The secret to living a meaningful life

Prof Brian Little, one of the world’s leading experts on personality psychology, is renowned as a public speaker. Listening to him you would probably conclude that he is an extravert.

But in fact, Little is a self-proclaimed introvert. After his talk you would quite likely find him seeking a few minutes of quiet refuge behind the locked door of a toilet cubicle. This is one of the “restorative niches” described in his 2014 book Me, Myself, and Us, which he uses to recover from the exhausting demands of acting extraverted.

Little can behave extraverted when he needs to, he explains, because he is enacting what he calls a “free trait”: behaving out of character in pursuit of a deeply meaningful “personal project”, which in this case is to engage and educate his students and others in the value of personality psychology. This isn’t a peculiar quirk of this Cambridge University professor. He believes that each one of us is able to act out of character when we are motivated by an important and meaningful personal goal.

Indeed, Prof Little and his colleagues have spent many years studying how we can break free from the constraints of our more permanent personality traits, and live a happier life too.

To get a flavour of his research, take a few minutes to write down your own current personal projects – for instance, it might be losing weight, being a better pet owner, or writing a book. The list doesn’t have to be exhaustive, but as a guide.

BREAK FREE

Now, spend a few moments reflecting on each one, in particular think about its importance and meaning to you; how much it is consistent with your personality and values; whether the project brings you joy or stress and frustration; the origins of the project; whether you share the project with anyone else; how much progress you’ve made; and how confident you are about ever completing it.

These questions tap into the five main dimensions measured by formal Personal Projects Analysis: meaning, manageability, connection (to others), negative emotions and positive emotions.

Now zoom in on the handful of projects that are the most meaningful and relevant to your values and identity. These are your core projects and they are especially likely to affect your happiness and well-being. This is an empowering finding, as Prof Little explains in Me, Myself and Us, because whereas your traits describe who you are, your projects describe what you do, and they are eminently changeable. Choose the right projects, and approach them in the right way, and you can make your life richer and more enjoyable.

You are especially likely to be happier if your personal projects feel attainable. In fact, Prof Little has found that our confidence in achieving our projects is an even more important factor for our wellbeing than how much meaning a project has. Put differently, there are few things worse than having a core personal project that feels unobtainable.

In fact, findings show that when someone is engaged in a personal project that makes them stressed and miserable, this is an even more powerful drag on their wellbeing than other more obvious factors like poverty. The perfect combination is to have one or more sustainable core projects that feel within reach and are also full of personal meaning, reflecting what matters to you in life.

There are many other findings to bear in mind. Your projects are likely to be more sustainable and joyful if you are pursuing them for your own reasons, and not simply to please someone else, for instance, and romantic partners tend to be happier together if they share some of the same personal projects.

Perhaps most intriguingly, pursuing these personal projects allows you to break free from your personality traits, which can itself be rewarding: research shows that introverts like Prof Little enjoy acting extraverted more than they think they will, for instance.

Even so, he warns that this can take a toll over time and that it is important to give yourself restorative niches – whether that’s an introvert’s moment alone after a public talk or an extravert’s party time after a day of quiet study.