A Psychologist's Tips To Find Meaning - Dr Clay Routledge | Modern Wisdom Podcast 366

... what we're referring to as existential agency. Existential agency, we define it as people's belief in their own ability to guide the meaning in their life, to have a meaningful life. (wind blows)

Clay Routledge, welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me. It's great to be here.

For the people who aren't familiar with you and your work, how do you describe what you study?

Well, I'm what's called an existential psychologist, and that probably sounds like, "What?" (laughs) "What's he talking about?" Um, so obviously, I'm a psychologist. I'm not a clinical psychologist. I don't see, I don't see clients or patients. Uh, I'm a, I'm a psychological scientist, so I do... I, I mainly do research. And so the existential part is... What I'm really interested in is the uniquely human capacity to ask big questions. Why am I here? What purpose do I serve? Does, you know, does my life have any meaning that transcends my mortality? Um, what does it mean to be free? You know, the idea of free will, agency, um, curiosity, creativity. You, you know, there's just all these things that we can do because we're intelligent and we're, you know, we're clever, we're imaginative. And so everything kind of wrapped around that idea of the big questions is what an existential psychologist is interested in. And then, of course, more... You know, that sounds very, very philosophical. So more concretely and practically, how does that connect to human wellbeing? Like, how do my concerns about meaning and life influence my goals, my ability to be mentally and physically healthy, my relationships, um, the types of beliefs I have? You, you know, so everything in life that, that, you know, that's really important to navigating, you know, the world and society and, and families and cultures. Um, how does that connect to these deeper questions of, of meaning and agency? That's pretty much in... You know, in a nutshell what I'm into.

Why does any other psychologist not study that? 'Cause that sounds-

(laughs)

... absolutely fascinating.

Yeah. Well, I mean, I think a lot of it is... It does... It sounds intimidating in some ways because it's so phil-... It, it sounds so abstract. And so one of the challenges we have as, you know, scientists is trying to, you know, trying to connect these broad ideas to empirically testable hypotheses. And so I think a lot of, a lot of psychologists, they're just, you know, they're just understandably interested in very specific things, like depression or schizophrenia or, you know, those, those types of issues. Um, and, you know, those are... O- obviously, those are important int-... Very, very important issues. But I'm into these kind of broader questions, which I think have implications for those i-... For those issues, um, so... But, but I do think a lot of people are like, "Well, you know, that's too fuzzy." Um, and it's... It, it, it's hard... It, it's hard to get at. Uh, but it is... I, I think it's a growing area, uh, a growing area of interest. I think there are more and more people that are interested in psychology, and I think a lot of that is driven by an increased awareness that clearly humans want their lives to be meaningful. Um, we're not machines, and we're not just... We're not just driven by money or practical security concerns, you know, like being... Having shelter, um, having, you know, having food. Um, we want something... We want something more than that. I mean, uh, the... um, the simplest, you know, example is like you could think about what if you were like, you know, filthy rich? You had everything you wanted. Like, you had a mansion, you had a yacht, you had, you know, um, the access to the best medicine. Um, that wouldn't... Y- you know, my guess is that would be pretty cool, (laughs) but that wouldn't necessarily, um, be totally fulfilling. I mean, m-... You, you might be bored, right? You might be like, "Well, what's the point of all this?" And so I think even if you control for all these kind of basic security needs that people have, to feed themselves, to feel safe, we long for something, for something more, to have an impact on the world. And so I think more and more people are realizing, uh, realizing that's, that's actually a really important driver of human behavior.