Transcript
Brett McKay:
Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. There’s been a lot of inks built in the past decade about young adults’ “failure to launch” where in 20 somethings who should be progressing into independent adulthood end up spending that decade of their life in a sort of extended adolescence. Several reasons have been given for this phenomenon from the economy to helicopter parenting. After conducting a landmark 25 year study, my guest today argues that a major factor in young adults failure to launch is actually rooted in their difficulty in finding a purpose for their life. His name is William Damon. He’s a professor of education at Stanford University. And today on the show we discuss the results of his study and the importance of having an overarching aim in life. These are themes of his book, The Path to Purpose. We began our conversation discussing the criteria of a good life’s purpose and why fewer young people have one today.
We then discussed why more young people are prioritizing fame and fortune over public service compared to their peers a half century ago. The new places many young people are finding purpose today and why that’s led to a decrease in civic engagement and the benefits that come from having a clear purpose in life. We end by talking about how a young person, even those longer in the tooth who still feel adrift can find a life’s purpose and what parents can do to help their children find theirs. After the show is over, check out the show notes at aom.is/pathtopurpose. Professor William Damon, welcome to the show.
William Damon:
Thank you.
Brett McKay:
So you wrote a book called The Path to Purpose, and it was the capstone of this 25 year study that you did on how young people find fulfilling purposes in their life. I’m curious, what was the impetus behind that 25 year study? Why did you think it had to be done?
William Damon:
When I realized that the studies that I’d been doing on young people’s identity and their values and how they succeed in life and the kind of commitments they make, that the real master concept that I was groping towards at the time and not really understanding what was bringing all this together, that master concept really was the kinds of goals, long-term goals that some young people develop. And when they do, they get a sense of direction that brings them through the hard times, the uncertainties, especially in adolescence and early adulthood when you don’t really know what your future is going to be. And I had a realization that what was really driving the successful young people was that they had found something that they could dedicate their lives to, something that they believed in that was beyond the self, that was something larger than their own immediate short term desires to get into a good college or get a job or have fun or any of the kinds of things that normally drive young people.
And all of those things are fine and they’re part of growing up, but what really made a difference for the young people that seemed to have a great sense of certainty and satisfaction and fulfillment about their lives was that they had found something to commit themselves to. And that concept was purpose. And I think that some of the things that I read at the time, I was reading, for example, Viktor Frankl’s wonderful book about man’s search for meaning and his own struggles and trials and how he found purpose and that got him through a terrible time when he was imprisoned in Germany. I read some theology, Rick Warren’s book on the Purpose Driven Life, which of course was a religious book that was very inspiring to me and a number of other sources that I realized finally that this was the idea that pulled together all of the insights that I’d had previously about identity and goal directedness and moral commitment and all of the many related things that I’ve been interested in. Purpose brought it all together.
Brett McKay:
I think you’ve kind of alluded to the definition of purpose through that answer you just gave. So first it’s something outside of yourself, but how else, what are the other factors that you found that make for a purpose in life?
William Damon:
Right. And this is a really good question because of course people use purpose in the common language in a million different ways. And sometimes they use it as if it’s synonymous with words like passion, for example, or meaning. And of course all of these other words are related in some way, but purpose has its own particular meaning. If it didn’t, you wouldn’t even need the word. What my group did, my research team did for, it actually took about a year, was to do an examination of how philosophers and theologians and other people had been using the word in a particular way. And so we came up with a definition that I think is now being used in a lot of scientific studies beyond our own, which relies on a number of criteria and they’re all important. And one of the important aspects of purpose is that it is a long-term goal.
It’s a long-term intention. It’s not going to town and trying to find a parking place or trying to go to a good movie or get a date on Saturday night or earn some money or get into a college. It’s not a finite short-term goal. It’s a long-term future horizon kind of perspective and it’s enduring. So that’s number one. Number two, it’s something that is meaningful. That’s an important part of it. So nobody can give you your purpose and say you’ve got to do it. That’s not a purpose if you’re just carrying out somebody’s orders. It’s something that you own yourself, that you buy into, that you believe in. So it has to be meaningful to you. And then third, and this is an important distinction between other things that are meaningful to you, is that it’s something beyond the self. It’s not just all about me, all about my own interests, my own development, my own protection.
And again, there’s nothing wrong with being concerned about meaningfulness to yourself, but purpose is something more than that. It’s a desire to have consequence on the world beyond the self in some way. It could be something altruistic, contributing to the welfare of others. It could be something aesthetic, creating something beautiful or something interesting, lasting in the world. It could be scientific, learning or discovering something about the world. There are lots of forms of going beyond the self, but it’s not all about my own fulfillment, my own satisfaction, my own happiness. It’s something that engages you in the broader universe. So when you put all of these criteria together, that gives you the unique definition of the word purpose. And it’s consistent, as I said, with the way a lot of previous philosophers and other scholars and other people have written about it, but we wanted to make it really clear because we do scientific work.
And when you do scientific work, every word has to be defined in a way that distinguishes it from other terms, obviously.
Brett McKay:
So in this 25 year study that you did, did you follow the same cohort of individuals or were you interviewing lots of people, different people within that 25 years?
William Damon:
Well, we do not have a 25 year study of any one cohort. We have actually, it’s a program of research. It’s a 25 year program of research, which consists of a number of different studies. We have one longitudinal data set that we began in the early 2000s, which would be about 15 years ago. And we’ve been following those young people. I think remembering right, our most recent follow up was maybe 2010 and we have plans to go back if we can, but generally we do longitudinal work and we follow young people for a few years. And as long as we have an opportunity to do that, I will say that we have a study now of people at midlife begins when people are 50 or above. And we’re very interested in purpose as folks age and as they even retire from their initial job or their children leave home and they have to search for new purposes in life, what we call encore purposes.
And so we’re very interested in purpose as a lifelong capacity that is important all through life, not just when you’re a young adult, but when you’re in midlife and when you’re an older person.
Brett McKay:
This research you’ve done on young people, did you find that a lot of young people didn’t have a purpose in life or didn’t have a clear purpose they were aiming for?
William Damon:
We found a number of different groups of young people. In our initial study, only about one in five of the young people between the ages of 12 and 22 had really clear, strong purposes already developed, which leaves 80% that did not. But of those 80%, about two thirds or three quarters of those young folks had begun to search for purpose, had initial leanings or ideas or inclinations or interests that would lead them to purpose. And there were a number, a small number, 20 to 25% of the total population that had not even begun their search and were still drifting. So we found a lot of heterogeneity in that population, but it’s a moving target. And as they grow, a lot of the young people that had not found purpose began or moved ahead or began to find commitments that they could really care about.
Brett McKay:
Within your research, were you able to find any changes in generations? What was it like maybe 50 years ago with baby boomers when they were young? Do you have any comparison between that?
William Damon:
Well, not research wise because of course I wasn’t doing that. I’m a baby boomer myself and I wasn’t doing research 50 years ago. I was being a young person myself and nobody was doing this kind of work. So we don’t really have anything like a solid scientific comparison with the same measures. I will say that in reading history about previous generations, it does seem to me that there are periods in every society where there is a strong sense of national purpose. For example, in reading about the lives of young people during the Great Depression, which the sociologist Glenn Elder has written about in a book called Children of the Great Depression, it was pretty clear that a lot of the young people growing up in families that did not have very much and the dad was out of work and everyone was scrambling around to survive economically.
These young people really pulled together and shouldered a lot of the family burdens and had a ready-made purpose that they could devote themselves to, which is helping their families get through these hard times. And that generation, according to the previous sociological research, looked very good in their further development. In fact, that was a generation that later became called The Greatest Generation by, I think it was Tom Brokaw who wrote that book. And I think there’s some point to that. There are times in history when there are national purposes. Of course, World War II is another example where the whole society really bought into it. That was the same generation when it was a bit older. And I think it is kind of a ready-made purpose that does make it a bit easier for young people to find commitments that they can devote themselves to commitments that are beyond the self.
And I think in our time, things are a bit confusing for young people because the world has so many options and especially with globalization and technology and even the world of work is changing so that fewer and fewer people are going into a corporation and expecting to stay there for 40 or 50 years and be a loyal member of that company. That’s becoming more and more rare. People aren’t living in the same communities anymore. They’re moving all over the place. The age of marriage and family formation has become much older, even less common. So all of these big purposes in life are becoming more elusive for this generation. So I think that it’s a challenge right now for a young person to find a purpose, but young people are. There are plenty of young people that are successful in this.
Brett McKay:
I guess the other challenge too with technology, you mentioned that is a lot of the technology is very individualistic. It’s very self-referential, right? Like social media.
William Damon:
Yes, that’s exactly right. And the whole sense of community is elusive these days. And all the research that we look at shows increasing amounts of social isolation at all ages. And interestingly, it’s at the youngest ages that you find the most increase in social isolation in the data that I’ve seen. So not having a community of actual real life people that you can meet with face to face beyond the social media kind of interactions, that again, removes one great source of purpose from young people’s lives.
Brett McKay:
And you mentioned a study that was done where they compared and contrast what college students’ priorities in life were say 50 years ago to what they are today. And I think it was 50 years ago, the top priority was to do meaningful work or something like that. And now for a lot of young people, it’s to be rich and famous. Am I referencing the right study?
William Damon:
Yes. That came out of UCLA, a group in UCLA that has studied everything from goals to spirituality in life. And that is what they found that at least when they did that research. Now that research is not totally current. I believe it’s about 20 years old at this point, but Sandy Aston is the person who did that work. But at least at that point, that’s right. There were a strong trend towards more material and career oriented goals that were not personally meaningful. I can’t say for sure if that trend is continued or not, because as I said earlier, it’s a very heterogeneous population and we find lots of distinctions between how young people are approaching their futures. There certainly is a driving number of young people who are very idealistic. That hasn’t gone away. It’s more that I think when they confront the world of work and the necessity to kind of get out there and compete in the economy, they’re getting messages that tend to orient them to more materialistic kinds of goals.
Brett McKay:
One manifestation of that, you go into detail about the book is that fewer young people even have an interest in doing public service or running for political office nowadays.
William Damon:
The lowest number of young people, the smallest percentage of purposeful aims of all the different sources of purpose was the idea of civic leadership of some kind. The sources of purpose that were popular in our studies included family, the idea of forming a family, of supporting a family, vocation, which of course is always a big source of purpose for young people, faith, other kinds of community goals like charity and that kind of thing, service. But the idea of getting involved in leadership in your community, such as running for mayor of your town or joining the school board or being on city council, that was not high on the list of many young people. That was the smallest portion of young people’s goals. And I know that must have changed from at least when I was young because I remember a lot of my schoolmates in my classes in high school had definitely had civic aspirations. So I think that even though we weren’t doing research back then, I think it’s fair to say that this has been a decrease over the years.
Brett McKay:
Were you able to get any insights as to why young people were less interested in civic leadership and did they give reasons why they had no interest in that whatsoever?
William Damon:
It’s hard to generalize about that. I mean, part of it is that the other sources of purpose have become so attractive to young people. For example, family, to give you one example, and family is a great source of purpose. I don’t want to disparage it at all, but I will note that this is a very family oriented cohort of young people, which is different than when I was young. When I was young, there was a much bigger emphasis on autonomy, of breaking away from the family. Those are the days of what was called the generation gap. The idea that, gee, I’m going to devote my life to supporting a family or being connected with my extended family, taking care of my mom and dad. I mean, these are wonderful aspirations, but they were not high on the radar screen. Family now is a very laudatory and admirable goal that young people have.
And the same thing for work. I think young people really are concerned about having a good career and there is almost a sense of insecurity among young people that, gee, am I going to find something that is going to be both interesting and rewarding? And I think that when I was younger, there was a much stronger sense of security that the economy would somehow take care of us. And it might have been a time of more affluence generally, I think. There’s been a lot written about how the economy has gotten so hard for so many groups of people. So I think that it’s probably a case that these other sources of purpose are now so compelling that they’ve pulled young people away from the public sphere in ways that were not the case a generation or two ago.
Brett McKay:
That could help the individual, but that could have effects for us as a society with fewer people engaged in civic life.
William Damon:
Certainly. And it’s an important part of becoming a mature adult to care about the society at large, to become a good citizen, to contribute. And of course, a lot of this, I mean, you remember the work that we had done on this area is really focused on young people in adolescent and early adult period between the ages of say 12 and 25 or 26 or something like that. They’re going to keep developing. They’re going to keep growing. And so a lot of these concerns could well be in their future. And I always say it’s very important that development does not stop at the end of high school or at the end of college or even at the end of young adulthood. As long as the brain is alive, people keep learning and growing all through life. So a lot of the things that we’re looking at that are not yet complete are very likely to happen for at least a lot of the young people that we’ve been looking at.
Brett McKay:
So let’s talk about the benefits of having a life purpose. In your research, what are some of the benefits you and your team found that come with having a clearly defined purpose?
William Damon:
Well, certainly motivation, energy, resilience. If you have something beyond the self that you’re dedicated to, it helps you get through all of the tough times that inevitably all of us have. You bounce back. Failure does not discourage you because you don’t take it personally. It’s not all about you. You’re not your main source of concern. You care about the cause that you’re dedicating yourself to or the goals that you have, what you’re trying to accomplish, so you keep going. So all of the motivational benefits of purpose are really clear. And then of course, when you’re highly motivated with something and you’re really engaged and working hard to get it accomplished, there is a sense of satisfaction to that. There’s a sense of that life flows, that you are brought out of yourself into something that you really care about. I also think that a lot of people have talked about emotional states like joy and passion.
And I think that often these do accompany purpose, but they’re not the same thing. And I do want to point out, because I think it’s a mistake that people make, is that purpose is not always accomplished every minute by a sense of joy or a sense of passion. A lot of times it’s a story of drudgery and just diligence and grit and keeping things going, even when it’s not very much fun. And that’s what commitment is. It’s sticking with things. But in the long run, it brings you a lot of satisfaction. It doesn’t mean that every moment you’re full of flow and passion and joy and all of those positive emotions. But in the long run, it’s a very satisfying, fulfilling sense that you have really worked to accomplish something and you care about it and you’ve made some progress on it. So I think it is a strength in life.
It’s something that, it’s a capacity that brings a lot of personal rewards. Those rewards include often a sense of joy, but more importantly, they include a sense of great satisfaction and as I said, resilience and energy and motivation. And I will say one other thing that there have been studies in gerontology. I’ve mentioned that we are doing some work at the upper end of the age span, and there’s work in gerontology that seems to indicate that purpose is connected with health and a decrease in both morbidity and mortality. We haven’t done that work ourselves, but the field of gerontology has reported that kind of finding.
Brett McKay:
How do people go about finding a purpose in life? And what did you guys see? Is it something you sit down at a journal and you answer some questions and you boom, you have a purpose or is it much more fluid and organic?
William Damon:
It’s more organic and it starts small like everything in life. It begins with having interests that you pursue. There are some conditions that promote it. For example, having someone in your life that you admire, somebody that is like a mentor or that demonstrates to you what a life of purpose can look like. It could be a parent, it could be a teacher, it could be somebody that you work for. That’s a big help. Having what you do in life matters, that it makes a difference. Taking what you do seriously. There are two great realizations that every young person or every person who we’ve seen who has developed purpose has at some point. And one revelation is that what I do in this world matters. I can make a difference. And the other revelation is that the world needs something, that there’s some way that what I do can improve or help either help other people or add something to the world that’s valuable.
And it can be something very consequential. It could be something very consequential, like the young people that want to go into medicine and cure cancer or something like that, very serious kinds of goals. Or it could be something that is not a response to something, a problem in life, but just something that adds to the world. Like one young person that we studied felt that scales, the musical scales used in jazz music had gotten boring. So he was dedicating himself to writing new scales and trying them out with new kinds of music. So it could be something ordinary like raising a family. It could be something heroic, like wanting to be an astronaut. There’s always a sense that I can do something that matters and it matters to the world. And beyond that, the world actually needs this. The world can, there’s a deficit. There’s something that is missing that I can add to.
And when those two insights are combined and then the person devotes some time to learning how to do this, to learning how to develop the skills that will enable the person to make the contribution, that’s when purpose really starts moving. That’s when the capacity really begins to develop.
Brett McKay:
And I thought it was an interesting point that your research found that parents can be a source, sort of a mentor, but you found that it’s often non-familial or non-parental mentors who have the most impact on a young person.
William Damon:
Yeah, that’s great. I’m really glad you said that and put it that way because that’s exactly right. And it’s something that a lot of parents don’t realize, I think. I think some parents or even a lot of parents feel that it’s their obligation to help write the script of life for their child. And of course, parents have a lot to offer and they certainly can provide a lot of wisdom and information that’s hugely helpful for young people, but you cannot write the script of life for your child. And we usually found in most of the cases we looked at that the purpose that the young person had discovered was not given to them by their parent. We did not find many cases of, for example, a father saying, “Well, our family has had three generations of lawyers in it. We have this great law firm or this great family business, and now your purpose is going to be to carry on and be a lawyer just like I was, or an engineer like I’ve been.” We find that the young person has to bring himself or herself to that.
And if that doesn’t happen, the purpose will not take, it will not endure. What parents can do is introduce their children to possibilities. They can listen hard to hear what the interests are that their children have developed on their own. They can provide resources and support and encouragement for the child’s interests, but they cannot give the child a purpose and say, “Okay, this is your purpose. Now go do it.” That doesn’t work. We’ve never seen a case where that works. So parents are really important.
In fact, most of the young people with purpose had parents who had encouraged them in some way and had added a lot to their lives, but it wasn’t introducing the purpose or defining it for the child. It was something much more indirect.
Brett McKay:
So besides introducing them to opportunities, possibilities, listening to your child, would another way that parents can help facilitate their children finding a purpose in life is maybe sharing their story of how they found their purpose in life?
William Damon:
Exactly. That’s exactly right. And again, I’m glad you said that because I was remembering that that was the one thing I had not gotten around to mentioning. And again, this is amazingly uncommon we find. When we interview young people, sometimes we’ll ask them what their parents are doing for their living, what mom or dad does. And the young person will say something like, “Well, my dad works on a computer all day. He types a bunch of stuff in. I don’t know what it’s for, but he works very hard or mom goes out and goes to the office and comes back.” And they don’t really know that maybe what their dad has done on the computer all day has eventuated in a truckload of sardines going to Tennessee or Texas. In other words, it has some value to the world that something is happening that would not have happened if mom hadn’t gone to the office or if dad hadn’t typed on the computer all day.
And what’s really valuable for young people is when their parents actually talk about What it is that they are accomplishing in life, why it is meaningful to them, and what problems they might have had. What do they have to overcome? What are their frustrations? What kind of resilience have they had to muster in order to done what they want to get done? And other adults too have the same opportunities. One of the things I always tell teachers is that you have a great opportunity to tell your students why you find teaching meaningful. Why is that your calling in life? And again, I’m surprised at how few teachers ever do this. The point isn’t to convince students to become teachers themselves. That’s not the point at all. The point is to show young people what it is like for a grownup to have a sense of purpose.
And if the young people see that, they’ll make their own meaning out of it and they will find their own way to have their own kind of calling. But it is enormously helpful for them to hear mom and dad or a teacher or some other adult explain to them why it is that the work that they do, the grownups do, is meaningful and important and purposeful.
Brett McKay:
Professor Damon, I know we have a lot of listeners who are in their early 20s, mid 20s, and they’re in that point in their life where they’re trying to figure out what their purpose is. Do you have any advice or insights based on your research and what they can start doing to lock down on that purpose?
William Damon:
Yeah. And let me say as a background, don’t worry too much or get too impatient. Purpose, just as purpose is a long-term goal, it takes a while to develop the capacity for purpose and to find purposes that actually do match your interests and your beliefs and your abilities. And there’s a lot of back and forth experimentation that happens, especially these days when there are so many options out there. So don’t worry too much if it doesn’t happen right away. And periods of trial and error are fine as long as there is some sense of forward movement that you’ve learned from your experiments, you’ve learned from trying out this job or doing this kind of activity. It can take quite a while. I mean, a lot of the young people we’ve looked at by age 30 have had 14, 15 different jobs already. So vocationally they have not yet gotten there where they’ve really settled in.
I think one of the important things that does help is to try to honestly and frankly identify what your skills are, what you’re particularly able to do and in an honest way, because to give you an extreme example, you might love basketball, but you’re not going to be a professional basketball player if you’re five feet, five inches tall. So you have to be honest about… And maybe if you love basketball, then you could go into basketball education or basketball marketing or something like that, but you wouldn’t want to try out for the Golden State Warriors or something like that. So that’s an analogy that applies to everything in every kind of career. I mean, there are lots of young people that want to go into the film industry or be script writers or film directors or actors and actresses. And a few of them have those kind of talents, most will not.
And you need to honestly assess what you’re able to do and listen to other people when they give you feedback about that. That’s number one. Number two, you have to honestly look at what the world needs. When I was a child, when I was eight years old, my big dream in life was to become a whaler because I grew up in the section of New England where back in the 1800s, they used to send whaling ships out all over the world and it was a tremendous romantic fantasy that you could actually go and do something like that. And it didn’t take me long to realize that, guess what? The world doesn’t need people going out catching whales anymore. So that was not a good choice for an occupation. And again, that’s an extreme analogy, but the point is that you do have to make an honest assessment of what the world needs, what’s the market like.
And the combination of, it’s really three things that you have to define for yourself, what you’re good at doing, what you’re capable of, in other words, what the world needs and what you believe in, what you’re interested in, what you can imagine enjoying for decades of your life. And when you can pull these three things together and combine them into one commitment that you pursue, that’s when you are on the road to purpose. And as I said, it can take a long time. There’s nothing wrong with that, especially these days with the economy is changing, it’s very complicated, there’s new industries growing up all the time. There aren’t ready-made niches for you to go in. You can take your time, but always try to move forward and learn and learn about those three things. Learn about what you’re good at doing, learn about what the world needs, and learn about what you believe in and what you’re interested in and what you can imagine getting a lot of satisfaction out of committing yourself to.
Brett McKay:
Yeah, I love that idea of moving forward and particularly the analogy you gave in the book, the equilibration. You had that psychologist, what’s the best way to stay afloat in water? And it’s not to float because that’s actually really hard to do if you’ve done that. If you’re a grown man, you’re heavy start sinking, but it’s just to swim forward.
William Damon:
Right, right. Again, it’s a little counterintuitive. Yeah, being static is not a good way to get balance in life, it turns out. It’s moving forward, it’s developing, it’s growing, it’s changing. That’s how you actually balance yourself in the world, not just by standing still. And as I said, you kind of know in life when you’re learning something. And remember, you learn through your failures as well as your successes. So that’s why I always, when I write, I always urge people at all ages to don’t be impatient and don’t get discouraged. Just keep moving forward and you will learn. As long as the brain is alive and you’re open to experience, you will learn and grow.
Brett McKay:
Well, Professor Damon, is there someplace people can go to learn more about your work?
William Damon:
We have a website on my center at Stanford. I’m a professor at Stanford University and we have a center at Stanford that I direct called the Center on Adolescence. And on that website, we constantly post all of the research, the journal articles that my students do, that my colleagues do. When I write something, it goes up there. So that’s the best way to keep current about the research on the development of purpose that we’re doing. And as I say, we have projects going at all ages now from early adulthood up through old age, the Stanford Center on Adolescence website, even though it’s called Center on Adolescence, we actually, most of our research now is done on early adulthood, midlife and older age. And we connect it back, of course, to what happens early in life.
Brett McKay:
Fantastic. Well, Professor Damon, thank you so much for your time. It’s been a pleasure.
William Damon:
For me too. I appreciate and thank you for your good insights too into what we’ve been doing.
Brett McKay:
My guest today was William Damon. He’s a professor of education at Stanford University. He’s also the author of the book Path to Purpose. It’s available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere. You can also find out more information about his work at williamdamon.com.
