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A meaningful life is a happy life


About The Foodie Traveller

Born and raised Aussie with a passion for all things food and travel! About seventeen thousand cities on my bucket list and, slowly but surely, I'm crossing them off one-by-one. Find me curled up with an extra-frothed latte drooling over cooking videos or daydreaming about my next holiday.


When it comes to happiness, have we got it all wrong?

Have you ever wondered what the purpose of life is? What the ultimate goal to attain in order to find fulfilment is?

Like so many of us, you may have answered ‘happiness’.

Our society is growing more and more obsessed with chasing happiness, and it turns out this is actually making people unhappy.

Emily Esfahani Smith went on a journey to find out what makes people truly happy. She found that it was having meaning in life. She discovered that seeking meaning was a more fulfilling path than simply seeking happiness.

While studying positive psychology, conducting interviews and reading scientific papers, she concluded that there were four pillars of a meaningful life: belonging, purpose, transcendence and storytelling.

But what do these pillars involve? How can we strive to build each of them in our lives?

Smith explains how we can each live more meaningfully, and tells the story of how she came to realise the meaning in her own life in this short, astute and inspirational TED talk, which you can watch here.

There's more to life than being happy | Emily Esfahani Smith


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