New Study Reveals: The Key Emotion for a Longer, More Meaningful Life Trumps Happiness

While contentment, excitement, and happiness are important, hope is the only consistent predictor of a meaningful life–and a longer life.

For most small business owners , money is a key driver, if only because being an entrepreneur means your income can be unlimited rather than capped .

But being an entrepreneur also involves freedom. Freedom to work more hours, or less. Freedom to make your own decisions, and to succeed and fail on your own terms.

At a basic level, entrepreneurship involves hope: hope for a better future determined, to a larger degree than when you work for someone else, by you.

But even if you’re not an entrepreneur, hope matters.

In fact, research shows hope — more than contentment, excitement, or even happiness — is the key to a meaningful life.

Hope and Meaning

According to a study recently published in Emotion , hope was the only consistent predictor of a stronger sense of meaning in life.

Sound odd? Maybe not. While feeling a sense of fulfillment could seem like the key to a meaningful life, fulfillment comes from achieving — past tense — something desired. I can feel good about something I’ve done, but what about the future? What about what I will do?

As a friend often says: no matter what your age, you aren’t old until the day you stop imagining a better future.

Other research backs that up. A study published in Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry found that participants who spent five minutes a day for two weeks imagining their “best possible self” — in terms of professional, relationship, and personal goals — experienced significant increases in optimism, and overall life satisfaction.

Picturing your best possible self? That’s a great definition of “hope.” Imagining what you will do. How you will spend your time. How you will use your resources. How you will make a difference in the lives of the people you care about.

Hope and Longevity

Do that, and science says you’ll likely live longer, too. A Proceedings of the National Academy of Science study that found people with “high optimism” were almost twice as likely to live to be at least 85, even after taking into account factors like health and socio-economic status.

There is one catch, though. If you’re in poor health or have an unhealthy lifestyle, the link between optimism and longevity is more tenuous.

Ultimately, individual longevity comes down to a number of factors, chief among them diet, exercise, and sleep habits; for a deeper dive, check out a leading physician’s Rule of 6 Plus 2 .

The Right Kind of Hope

Ultimately, hope involves goals. (Otherwise, what are you hoping for?) The key, where feeling a sense of meaning is concerned, is to focus on intrinsic, not extrinsic goals.

According to a meta-analysis of more than 100 studies published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , pursuing extrinsic goals related to image, fame, and money are linked with feelings of ill-being: the researchers call it the “dark side of the American dream.”

As you can probably guess, intrinsic goals related to growth, relationships, community, and health are linked with feelings of well-being.

Doing good, for yourself and for others, makes you feel good about yourself. Intrinsic goals tend to satisfy basic psychological needs like growth, independence, and connection. Extrinsic goals satisfy external validation goals (“satisfy” because external validation is only occasionally satisfying, and never lasting) and tend to lead to anxiety, insecurity, and even depression.

In part, that’s because of the nature of the comparisons involved. With extrinsic goals, comparisons tend to be outward, not inward — and there will always be someone more “something” to compare yourself to. Learn and grow, though, and the comparison you make is between the person you used to be and the person you’ve become .

That’s why a study published in the Journal of Research in Personality found that achieving goals involving personal growth, relationships, and community led to increased feelings of well-being.

So go ahead and hope. Picture a better future. Picture a better version of yourself. Work to achieve it. Keep rinsing and repeating.

Not only will you accomplish more, you’ll express a greater sense of meaning. And maybe even live longer.

Can’t beat that.

This post originally appeared at The News Pulsecom .

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