🫶 Meaning / Purpose

Book page | Hoopla | Barnes & Noble | Amazon

Official description: Free yourself from depression, anxiety, and insecurity, and instead build a rich and meaningful life with the updated and expanded edition of the world’s best-selling guide to escaping the “happiness trap.”

Over 1 million copies sold!

In The Happiness Trap, Dr. Russ Harris provides a means to escape the epidemic of stress, anxiety, and depression, unlocking the secrets to a truly fulfilling life.

Updated and expanded in its second edition, this empowering book presents the insights and techniques of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), covering more topics and providing more practical tools than ever before. Learn how to clarify your values, develop self-compassion, and find true satisfaction with this bigger and better guide to:

• Reducing stress and worry
• Handling painful thoughts and feelings more effectively
• Breaking self-defeating habits
• Overcoming insecurity and self-doubt
• Building better relationships
• Improving performance and finding fulfilment at work

The Happiness Trap is for everyone. Whether you’re lacking confidence, facing illness, coping with loss, working in a high-stress job, or suffering from anxiety or depression, this book will show you how to build authentic happiness, from the inside out.

Book page | Barnes & Noble | Amazon

Official description: In a culture obsessed with happiness, this wise, stirring book points the way toward a richer, more satisfying life.

Too many of us believe that the search for meaning is an esoteric pursuit—that you have to travel to a distant monastery or page through dusty volumes to discover life’s secrets. The truth is, there are untapped sources of meaning all around us—right here, right now.

To explore how we can craft lives of meaning, Emily Esfahani Smith synthesizes a kaleidoscopic array of sources—from psychologists, sociologists, philosophers, and neuroscientists to figures in literature and history such as George Eliot, Viktor Frankl, Aristotle, and the Buddha. Drawing on this research, Smith shows us how cultivating connections to others, identifying and working toward a purpose, telling stories about our place in the world, and seeking out mystery can immeasurably deepen our lives.

To bring what she calls the four pillars of meaning to life, Smith visits a tight-knit fishing village in the Chesapeake Bay, stargazes in West Texas, attends a dinner where young people gather to share their experiences of profound loss, and more. She also introduces us to compelling seekers of meaning—from the drug kingpin who finds his purpose in helping people get fit to the artist who draws on her Hindu upbringing to create arresting photographs. And she explores how we might begin to build a culture that leaves space for introspection and awe, cultivates a sense of community, and imbues our lives with meaning.

Inspiring and story-driven, The Power of Meaning will strike a profound chord in anyone seeking a life that matters.

Book page | Hoopla | Barnes & Noble | Amazon

Official description: Uncover the keys to longevity and lifelong happiness and fulfilment—Practical tips and science-based evidence for complete personal transformation from a behavioral science pioneer

“Victor Strecher has written what I would best describe as a ‘gift.’ He gifts us the ability to define our purpose and immediately start instilling into our own lives. Make no mistake, understanding this concept is not only good for your health -- it is good for the whole world.” — Sanjay Gupta, New York Times bestselling author and Chief Medical Correspondent CNN

Your life is a boat. You need a rudder. But it doesn’t matter how much wind is in your sails if you’re not steering toward a harbor—an ultimate purpose in your life.

While the greatest philosophers have pondered purpose for centuries, today it has been shown to have a concrete impact on our health. Recent studies into Alzheimer’s, heart disease, stroke, depression, functional brain imaging, and measurement of DNA repair are shedding new light on how and why purpose benefits our lives.

Going beyond the fads, opinions, and false hopes of “expert” self-help books, Life on Purpose explores the incredible connection between purposeful living and the latest scientific evidence on quality of life and longevity. Drawing on ancient and modern philosophy, literature, psychology, evolutionary biology, genetics, and neuroscience, as well as his experience in public health research, Dr. Vic Strecher reveals the elements necessary for a purposeful life and how to acquire them, and outlines an elegant strategy for improving energy, willpower, and long-term happiness, and well-being. He integrates these core themes into his own personal story—a tragedy that led him to reconsider his own life—and how a deeper understanding of purposeful living helped him not only survive, but thrive.

Illuminating, accessible, and authentically grounded in real people’s experiences, Life on Purpose is essential reading for everyone seeking to live more fully, and mindfully, today and for years to come.

Book page: Meaning in Life and Why It Matters

Book page | Hoopla | Barnes & Noble | Amazon

Official description: A fresh reflection on what makes life meaningful

Most people, including philosophers, tend to classify human motives as falling into one of two categories: the egoistic or the altruistic, the self-interested or the moral. According to Susan Wolf, however, much of what motivates us does not comfortably fit into this scheme. Often we act neither for our own sake nor out of duty or an impersonal concern for the world. Rather, we act out of love for objects that we rightly perceive as worthy of love―and it is these actions that give meaning to our lives. Wolf makes a compelling case that, along with happiness and morality, this kind of meaningfulness constitutes a distinctive dimension of a good life. Written in a lively and engaging style, and full of provocative examples, Meaning in Life and Why It Matters is a profound and original reflection on a subject of permanent human concern.

Book page | Barnes & Noble | Amazon

Official description: America's leading expert on adolescence offers his prescription for instilling a sense of purpose and fulfillment in today's youth.

Drawing on the revelatory results of a landmark study, William Damon-one of the country's leading writers on the lives of young people, whose book Greater Expectations won the Parents' Choice Award-brilliantly investigates the most pressing issue in the lives of youth today: why so many young people are "failing to launch"-living at home longer, lacking career motivation, struggling to make a timely transition into adulthood, and not yet finding a life pursuit that inspires them.

His groundbreaking study shows that about one-fifth of youth today are thriving-highly engaged in activities they love and developing a clear sense of what they want to do with their lives-but approximately one-fourth are still rudderless, at serious risk of never fulfilling their potential. The largest portion are teetering on the brink, in need of guidance to help them move forward: some are "dabblers" who pursue strings of disconnected interests with no real commitment; others, "dreamers" who have no realistic plans or understanding of what success will require.

What makes the difference? Damon shows that the key ingredient for the highly engaged is that they have developed a clear sense of purpose in their lives that motivates them and gives them direction. Based on in-depth interviews, he takes readers inside the minds of the disengaged and drifting kids and exposes their confusion and anxiety about what they should do with their lives. He then offers compelling portraits of the young people who are thriving and identifies the nine key factors that have made the difference for them, presenting simple but powerful methods that parents and all adults can and must employ in order to cultivate that energized sense of purpose in young people that will launch them on the path to a deeply satisfying and productive life.