Meaningful life

He publishes regularly on his Practical Spirituality Substack and serves on the board of the Association for Spiritual Integrity.

His website is philipgoldberg.com. Phil's latest book is Karmic Relief, Harnessing the Laws of Cause and Effect for Joyful, Meaningful Life.

Phil, it's so wonderful to have you on Big Universe.

Thanks for coming.

I feel very confident in that.

Philip Goldberg is a practitioner, teacher, and the author of so many books, including Spiritual Practice for Crazy Times.

He hosts the Spirit Matters podcast, also on mindbodyspirit.fm, His website is philipgoldberg.com. His latest book is Karmic Relief, Harnessing the Laws of Cause and Effect for a Joyful, Meaningful Life.

Check out our new website, biguniversepodcast.com. And also, of course, check out all the wonderful podcasts on mindbodyspirit.fm.

So it's a very condensed version of what I'm sharing with you today [laughs] but I'm really, I'm really proud of it.

So interestingly, as part of my Meaningful Life series, I started working on an episode called Write Your Own Eulogy, and if you're listening to me for the first time and you're like, "Why does this woman talk about death so much?" I don't, but I do include death in the stories about living, because I do think knowing that we are going to die does impact how we live.

And so I had already had an intention to write a podcast episode called Write Your Own Eulogy.

It really is something that is an exercise that many contemplative traditions suggest, or I have some good friends who took some courses on mindful death and dying, which I do wanna take, actually.

In two thousand and thirteen, there was this landmark research done by Roy Baumeister and his colleagues, and it was published in the Journal of Positive Psychology.

It looked at the difference between a happy life and a meaningful life, and what they found was happiness and meaning do overlap, but they're not identical.

People tended to report greater happiness when their needs and wants were being satisfied.

They felt healthy, comfortable, financially secure, and generally believed that life was going pretty well.

Meaning and fulfillment show a different pattern, though.

Meaning was connected more strongly with giving, contributing, helping others, and seeing your life as part of a bigger story.

A meaningful life also tended to connect the past, present, and the future.

You can look backwards and understand how certain experiences shaped you, who you are today.