Meaningful Life as the Pinnacle of Happiness
Be In Service of Something Bigger Than Yourself
Notes by Natalie Ola
2 min read · 9.7.2025
Positive Psychology
In 1998, Martin Seligman becomes president of the American Psychological Association. He chooses positive psychology as a central theme for his term.
Newsletter excerpt, “Psychology is not just the study of weakness and damage, it is also the study of strength and virtue; treatment is not just fixing what is broken, it is nurturing what’s best in ourselves.”
Year 2000, Manifesto for Positive Psychology is published.
3 Ways to Live a Happy Life
One of the big realizations was that there are 3 ways to have a good life; you can have a pleasant life, an engaged life or a meaningful life.
⇀ Pleasant Life
Pleasant life is about moment to moment happiness. Hedonic happiness—emotional set points will dictate or lock you up for life.
On the upper end what will raise your emotional set points—consistent access to non-ordinary states of consciousness; that is the only way to raise your emotional set points, which means flow experience after flow experience after flow experience and so forth.
But you also seem to have to do the emotional work to do that, you have to integrate the experiences, you don’t just get to do a bunch of psychedelics and move up the chain; you have to do the integration, hard work on the back end.
⇀ Engaged Life
The next step on the run is engaged life. This is a high flow lifestyle. An engaged life is a lifestyle that has a tremendous amount of flow in it.
⇀ Meaningful Life
The next step up is a meaningful life. And this is where those high flow activities are in service of something positive and bigger than yourself. And this seems to be the pinnacle of happiness, the best that we can do.
A meaningful life involves finding purpose, significance, and fulfillment through connections, goals, and contributions.
It’s about aligning daily actions with values, pursuing passions, and making a positive impact on the world.
Massively Transformative Purpose
Peter Diamandis writes in his tech blog,
“A single individual driven by a purpose can change the world. I often get asked for a single piece of advice to make an entrepreneur succeed.
“While there is no surefire route to success, I believe a necessary component of success for every entrepreneur is having a Massively Transformative Purpose (MTP).
“A purpose that drives you to wake up in the morning.
“Something you repeat in your head while you eat, shower, and before you go to sleep.
“Every successful person and organization has an MTP. You may have heard of Google’s MTP, ‘organizing the world’s information.’ That is no small feat.
“An MTP must be something that inspires and challenges you.
“It must be aimed not just at the mind, but also the heart.
“It has to be declared with confidence and sincerity.
“It can’t be a narrow goal, or even technology specific.
“And above all, it has to be uniquely yours.
“My personal MTP is to “inspire and guide the transformation of humanity on and off the earth.”
“This is what drives me.
“Everything I do, I try to do with this purpose in mind.”
⇀ Massive Transformative Purpose gives you the power of pull.
References:
Steven Kotler. Mapping Cloud Nine: Neuroscience, Flow, and the Upper Possibility Space of Human Experience. Audiobook. 5.10.2022.
Peter Diamandis. Discovering Your Massively Transformative Purpose. 9.7.2017
Alicia Nortje, Ph.D. How to Find Meaning in Life: 5 Ways to Realize Your Meaning. Positive Psychology. 3.4.2020.