By Bijan White
How do we derive meaning from the mundane world in which we live? Hal Hershfield, assistant professor of marketing at Anderson, attempts to decipher the complex mechanism of the mind. In research published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Hershfield and his colleagues tested whether simulation in general corresponds to and, more important, predicts meaning in life.
In his recent article in Slate, Step Outside Yourself, Hershfield writes about the formal studies and reports, “We found that having people project themselves forward or backward in time or into other geographic locations — compared with having people think about the present — boosted their subsequent reports of meaning in life.”
He reminds us that the mind possesses remarkable abilities of time travel, projection and imagination. We are constantly traveling through time and space in our minds, reliving memories, envisioning faraway places, and entering peoples’ heads. Hershfield asserts that mental stimulation is correlated with a stronger sense of meaning in one’s life.
When feeling a little lost, try to get lost in thought and discover a place deep inside yourself to bring some meaning to the present.
Read more about Hershfield’s research on decision-making in Harvard Business Review.
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