Mindset Interventions & Individual Skills-Building

Explore Purpose in Life

Purpose in life refers to the belief that one lives a meaningful existence. Feeling a sense of purpose in life is associated with overall satisfaction and happiness, as well as reduced negative affect in the face of daily stressors (Hill et al., 2018), as well as with health, well-being and adaptive coping (Thompson, Coker, Krause, & Henry, 2003). You can help students understand the connections between their learning experiences and their sense of purpose in life, but also more immediately, to their reasons for enrolling in this course, and the major they have chosen to bring a sense of purposefulness to course activities. Doing so can also increase their engagement in your course or cohort and within the academic setting more generally.

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Example practices

The strategies below are organized along the timeline of a course: from early weeks of the semester to ongoing.

Early (First Two Weeks)

  • Have students set goals for what they want to accomplish in the course or over the academic year if in a cohort/advisee process with you.
  • Share how course content and skills relate to your own professional goals—and ask students to look for connections between what they are learning and their career and life purpose. This can also be applied to professional development opportunities you offer as part of advising or Lab activities.

Ongoing

  • Share how course content and skills relate to your own professional goals—and ask students to look for connections between what they are learning and their career and life purpose.
  • While teaching, explicitly connect course content to students’ goals. This can also be applied to reading groups, advisee meetings, and professional development opportunities.
  • Set up times to talk informally with students about their goals and life plans. Consider indicating to students that you are open to having a meal with students in a campus dining hall (a process subsidized by the Office of the Dean of Undergraduate Students).
  • Share with students that their life purpose is a process of contributing to the world using their unique set of strengths, values, interests and passions. Consider sharing how your study of the field has furthered your life purpose and brought it meaning. If students (graduate or undergraduate) are considering a career outside of academia, consider making connections between those students and your industry or other professional connections, or particularly for graduate students, suggest they make use of the resources offered by GradFutures within the Graduate School.