn't have a purpose in life or didn't have a
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clear purpose they were aiming for we found a um a number of different groups of young people in our
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initial study only about one in five of the young people between the ages of 12 and 22 had really clear
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strong purposes already developed which leaves 80 percent that did not but of those 80 percent about
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two-thirds or three-quarters of those young folks had begun to search for purpose had initial
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leanings or ideas or inclinations or interests that would lead them to purpose
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and there were a number a small number 20 to 25 percent of the total population that had not even begun their
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search and we're still drifting so we found a lot of heterogeneity in that population but but it's a
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moving target and as they grow a lot of the young people that had not found purpose began or moved
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ahead or or began to find commitments that they that they could really care about within your research were
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you able to find any any changes in generations what was it like maybe 50 years ago with baby
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boomers when they were young do you have any comparison between that well not not research
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wise because of course i wasn't doing that i'm a baby boomer myself and uh i wasn't doing research
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50 years ago i was being a young person myself and nobody was doing this kind of work so we don't
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really have anything like a a solid scientific comparison with the same measures i will say that
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in reading history about previous generations it does seem to me that there are periods in every
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society where there is a strong sense of national purpose for example in reading about the lives of
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young people during the great depression which the sociologist glenn elder has written about in
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a book called children of the great depression it was pretty clear that a lot of the young people
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growing up in families that did not have very much and the the dad was out of work and everyone was
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scrambling around to survive economically these young people really pulled together and shoulder a
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lot of the family burdens and had a ready-made purpose that they could devote themselves to which
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is helping their families get through these hard times so and that generation according to the
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previous sociological research looked very good in their uh in their further development in fact
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that was the generation that later became called the greatest generation by i think it was tom brokaw who
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wrote that book and i think there's some point to that there are times in history when there are national
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purposes of course world war ii was another example where the whole society really bought into it that was the
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same generation when it was when it was a bit older and i think it is kind of a ready-made purpose that
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does make it a bit easier for young people to find commitments that they can devote themselves to
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commitments that are beyond the self and i think in our time things are a bit confusing for young people
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because the world has so many options and especially with globalization and technology and even the world of work
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is changing so that fewer and fewer people are going into a corporation and expecting to stay there for
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40 or 50 years and be a loyal member of that company that's that that's becoming more and more rare
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people aren't living in the same communities anymore they're moving all over the place the age of
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marriage and family formation has gone has gone has become much older even less common so all of these
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big purposes in life are becoming more elusive for this generation so i i think that it is it it's a
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challenge right now for a young person to find a purpose but young people are there are plenty of
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young people that are uh successful in this i guess the other challenge too with technology you mentioned
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that is a lot of the technology is very individualistic it's very self-referential
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right like social media yes that's exactly right and the whole sense of community is elusive these days
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and all the research that we look at shows increasing amounts of social isolation at all ages and
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interestingly it's at the youngest ages that you find the most increase in social isolation in the data
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that i've seen so not having a community of actual real life people that you can meet with face to
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face beyond the social media kind of interactions that again removes one great source of purpose from
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young people's lives and you mentioned a study that was done where they compared and contrast you
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know what college students priorities in life were say 50 years ago to what they are today and i think it
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was 50 years ago the top priority was to you know do meaningful work or something like that and now
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it's for a lot of young people it's to be rich and famous is that is that my reference in the right study
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yes that came out of ucla a group in ucla that has studied everything from uh goals to spirituality
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in life and and that is what they found that at least when they did that research now that research is
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not totally current i believe it's about 20 years old at this point but sandy astin is the person who
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did that work but at least at that point that's right there were a strong trend towards more material
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and uh career oriented goals rather than that that are that were not personally meaningful
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i can't say for sure if if that trend is continued or not because as i said earlier it's a very
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heterogeneous population and we find lots of distinctions between how young people are approaching
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their futures there certainly is a thriving number of young people who are very idealistic that that hasn't
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gone away it's it's more that i think when they confront the world of work and the necessity to
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kind of get out there and compete in the in the economy they're getting messages that tend to orient
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them to more materialistic kinds of goals one manifestation of that you go into detail about
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the book is that fewer young people are even have an interest of in doing public service or running for
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political office nowadays the lowest number of young people the smallest percentage of purposeful aims
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of all the different sources of purpose was the idea of civic leadership of some kind
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the sources of purpose that were popular uh in in our studies included family the idea of forming a
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family of supporting a family vocation which of course is always a big source of purpose for young people
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faith other kinds of community goals like charity and that kind of thing service but the idea of getting
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involved in leadership in your community such as running for mayor of your town or joining the school board or
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being on city council that was not high on the uh on the list of many young people that was the smallest
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portion of young people that had his goals and i know that must have changed uh from at least when i was
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young because i remember a lot of my schoolmates in my classes in high school i had definitely had civic
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aspirations so i think that even though we weren't doing research back then i think it's fair to say that this
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has been a decrease over the years were you able to get any insights as to why young people were less
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interested in civic leadership and did they give reasons why they had no interest in that whatsoever
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it's hard to generalize about that i i think i mean part of it is that the other sources of purpose have
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become so attractive to young people for example family to give you one example um and family is a great
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source of purpose i don't want to disparage it at all but i will note that this is a very family
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oriented cohort of young people uh which is different than when i was young when i was young
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there was a much bigger um emphasis on autonomy of breaking away from the family those are the days of
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what was called the generation gap the idea that gee i'm going to devote my life to to supporting a
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family or or being connected with my extended family taking care of my mom and dad i mean these
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are wonderful aspirations but they they were not high on the radar screen family now is a very laudatory
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and admirable goal that young people have and the same thing for work i think young people really
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are concerned about having a good career and there is almost a sense of insecurity among young people
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that gee am i going to find something that is going to be both interesting and rewarding
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and i think that when i was younger there was a much stronger sense of security that the economy would
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somehow take care of us and it might have been a it might have been a time of more affluence uh
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generally i think there's been a lot written about how the economy has gotten so hard for so many
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groups of people so i think that it's probably a case that these other sources of purpose are now so
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compelling that they pulled young people away from the public sphere in ways that were not the case
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generation or two ago that could help the individual but that could have effects for us
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as a society with fewer people engaged in civic life certainly and it's it's an important part of
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becoming a mature adult to to care about the society at large to become a good citizen uh to contribute
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and of course a lot of this i mean you remember the work that we had done in this area is really
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focused on young people in adolescent and early adult period between the ages of say 12 and 25 or 26 or
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something like that they're going to keep developing they're going to keep growing and so a lot of these
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concerns could well be in their future and i always say it's very important that development
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does not stop uh at the end of high school or at the end of college or even at the end of young
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adulthood as long as the brain is alive people keep learning and growing all through life so a lot of the
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things that we're looking at that are not yet complete are very likely to happen for at least
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a lot of the young people that we've been looking at so let's talk about the benefits of having a life
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purpose in your research what are some of the benefits you and your team found that come with
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having a clearly defined purpose well certainly motivation energy resilience if you have something
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beyond the self that you're dedicated to it helps you get through all of the tough times that inevitably
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all of us have you bounce back failure does not discourage you because you don't take it personally
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it's not all about you you're not your main source of concern you care about the cause that you're
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dedicating yourself to or the goals that you have what you're trying to accomplish so you keep going
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so all of the motivational benefits of purpose are really clear and then of course when you're highly
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motivated with something and you're really engaged and working hard to get it accomplished there is
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there is a sense of satisfaction to that there's a sense of that life flows that you are brought out
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of yourself into something that that you really care about i also think that a lot of people have talked
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about emotional states like joy and passion and i think that often these do accompany purpose but they're
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not the same thing and i do want to point out because i think it's a mistake that people make is that
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purpose is not always accomplished every minute by a sense of joy or a sense of passion a lot of times
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it's uh it's a uh story of drudgery and just uh diligence and grit and keeping things going even when
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it's not very much fun and that's what commitment is it's it's sticking with things but in the long run it brings
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you a lot of satisfaction it doesn't mean that every moment you're full of flow and passion and joy and
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all of those positive emotions but in the long run it's a very satisfying fulfilling sense that you you
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have really worked to accomplish something and you care about it and you've made some progress on it so i
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think it is a a strength in life it's something that it's a capacity that brings a lot of personal
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rewards those rewards include often a sense of joy but more importantly they include a sense of
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great satisfaction and as i said resilience and energy and motivation and i will say one other
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thing that there have been studies in gerontology i mentioned that we are doing some work at the upper
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end of the age span and there's work in gerontology that seems to indicate that purpose is connected with
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health and a decrease in both morbidity and mortality we haven't done that work ourselves but the field
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of gerontology has reported that kind of finding how do people go about finding a purpose in life and
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what did you guys see is it something you sit down at a journal and you you know you answer some
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questions and you boom you have a purpose or is it much more fluid and organic it's more organic and it
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starts small like everything in life it begins with having interests that you pursue there are some
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conditions that promote it for example having someone in your life that you admire somebody that
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is like a mentor or that demonstrates to you what a life of purpose can look like it could be a parent
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it could be a teacher it could be somebody that you work for that's a big help having what you do in life
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matters that it makes a difference taking what you do seriously there are two great realizations that
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every young person or every person who we've seen who has developed purpose
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has at some point uh and one one revelation is that what i do in this world matters i can make a
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difference and the other revelation is that the world needs something that there is some way that
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what i do can improve or help either help other people or add something to the world that's
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valuable and it can be something very consequential it could be something very consequential like the
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young people that want to go into medicine and cure cancer or something like that very serious
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kinds of goals or it could be something that is not a response to something a problem in life but
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just something that adds to the world like one young person that we studied felt that scales the
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musical scales used in jazz music had gotten boring so he was dedicating himself to writing new scales
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and trying them out with new kinds of music so it could be something ordinary like raising a family it could
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be something heroic like wanting to be an astronaut there's always the sense that i can do something that
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matters and it matters to the world and beyond that the world actually needs this the world can uh
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there's a deficit there's something that is missing that i can add to and when those two insights are
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combined and then the person devotes some time to learning how to do this to learning how to develop the
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skills that will enable the person to make the contribution that's when purpose really starts
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moving that's when the capacity really begins to develop and i thought it was an interesting
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point that your research found that you know parents can be a source sort of a mentor but you
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found that it's often non-familial or non-parental mentors who have the most impact on a on a young
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person yeah that's great i'm really glad you said that and put it that way because that's that's exactly
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right and it's something that a lot of parents don't realize i think i think some parents or even a lot
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of parents feel that it's their obligation to help write the script of life for their child and of
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course parents have a lot to offer and they certainly can provide a lot of wisdom and information that's
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hugely helpful for young people but you cannot write the script of life for your child and we usually
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found in most of the cases we looked at that the purpose that the young person had discovered was not
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given to them by their parent we did not find many cases of for example a father saying well our
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family has had three generations of lawyers in it we have this great law firm or this great family
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business and now your purpose is going to be to carry on and uh and be a be a lawyer just like i was
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uh or an engineer like i've been we find that the young person has to bring himself or herself to
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that and if that doesn't happen the purpose will not take it will not endure what parents can do is
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introduce their children to possibilities they can listen hard to hear what the interests are that
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their children have developed on their own they can provide resources and support and encouragement
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for the child's interests but they cannot give the child a purpose and say okay this is your purpose
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now go do it that doesn't work it it we've never seen a case where that works so parents are are really
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really important they're uh uh in fact most of the young people with purpose uh had parents who had
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encouraged them in some way and had added a lot to their lives but it wasn't introducing the purpose
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or defining it for the child it was uh something much more indirect so besides introducing them to
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opportunities possibilities listening to your child would another way that parents can help facilitate
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their children finding a purpose in life is maybe sharing their story of how they found their purpose
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in life exactly that that's exactly right and again i'm glad you said that because i was i was going
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to uh i was remembering that that was the one thing i had not gotten around to mentioning and again this is
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amazingly uncommon we find when we interview young people sometimes we'll ask them what their parents are
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doing for their living uh with what mom or dad does and the young person will say something like well you
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know my dad uh works on a computer all day uh you know he types a bunch of stuff in i don't know what
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i don't know what it it's for but uh he works very hard or or you know mom goes out and goes to the office
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and comes back and they don't really know that maybe what uh what their dad has done on the computer all day
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has eventuated in a truckload of sardines uh going to tennessee or texas or that in other words it has
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some value to the world that something is happening that would not have happened if mom hadn't gone to
00:29:49.600
the office or if dad hadn't typed on the computer all day and what's really valuable for young people is
00:29:57.120
when their parents actually talk about what it is that they are accomplishing in life why it is
00:30:04.160
meaningful to them and what problems they might have had what what do they have to overcome what
00:30:10.000
are their frustrations what kind of resilience have they had to muster in order to done what they want to
00:30:18.080
get done and other adults too have the same opportunities one of the things i always tell teachers is that
00:30:26.720
you have a great opportunity to tell your students why you find teaching meaningful why is that your
00:30:34.480
calling in life and again i'm surprised at how few teachers ever do this it's it's not the point isn't
00:30:41.840
to convince students to become teachers themselves that's not the point at all the point is to show
00:30:49.440
young people what it is like for a grown-up to have a sense of purpose and if the young people see that
00:30:58.880
they'll make their own meaning out of it and they will find their own way to to have their own kind of
00:31:06.160
calling but it is enormously helpful for them to hear mom and dad or a teacher or some other adult
00:31:13.440
uh explain to them why it is that the work that they do the grown-ups do is meaningful and important
00:31:23.360
and purposeful professor damu i know we have a lot of listeners who are you know in their early 20s mid
00:31:28.320
20s and they're in that point in their life where they're trying to figure out what their purpose is
00:31:31.920
do you have any advice or insights based on your research and what they can start doing to to lock down on
00:31:37.440
that purpose yeah uh and let me say as a background don't worry too much or or get too impatient purpose
00:31:48.400
just as purpose is a long-term goal it takes a while to develop the capacity for purpose and to find
00:31:54.320
purposes that actually do match your interests and your beliefs and your abilities and there's a lot of
00:32:03.040
back and forth experimentation that happens especially these days when there are so many options out
00:32:09.520
there so don't don't worry too much if it doesn't happen right away and periods of trial and error are
00:32:16.640
fine as long as there is some sense of forward movement that you've learned from your experiments
00:32:25.200
you've learned from trying out this job or or doing this kind of activity it can take quite a while
00:32:32.000
i mean a lot of the young people we've looked at by age 30 have had 14 15 different jobs already so
00:32:38.640
vocationally they have not yet gotten there where they've really settled in i think one of the
00:32:43.440
important things that does help is to try to honestly and frankly identify what your skills are what
00:32:52.720
you're particularly uh able to do and in an honest way because i mean to give you an extreme example you
00:33:00.000
might love basketball but you're not going to be a professional basketball player if you're five
00:33:04.800
feet five inches tall so you know you have to be honest about and maybe if you love basketball then
00:33:11.120
you could go into basketball education or ad or or basketball marketing or something like that but you
00:33:16.960
wouldn't want to try out for the golden state warriors or something like that so that's an analogy that
00:33:23.680
applies to everything and every kind of career i mean there are lots of young people that want to be uh
00:33:28.560
going to go into the film industry or be script writers or film directors and or actors and actresses
00:33:35.280
and a few of them have those kind of talents uh most will not and you need to honestly assess what
00:33:42.640
you're able to do and listen to other people when they give you feedback about that that's number one
00:33:47.600
number two you have to honestly look at what the world needs you know you're not when i was a child
00:33:54.480
when i was eight years old my big dream in life was to become a whaler because i grew up in the part of
00:34:00.800
in the section of new england where there were back in the 1800s they used to send whaling ships out all
00:34:06.080
over the world and it was a tremendous romantic fantasy that you could actually go and do something
00:34:10.880
like that and it didn't take me long to realize that guess what the world doesn't need people going out
00:34:16.880
uh catching whales anymore so that was not a good choice for an occupation and again that's an extreme
00:34:23.840
analogy but the point is that you do have to make an honest assessment of what the world needs what's
00:34:28.480
the market like and the combination of it's really three things that you have to define for yourself
00:34:34.960
what you're good at doing what you're capable of in other words what the world needs and what you
00:34:41.120
believe in what you're interested in what what you can imagine enjoying for decades of your life and
00:34:47.600
when you can pull these three things together and combine them into one commitment that that you uh
00:34:55.280
pursue uh that's when you are on the road to purpose uh and as i said it can take a long time
00:35:03.040
there's nothing wrong with that especially these days where the economy is changing it's very complicated
00:35:10.080
there's new industries growing up all the time there aren't ready-made niches for you to go in
00:35:17.120
you can take your time but always try to move forward and learn and learn about those three
00:35:22.720
things learn about what you're good at doing learn about what the world needs and learn about what you
00:35:28.160
believe in and what you're interested in and what you can imagine getting a lot of satisfaction out of
00:35:33.600
committing yourself to yeah i love that idea of moving forward and particularly the analogy you gave in
00:35:38.640
the book the equilibration you had that psychologist you know what's the best way to stay afloat in
00:35:43.600
water and it's not to float that's actually really hard to do if you've done that if you're a grown
00:35:48.720
man it's you're heavy you start sinking but it's just to swim forward right right it's again it's a
00:35:53.600
little counterintuitive yeah being static is is not a good way to get balance in life it turns out
00:35:59.680
it's moving forward it's developing it's growing it's changing that's how you actually balance
00:36:05.840
yourself in the world not just by standing still and uh and as i said you you kind of know in life
00:36:14.080
when you're learning something and you and remember you learn through your failures as well as your
00:36:18.640
successes so that's why i always when i write i always urge people at all ages to don't don't be impatient
00:36:26.640
and don't get discouraged uh just keep moving forward and things will uh you you will learn
00:36:33.520
as long as the brain is alive and and uh you're open to experience you will learn and grow well
00:36:40.560
professor damien is there some place people can go to learn more about your work we have a website on
00:36:45.840
my center at stanford i'm a professor at stanford university and we have a center at stanford that i
00:36:54.000
direct called the center on adolescence it's stanford coa it's the website and on that website we
00:37:01.120
constantly post all of the research the journal articles that my students do that my colleagues do
00:37:08.960
i write when i write something it goes up there so that's the best way to keep current about uh about
00:37:15.440
the research on on the development of purpose that we're doing and as i say we have projects going at
00:37:20.320
all ages now uh from early adulthood up through old age the stanford center on adolescence website
00:37:27.360
even though it's called center on adolescence we actually most of our research now is done on
00:37:32.400
early adulthood mid mid life and older age and we connect it back of course to what happens early
00:37:39.920
in life fantastic well professor damon thank you so much for your time it's been a pleasure for me too
00:37:43.760
i appreciate and and thank you for your good insights too into uh into what we've been doing
00:37:48.560
my guest today was william damon he's a professor of education at stanford university he's also the
00:37:52.240
author of the book path to purpose it's available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere you can
00:37:56.160
also find out more information about his work at williamdamon.com also check out our show notes at
00:38:00.480
aom.is slash path to purpose all one word where you can find links to resources where you can delve
00:38:05.120
deeper into this topic well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast for
00:38:11.760
more manly tips and advice make sure to check out the art of manliness website at
00:38:14.960
artofmanliness.com if you enjoy the show the podcast and have gotten something out of it over
00:38:18.880
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00:38:22.320
that helps us get the word out about the show as always thank you for your continued support and
00:38:26.080
until next time this is brad mckay telling you to stay manly