Ever felt directionless despite achieving everything you “should” want? Burned out treating every setback like catastrophe? Exhausted trying to control what you can’t? These are manifestations of a lack of spiritual health. “Spiritual health” is poorly defined, so I’ll define it practically: spiritual health means having a north star (purpose/direction), knowing you’re NOT the center of the universe (transcendence/perspective), and accepting you have influence, not control (coherence/acceptance). Miss any one and you’ll find yourself spiritually malnourished in problems as old as time.
- What Do We Mean by “Meaning”?
- Common Spiritual Problems
- Four Frameworks on Spiritual Health
- Are These Two Dimensions or One?
- Practical Implications
- What the heck is transcendence?
- How increase your purpose
- What’s the meaning of life?
What Do We Mean by “Meaning”?
Before diving into frameworks, we need to address a fundamental confusion: different experts use “meaning” to describe completely different aspects of spiritual health. This isn’t just semantic nitpicking - these definitional differences explain why frameworks seem to conflict and why you might have one type of meaning while desperately lacking another.
Three Dimensions of Meaning
Researchers have identified three distinct components that all get called “meaning” in different contexts:
1. Meaning as Coherence (Comprehension)
This is meaning as “making sense” - your life has a narrative structure that you can understand. But here’s the paradox: life contains randomness AND you still need to maximize your influence.
The solution comes from the Serenity Prayer:
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, The courage to change the things I can, And the wisdom to know the difference.
This wisdom shows up across frameworks:
- 7 Habits (Covey): Circle of Influence vs. Circle of Concern - focus energy on what you can actually affect
- Dr. Raph’s Anxiety Solution: Figure out what you’re trying to control, then switch to maximizing your influence instead
- Christian Perspective: Trust God’s plan while working faithfully - “Work as if everything depends on you; pray as if everything depends on God”
These problems aren’t new, Christians tried to solve it way back when:
- “Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding” (Proverbs 3:5) - accept what you can’t control
- “We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him” (Romans 8:28) - coherence emerges through faith
- “Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might” (Ecclesiastes 9:10) - maximize your influence
What coherence means:
- Events aren’t all random; there’s a pattern or logic (even though many are random)
- You can explain how you got where you are (even though the story is made up)
- You accept that you don’t have control.
- Example: “I can’t control the outcome, but I can control my response”
Without coherence, life feels chaotic and arbitrary. You might have clear goals and matter to others, but nothing makes sense because you’re fighting battles you can’t win.
2. Meaning as Significance (Mattering)
This is meaning as “having worth” - your existence makes a difference:
- Your life has value and importance
- What you do impacts others
- You matter in the larger scheme of things
- Example: “My work/relationships/contributions matter”
Without significance, life feels pointless. You might understand your story and know where you’re going, but wonder “so what?”
3. Meaning as Purpose (Direction)
This is meaning as “having aims” - you know where you’re headed:
- Clear sense of goals and intentions
- Values that guide your decisions
- A mission or calling to pursue
- Example: “I know what I’m trying to accomplish”
Without purpose, life feels aimless. You might matter and make sense, but have no idea what to do next.
How Different Frameworks Define Meaning
Here’s where the confusion becomes clear - each framework emphasizes different dimensions:
Viktor Frankl (Logotherapy):
- Primary emphasis: Significance through self-transcendence
- “Meaning” = Your life matters because you contribute to something beyond yourself
- Even suffering has meaning when you choose your attitude toward it
- Less concerned with coherence or specific purposes
Arthur Brooks (Build the Life You Want):
- Primary emphasis: Significance beyond self-interest
- “Meaning” = One of three happiness components (with enjoyment and satisfaction)
- Specifically tied to serving others and causes greater than yourself
- Assumes purpose emerges from significance
MLQ - Meaning in Life Questionnaire (Steger):
- Measures: All three dimensions combined
- “Presence of meaning” = Having coherence + significance + purpose
- “Search for meaning” = Actively seeking any/all of these dimensions
- Most comprehensive definition but can obscure which dimension is missing
When you plot these two dimensions, you get four distinct meaning profiles:
Deepening understanding
Healthy development
Never fully satisfied (in a good way)
Satisfied with purpose
No drive to explore further
Risk: Stagnation if challenged
Disconnected from purpose
May indicate depression
Most concerning profile
Motivated to find purpose
In transition
Potential for growth
This grid reveals a crucial insight: searching for meaning isn’t a sign of lacking meaning - you can have high presence of meaning AND still be actively seeking more. In fact, the top-right quadrant (presence with seeking) often represents the healthiest spiritual state: grounded in current meaning while remaining open to growth and deeper understanding.
Power of Full Engagement (Loehr & Schwartz):
- Primary emphasis: Purpose that energizes action
- “Meaning” = Connection to values that fuel engagement
- Bridges purpose and significance (“purpose beyond self-interest”)
- Views meaning as the energy source for all life dimensions
The critical insight: When someone says they “lack meaning,” they might be missing any combination of:
- Understanding (coherence)
- Mattering (significance)
- Direction (purpose)
And when different books promise to help you “find meaning,” they might be addressing completely different problems. This explains why advice that transforms one person’s life leaves another cold - they’re solving different equations.
Common Spiritual Problems
Having strong spiritual health means: having a north star (purpose/direction), knowing you’re NOT the center of the universe (transcendence/perspective), and accepting you have influence, not control (coherence/acceptance).
Note: Spiritual health is often confused with emotional health, but they’re orthogonal dimensions - you need both independently. For the key differences, see Spiritual vs Emotional Health in Four Healths.
When these break, you face three core problems:
Problem 1: “You Lack a North Star” (Purpose)
What breaks:
- You feel directionless even when succeeding by external measures
- You go through motions without knowing why
- You can’t make value-aligned decisions because you don’t know your values
- The work gets done but feels hollow
The cure: Purpose Anchoring
- Clear sense of personal purpose and values
- Regular engagement with your eulogy - who you want to be
- Making decisions aligned with your values
- Finding and following your north star
Example failure case: The professionally successful person who has achieved everything they thought they wanted but feels empty and wonders “what’s the point of all this?”
Problem 2: “You Are the Center of the Universe” (Transcendence)
What breaks:
- Life feels like a tedious sitcom where you’re the main character
- Your problems loom disproportionately large
- You lack perspective on what actually matters
- Anxiety and depression from thinking you’re the center of the universe
The cure: Self-Transcendence
- Walking in nature at dawn without devices, watching sunrise
- Meditation and prayer
- Philosophy and deep intellectual engagement with ideas bigger than yourself
- Service to causes larger than yourself
- Seeking truth and serving others (NOT pursuing personal happiness)
Example failure case: The person who knows exactly what they want and why, but burns out from treating every setback as catastrophic because they lack cosmic perspective.
Problem 3: “You Want to Control, But All You Have Is Influence” (Coherence)
What breaks:
- You exhaust yourself trying to control outcomes beyond your reach
- Life feels chaotic because you’re optimizing for variables you can’t actually affect
- You lose the narrative thread because you’re fighting reality instead of responding to it
- Anxiety from the gap between effort and results in domains you don’t control
The cure: Accept Your Circle of Influence
- Distinguish between what you control (your actions, attitudes) and what you don’t (outcomes, others’ choices)
- Focus energy on your actual sphere of influence, not your sphere of concern
- Find meaning in right action regardless of results
- Accept that some things simply aren’t yours to fix
Example failure case: The parent who tries to control their adult child’s life choices, burning out from attempting to influence decisions that aren’t theirs to make - or the leader micromanaging every detail of their team’s work instead of empowering them, creating chaos while trying to impose order.
Four Frameworks on Spiritual Health
Viktor Frankl: Meaning Through Self-Transcendence
Viktor Frankl’s “Man’s Search for Meaning” may be the foundational text on spiritual health. Written by a Holocaust survivor and psychiatrist, it introduces logotherapy - therapy through meaning. Frankl’s core insight predates and arguably underlies all modern frameworks on purpose and transcendence.
As noted in our definitions above, Frankl primarily emphasizes significance through self-transcendence - your life matters because you contribute to something beyond yourself.
The Primary Human Drive: At the heart of logotherapy is a radical claim: “The primary motivational force of individuals is to find meaning in life.” Not pleasure (Freud), not power (Adler), but meaning. This is the fundamental human drive.
Self-Transcendence as Core Mechanism: Frankl emphasizes that meaning is found through self-transcendence - “connecting with something greater than oneself, and finding significance in relationships and societal contributions.” His definition: “We can find our true self only by letting go of the old one.”
Three Paths to Meaning:
Frankl identified three ways to discover meaning in life:
- Creating a work or doing a deed - Purpose through contribution and achievement
- Experiencing something or encountering someone - Meaning through love, beauty, truth
- The attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering - Finding meaning even in what cannot be changed
This third path is Frankl’s most profound contribution: meaning can be found even in suffering when we choose our attitude toward it. “Being human involves exposure to the tragic triad of life, comprised of unavoidable guilt, suffering, and death, and in these circumstances, meaning can still be derived from the attitude we take toward the situation.”
Spiritual Dimension: Logotherapy was revolutionary for introducing “a focus on the spiritual dimension of the human psyche, previously ignored by most psychotherapists.” For Frankl, spiritual health isn’t religious - it’s the dimension where we confront questions of meaning, value, and purpose.
Diagnosis: “Frankl believed depression occurred at the psychological, physiological, and spiritual levels, with the depressed individual facing tension at the spiritual level between who they actually are in relation to what they should be.” This tension between actual and ideal self happens in the spiritual dimension.
Key Techniques:
- Paradoxical Intention: Overcome fear by anticipating and even wishing for what you fear, removing fear from your intention
- Dereflection: Stop obsessing on yourself; redirect attention outward toward meaning (accessing self-transcendence)
- Socratic Dialogue: Discover your own meaning through questioning rather than being told what it should be
Frankl’s Unique Integration: What makes Frankl essential is that he explicitly combines BOTH purpose and transcendence:
- Purpose: You must find YOUR specific meaning (can’t be prescribed; discovered through Socratic dialogue)
- Transcendence: That meaning is found by connecting to something beyond yourself (relationships, work, society, values larger than self-interest)
His model shows these aren’t separate - purpose IS transcendence. You find your purpose BY transcending self-focus. The path to meaning runs through self-transcendence.
The Paradox: “Frankl took a surprisingly hopeful view of people’s capacity to transcend their predicament and discover an adequate guiding truth.” Even in concentration camps, those who found meaning in their suffering - through their attitude, through serving others, through holding onto values - survived better than those focused on their own survival.
The lesson: Spiritual health isn’t about finding the right circumstances. It’s about finding meaning regardless of circumstances. And that meaning is always found through self-transcendence - through connecting to something beyond your immediate self-interest.
Arthur Brooks: Transcendence Through Getting Small
In Build The Life You Want, Brooks describes faith as “anything transcendent that helps you escape the boring sitcom that is your life.” His core insight: “You need to get small.”
Brooks’ framework emphasizes significance beyond self-interest (see definitions above) - meaning emerges when you serve causes and people beyond yourself.
The mechanism: Standing in awe of something vastly larger makes you appropriately small, which paradoxically provides perspective and peace. “What we need is a sense of the transcendent that makes us small, because we need perspective.”
Specific practices:
- Walking in nature at dawn without devices, experiencing awe from sunrise
- Meditation and prayer (Brooks combines rosary prayer with meditation techniques from Tibetan monks)
- Philosophy and deep intellectual engagement - “the transcendental walk in ideas and concepts every single day that are bigger than you”
- Service to causes larger than yourself
Critical distinction: The goal should be “seeking truth and the good of others” - NOT pursuing personal happiness. Happiness follows naturally as a byproduct.
Brooks addresses Chapter 8 “Find Your Amazing Grace” to three challenges:
- Your Monkey Mind - Mind wandering that avoids emotions and prevents presence
- Getting Started - Just start somewhere rather than waiting for perfect clarity
- The Right Focus - Don’t pursue spirituality for personal happiness; seek truth and serve others
Research shows spiritual practices protect against depression and anxiety by providing perspective that makes personal concerns appropriately small.
My Four Healths: Purpose as Direction
In my Four Healths framework, I treat spiritual health as your purpose anchor - the connection to meaning and purpose that prevents aimlessness.
This framework primarily emphasizes purpose as direction (see definitions) - having your north star, having clear values and goals to navigate by.
What it enables:
- Persisting through difficulty when results are far away
- Making decisions aligned with your values
- Finding meaning in ordinary moments
- Staying engaged rather than just going through motions
Core components:
- Clear sense of purpose and values
- Connection to something larger than yourself
- Rituals that mark transitions and create meaning
- Regular reflection on what matters
What breaks without it:
- Feeling aimless despite achievement
- Disengagement and going through motions
- Burnout from lack of meaning
- Difficulty making value-aligned decisions
This framework emphasizes having your north star - you need direction, not just perspective. Spiritual rituals anchor you to your deeper “why” and give ordinary moments significance.
Power of Full Engagement: The Bridge Between Both
Loehr and Schwartz in “The Power of Full Engagement” define spiritual energy as “connection to deeply held values and a purpose beyond our self-interest.” This definition brilliantly bridges both frameworks:
Their approach combines purpose as direction with significance beyond self (see definitions), viewing meaning as the energy that fuels all action.
- Like my framework: Emphasizes connection to YOUR deeply held values (purpose/direction)
- Like Brooks: Emphasizes “purpose beyond our self-interest” (transcendence/getting small)
Their key insight: “Purpose becomes more powerful when it moves from negative to positive, external to internal, and self to others.” This progression suggests spiritual energy starts with personal purpose but matures into transcendent service.
Unique contribution: They frame spiritual energy as the force for action - it “fuels passion, perseverance, and commitment” and “provides the force for action in all dimensions of our lives.” This makes it foundational rather than just another pillar.
Character as spiritual capacity: They define character as “the courage and conviction to live by our deepest values.” This aligns with purpose anchoring - knowing your values isn’t enough; spiritual health is the capacity to actually live by them under pressure.
The supporting “muscles” of spiritual energy:
- Character (courage and conviction to live by values)
- Passion
- Commitment
- Integrity
- Honesty
Rituals: They emphasize that “rituals create a means by which to translate our values and priorities into action.” Spiritual health isn’t just having values - it’s building the automatic behaviors that keep you aligned with them.
Are These Two Dimensions or One?
With our understanding of the three dimensions of meaning, we can now see that the apparent conflict between frameworks comes from emphasizing different aspects of meaning.
The Case for Two Separate Dimensions
These frameworks address orthogonal failure modes - you can have one without the other:
You can have transcendence without purpose:
- You feel appropriately small in the cosmic scheme
- You experience awe regularly and escape the tedium
- But you still don’t know what YOU should be doing
- You’re inspired but aimless about your own path
- Example: The spiritually minded person who meditates daily and feels connected to something greater but can’t figure out their career or relationships
You can have purpose without transcendence:
- You know exactly what matters to you and why
- Your values are crystal clear, decisions aligned
- But you take yourself and your mission TOO seriously
- Your problems loom too large because you lack cosmic perspective
- Example: The driven founder who knows their mission but burns out from treating every setback as catastrophic
Both missing:
- Aimless AND self-absorbed
- Don’t know where you’re going AND take yourself too seriously
- No direction AND no perspective
This suggests they should be separate dimensions: Purpose (having your north star) and Transcendence (getting appropriately small).
The Case for Developmental Stages
Both “Power of Full Engagement” and Viktor Frankl suggest these might be developmental stages rather than separate dimensions:
Stage 1: Purpose develops from self-focused to other-focused
- Early: “What do I want?” (self-focused purpose)
- Mature: “How do I serve?” (other-focused purpose = transcendence)
Stage 2: Purpose becomes more powerful through progression Loehr/Schwartz’s insight that purpose strengthens as it moves “from self to others” suggests transcendence isn’t separate - it’s what purpose becomes when it matures.
Stage 3: Frankl’s Integration Frankl’s model most explicitly shows this progression: You find YOUR meaning (purpose), but that meaning is ONLY found through self-transcendence (connecting to something beyond yourself). Purpose and transcendence aren’t separate - purpose IS the result of self-transcendence.
His three paths to meaning demonstrate this:
- Creating work → transcending self through contribution
- Loving someone → transcending self through relationship
- Attitude toward suffering → transcending self through values
Spiritual energy as foundation: Loehr/Schwartz’s framing of spiritual energy as “the force for action in all dimensions” suggests it’s not another pillar alongside physical/emotional/cognitive - it’s the underlying capacity that energizes all of them.
This view suggests: You start with personal purpose (find your north star), and as spiritual capacity grows, that purpose naturally expands through self-transcendence (seeing your direction as part of something vastly larger, moving forward for something beyond yourself).
Practical Implications
Regardless of whether these are separate dimensions or developmental stages, both are needed:
If you lack purpose (don’t have a north star):
- Work on clarity: eulogy, values identification, reflection on what matters
- Build rituals that keep you connected to your “why” - like a daily devotional practice
- Make decisions aligned with values to build character
- Focus inward first - you need direction before you can transcend
If you lack transcendence (thinking you’re the center of the universe):
- Cultivate awe: nature walks at dawn, meditation, philosophy
- Shift focus from “what will make ME happy” to “what is true and how can I serve”
- Get small - intentionally experience perspective on your place in the universe
- Focus outward - connect to something vastly larger than yourself
If you lack both:
- Start with purpose - it’s hard to transcend when you don’t know what you’re transcending toward
- Once you have some direction, begin cultivating awe and perspective
- Build rituals that maintain both (weekly reflection on purpose + daily transcendent practices)
If you have both:
- You’re in the rare position of having your north star AND having perspective on the universe
- Your challenge: maintaining both through life’s inevitable changes
- Keep both practice streams active - purpose without transcendence becomes obsession, transcendence without purpose becomes escapism
The key insight from all three frameworks: Spiritual health requires intentional practice. Whether you call it rituals (Power of Full Engagement), spiritual practices (Brooks), or purpose anchoring (Four Healths), you need consistent actions that keep you connected to both your personal values and something beyond yourself.
What the heck is transcendence?
Transcendence literally means “going beyond” or “climbing across” (from Latin trans- “across” + scandere “to climb”). In spiritual health, it refers to the capacity to connect with something larger than your immediate self-concerns.
Climbing Across, going beyond, or connecting beyond yourself.
Which direction
Up
- Connection to the divine, cosmic, or universal
- Experiencing the sacred or numinous
- Feeling part of something infinitely larger
- Examples: Religious experiences, cosmic awe, mystical states
Out
- Connection to humanity, community, or causes
- Seeing yourself as part of collective human experience
- Serving something beyond personal gain
- Examples: Social movements, deep empathy, collective joy
Through time
- Connection to past and future generations
- Seeing your life as part of an ongoing story
- Building legacy that outlasts you
- Examples: Ancestry work, creating for future generations, tradition
In (Self-Transcendence)
- Going beyond ego boundaries
- Dissolving the subject-object distinction
- Pure awareness without self-reference
- Examples: Deep meditation, flow states, ego death experiences
- Going beyond duality
What Transcendence Feels Like
You’ve likely experienced transcendence even if you didn’t name it:
Feeling Awe
- Watching a sunset that makes you gasp
- Standing before mountains or ocean
- Witnessing birth or death
- Encountering vast beauty or complexity
Feeling Appropriately Small
- Sudden perspective on your place in the universe
- Your problems shrinking to proper size
- Relief from the burden of being the main character
- What Brooks calls “getting small”
Feeling Ego Dissolve
- Temporary disappearance of self-consciousness
- Merging with the activity or environment
- No separation between you and experience
- Often occurs in flow states
Feeling Peak Connection
- Moments of profound meaning or unity
- Everything suddenly making sense
- Oneness with all existence
- Life’s most significant moments
Transcendence (Perspective) and Purpose (Direction)
Now we arrive at the heart of spiritual health: understanding how transcendence and purpose work together, yet remain distinct.
| Aspect | Purpose (Direction) | Transcendence (Perspective) |
|---|---|---|
| Core Question | “Where am I going?” | “What’s beyond me?” |
| Focus | Your specific path and contribution | Your place in the larger whole |
| Orientation | Future-directed | Present-moment awareness |
| Energy Type | Drives action toward goals | Provides peace and acceptance |
| Risk When Alone | Burnout from taking mission too seriously | Aimless floating without direction |
You can have purpose without transcendence - driven but lacking perspective, like the founder who burns out treating every setback as catastrophic. Or transcendence without purpose - connected but directionless, like the spiritual seeker who meditates for hours but can’t decide what to do with their life.
The highest spiritual health integrates both:
| Purpose | Transcendence |
|---|---|
| Gives you a mountain to climb | Shows you the entire mountain range |
| Provides energy for action | Provides peace with what is |
| Focuses your contribution | Connects it to the whole |
This integration reveals the ultimate paradox: As Frankl showed, you find purpose THROUGH transcendence - by connecting to something beyond yourself. Yet as Brooks demonstrates, transcendence without purpose leaves you inspired but aimless. We need both the direction and the perspective, the climbing and the view.
Why Transcendence Matters
Beyond feeling good, transcendence serves crucial psychological and spiritual functions:
Provides Perspective
- Your problems become appropriately sized
- Reduces anxiety about personal concerns
- Offers relief from self-obsession
- Creates space between you and your thoughts
Prevents Burnout
- Reconnects you to why things matter
- Refreshes depleted spiritual energy
- Reminds you you’re not carrying the world alone
- Provides sanctuary from achievement pressure
Creates Meaning Beyond Success
- Connects you to significance independent of outcomes
- Provides worth beyond accomplishment
- Offers identity beyond roles
- Ensures meaning survives failure
Protects Mental Health
- Research shows transcendent experiences protect against depression
- Reduces existential anxiety
- Increases resilience in face of suffering
- Provides hope in difficult times
The Paradox of Seeking Transcendence
Here’s the catch: You can’t achieve transcendence through effort the way you achieve goals. The harder you grasp for it, the more it eludes you. Instead:
- Create conditions where transcendence can arise
- Practice regularly without attachment to results
- Notice and appreciate when it occurs naturally
- Don’t try to hold onto transcendent states
- Let it transform you rather than trying to possess it
Transcendence is less something you DO and more something you ALLOW. It’s not an achievement but a release - a letting go of the very self that seeks transcendence.
How increase your purpose
(From Power of full engagement)
- Go from negative (not losing) to positive (thriving)
- Go from extrinsic motivation (money) to intrinsic motivation (autonomy, mastery, purpose)
- Go from self to others
What’s the meaning of life?
Here’s where I love Viktor Frankl’s insight the most: You’re asking the wrong question.
You should not ask what “what’s the point?” Life is asking YOU: “What’s the point of YOUR life?”
And you answer not with words, but with what you decide are your responsibilities.
When life presents situations - a child needing guidance, a problem needing solving, work needing doing - it’s asking “what are you going to do about this?” Your meaning emerges from how you respond. From what you choose to be responsible for.
This is why Frankl’s three paths (mentioned earlier) are all outward expressions: creating work, loving someone, choosing your attitude toward suffering. Each is taking responsibility for something beyond just existing.
My eulogy is my answer to life’s question: being a great father, being present, bringing joy, helping others grow. Not abstract philosophy - commitments to show up in specific ways.
The meaning gets stronger when those responsibilities extend beyond yourself - when you’re responsible for your kids’ growth, your partner’s wellbeing, your team’s success. That’s when purpose and transcendence merge.
Stop asking life what it means. Start answering life’s question about what YOU mean to do with it.