What Is Positive Psychology?

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Meaning and purpose are difficult to find, but, like many things, their difficulty makes them important.

Finding meaning is best treated as a process and not a single step you have to get right the first time.

Treat each activity and experience in your life as a way of helping you get further to defining meaning.

Even experiences that end up not feeling meaningful give you insight as to how you define purpose.

Social evolution has led human beings to look for ways to make what they do every day feel important beyond just survival. For centuries, human beings were focused only on getting through every day, so meaning and purpose in their lives were primarily focused on finding shelter and food. That pretty much took up every day.

Notice I talk here about “social evolution.” From a psychological point of view, social evolution is much more important than genetic evolution. Genetic evolution is important and primarily focuses on the physiological factors that contribute to how we respond to our environment. But social evolution, from an emotional and behavioral standpoint, is even more important because it offers much explanation........

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