The Meaningful Project
An ongoing exploration of what’s meaningful.
Initial project in collaboration with: Gregory Pepper, Nagaraju Thummanapalli
What is Meaningful?
The Meaningful Project aims to identify, understand and nurture what is meaningful to people. By bringing meaning to the forefront of daily life, we attempt to counter the current increase of mental health issues such as depression loneliness, stress and anxiety.
“The most effective way to increase and maintain one’s chronic happiness over and above the genetic set point is by changing one’s behaviour via intentional activities.”
— ‘Sustainable happiness model’ of Lyubomirsky et al. (2005)
Belonging, Purpose, Transcendence, Narrative
Instead of chasing happiness, Emily Esfahani Smith suggests pursuing meaning. The core concept of The Meaningful Project is based on positive psychology and inspired by Emily Esfahani Smith’s four pillars of a meaningful life: belonging, purpose, transcendence and narrative.
The Pursuit of Meaning
With different interventions The Meaningful Project enters different spheres: the private, public, physical and virtual. Some interventions seamlessly and naturally integrate into our daily flow, others do exactly the opposite: Make us stop, step out, take a breath, reflect in order to consciously make the right decisions.
Positive Design approach
Based on Positive Psychology, Positive Design deliberately intends to increase people’s subjective well-being. Through several interventions The Meaningful Project is making this subjective well-being explicit. Furthermore, research shows that in order to change behaviour sometimes a prompt can be all it takes.
