Huge Study Confirms Purpose and Meaning Add Years to Life
Okinawans call it ikigai or “reason for being.” Costa Ricans call it “plan de vida.” . . . It’s simply referred to as your life’s purpose. In the blue zones regions of the world, purpose has always played a major role in well-being and the resulting extreme longevity. . . . Dr. Robert Butler, the first director of the National Institute on Aging, estimated that an ability to define your life meaning adds to your life expectancy. . . .His study found that individuals who expressed a clear goal in life—something to get up for in the morning, something that made a difference—lived longer and were sharper than those who did not. A more recent study published by the Journal of the American Medical Association linked a strong sense of purpose with a lower risk of all-cause mortality after age 50. The study followed about 7,000 adults over the age of 50. They found that participants who had the lowest life-purpose scores were twice as likely to have died than those with the highest scores.
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