At 42 years of age, Michael Steger looks just like any other middle aged man. A bit taller than most? Yes. A bit more willowy than the average guy? Sure. A bit greyer than most 40 somethings? Definitely. But nothing defining that would give him away as one of the most pioneering psychologists in the field of positive psychology.

With his endearing sense of humour, he talks about his two kids and a wife who he proposed to with a clamshell. Talking in front of large audiences at some of the most highly recognised academic conferences, most would say Steger has definitely found his purpose in life. But as someone who has spent over a decade studying meaningfulness, he says he groups himself as a ‘seeker’ – someone who finds meaning over a long, enduring period that is seemingly never-ending.

“I’m in that boat,” Steger says. “Wondering. Not taking things for granted.”

Steger started his journey of meaningful life while undertaking his Ph.D at the University of Minnesota. At the time he was studying people who had been confronted with significant trauma at some stage in their life and how they were managing to “rewrite their stories, redraw their maps, to create a world that is different from the one since the event.”

This research then led to the question of how other people in the world figure out their own meaning, despite not experiencing any life changing trauma event.

He describes the psychological study of the meaning in life as the difference between two groups; one of which embrace the fragility of existence and the moments in life we’ve been given, and those who don’t.

“We are this little speck of dust in the middle of the abyss. We are ourselves, a tiny speck of dust. We live on a speck of dust in the middle of oblivion of nothingness. It’s actually worse than that. We only live on the outer crust of a speck of dust – that’s where life is for us. In that life we have all these moments we’ve been given and we  have to make those moments matter.”

“They (those people who) go to the fragility of existence – they’re making their moments matter” – MICHAEL STEGER

“They (those people who) go to the fragility of existence – they’re making their moments matter.”

While the construct of meaning is perhaps somewhat an ambiguous one, Steger breaks the word down in to two components; purpose – the need to do and significance – the need to make sense.

“The easiest way to not have meaning in life is to really try to focus on having more meaning itself. Meaning comes from doing, not just thinking,” he says.

“The bad news is I can’t tell you how to find meaning in your lives. You are going to go out and find your purpose and you are going to go and forge the sense you make in your own lives. There’s no answer from me, or anybody.  The good news is that you can all do it – anyone can do it.”

Despite confronting his own share of challenges throughout the duration of his research – “When I told people to write about what makes their lives meaningful, it made them irritable” – Steger has discovered there is one overarching theme that runs across most of his findings when asking “what makes life meaningful?

“Relationships are the ocean in which we find meaning, it’s the landscape of meaning.”

One study, in which Steger and his colleagues instructed college students to go out and take pictures of what makes their life meaningful and then come back and report what they took a picture of, found that “the number one answer was people.”

“90 per cent of these students mentioned explicitly a form of relationship.”

“Depending on the stages of life, those relationships can be parents or extended family,” he said. “People value us, they interest us, help us grow. They carry on a legacy, they give us a sense of our place in time. We can look at our genealogies. We see that relationships pull us out of ourselves.”

But, he says, there are many opportunities to find ways beyond other people.

“The question is not how can we finding meaning in life, but how can we not find meaning in life? It’s happening all the time, it’s happening 100 times today. There are invitations all around us to find meaning.”

However, although Steger passionately encourages every single person to embark on a journey to find some kind of meaning in their life, he expresses his fear of meaningfulness simply becoming another commodity, like “bottled water that we have to get from some South Pacific island that’s made out of raindrops or something.”

So, he says, maybe a better question to ask is: “what if you and I try to give a meaningful life?”

And how does Steger himself seek to find – and give- meaning in his own life?

“There are lots of little things. Trying to make people laugh. Having quiet moments. And the other two biggies are finding and savoring beauty in the world and always trying to learn more about life.”

Steger says the he would “like to be of some small benefit to the world around me, and if I can’t do that then I at least want to not be a problem.”

Despite his overwhelming sense of modesty, the 16,500 hits that return on a Google Scholar search of his name suggest that he has already contributed more than what most people will in a lifetime.

The AFL Players’ Association in conjunction with ACU is currently doing research into the impact on work-life balance on athletic performance.

Michael Seger will be the keynote speaker at an AFL Players’ Meaning @ Work breakfast  – Click here for more details 

What brings meaning to your life?