Overview
By Tony Lyda, Psychotherapist and Co-founder of Jenora.
As a therapist, I am often part of someone's life for only a limited period.
I may meet them during a crisis, in recovery, after a loss, or while they are trying to understand what comes next. I do not control where their story goes, and I may never see all the chapters that follow.
But being invited to walk alongside someone for part of that journey gives my own life meaning.
Sometimes it is not about solving everything. It may be about helping someone feel understood, notice something they had not seen before, make one difficult decision, or get through a period they were not sure they could survive.
I may only play a small part.
That part can still matter.
Meaning does not always come from being the main character in our own story. Sometimes it comes from knowing that, for a time, our presence mattered in someone else's.
Success and Meaning Are Not the Same
Achievement can feel wonderful.
Getting a promotion, graduating, reaching a financial goal, completing treatment, buying a home, improving your health, or receiving recognition can create pride, relief, and excitement.
Those moments deserve to be celebrated.
But the feeling often fades.
After working toward something for months or years, people sometimes reach it and ask: is this it?
That does not mean the achievement was empty. It means achievement and meaning are not quite the same thing.
Achievement tells us that we reached a goal. Meaning tells us that our life matters.
Achievement is often visible and measurable. We can count qualifications, income, awards, followers, milestones, or years of sobriety.
Meaning is harder to measure. It may come from experiences that are quiet, demanding, unnoticed, or impossible to display:
caring for someone keeping a promise raising a child rebuilding trust helping a colleague being present for a friend contributing to a community teaching something creating something useful supporting someone through a difficult period allowing another person to support us
These experiences do not always make us happy in the moment. They can be tiring, uncomfortable, or emotionally difficult. They can still be deeply meaningful.
Meaning Is More Than Happiness
We often use happiness as the main measure of whether life is going well. We ask: am I enjoying myself? Do I feel good? Am I satisfied? Is this making me happy?
Those questions matter, but they do not capture everything.
Some of the most meaningful parts of life involve effort, grief, responsibility, frustration, or sacrifice.
Parenting can be meaningful without being enjoyable every day. Supporting someone through illness can be meaningful while also being exhausting. Recovery can be meaningful even when it is difficult. Therapy can be meaningful even when it brings painful experiences into awareness.
Meaning may not always ask: how do I feel right now?
It may also ask: what am I part of? What am I moving toward? Who or what matters enough for me to keep showing up?
Three Parts of a Meaningful Life
Psychologists often describe meaning through three connected experiences:
Coherence: my life makes some sense Purpose: I have something to move toward Significance: my presence matters
These do not need to be present perfectly or equally. At different times, one may be stronger than the others. When life feels empty or directionless, it can help to ask which of these areas feels most absent.
Coherence: My Life Makes Some Sense
Coherence is the feeling that the different parts of our lives fit together in a way we can understand.
It does not mean everything is fair, predictable, or easy. It means we can begin to make sense of what has happened to us, how those experiences have shaped us, what matters now, who we are becoming, and what this period of life may mean.
Routine can create coherence. Getting up at a regular time, preparing breakfast, going to work, attending a meeting, exercising, caring for children, or completing an evening reflection can make life feel less chaotic.
Stories also create coherence. When we can place an experience within a larger story, it no longer has to stand alone as proof that everything is ruined.
A job loss may be painful without meaning that we are worthless. A relapse may be serious without meaning that all recovery has failed. A relationship ending may change our future without ending our capacity for connection. A period of depression may shape our story without becoming the whole story.
Coherence begins to return when we can say: this happened, it affected me, it is not all that I am, my story is still continuing.
Reflection, journaling, therapy, conversation, spiritual practice, cultural traditions, and understanding our emotional patterns can all help life feel more coherent.
Purpose: I Have Something to Move Toward
Purpose gives direction. It helps answer: what am I moving toward?
Purpose does not have to be a single grand calling. It may be:
improving your health completing treatment rebuilding a relationship caring for a child returning to work learning something creating stability becoming more dependable living more consistently with your values supporting someone else contributing to a group building a life that feels more honest
At one stage of life, purpose may simply be survival. Later, it may become stability. After that, it may become connection, contribution, creativity, service, growth, or responsibility. Purpose often changes as we change.
It can be difficult to feel purpose when we are waiting for a perfect answer to appear. Sometimes purpose grows after we begin acting. We attend the group before feeling ready. We call someone before knowing exactly what to say. We return to exercise before feeling motivated. We take responsibility for one task. We keep one promise.
Direction can emerge through participation. You do not always need to know your final destination. You may only need something worth moving toward today.
Significance: My Presence Matters
Significance is the feeling that our life reaches beyond our immediate experience. It is the sense that our presence, care, choices, or contributions matter to someone or something outside ourselves.
This is where relationships become especially important. Meaning does not come only from having people around us. It often comes from participating in their lives.
We may experience significance when someone trusts us, when we encourage another person, when we teach something, when we care for someone, when we contribute to a shared task, when we become dependable, when we make something that another person uses, when we support someone through a difficult moment, when we help another person see possibility, or when we allow ourselves to be known.
One of the strongest ideas here is that meaning can come from being part of a story that is not our own.
We often imagine that meaning will come from making our own story impressive. But many meaningful moments happen when we stop being the centre of the story. We listen. We show up. We help. We teach. We encourage. We care. We may only play a supporting role, and we may never know the full effect. Our part can still matter.
You Do Not Have to Change Someone's Whole Life
People sometimes dismiss their contribution because it seems too small. They think: I was only there briefly. I did not fix the situation. Someone else could have done it. I do not know whether it made a difference. They probably do not remember me.
But meaning does not require control over the outcome.
A teacher may influence a student without knowing it. A nurse may offer reassurance during one frightening night. A friend may answer one phone call at the right time. A therapist may help someone through one chapter and never see the chapters that follow. A colleague may make someone feel less alone during a difficult period. A person in recovery may say something in a meeting that another person remembers years later.
You do not need to carry the whole story for your contribution to matter. Sometimes meaning comes from being one good part of it.
Allowing Others Into Your Story
There is another side to this.
When we allow people to help us, we are not only receiving support. We may also be allowing them to experience connection, contribution, and meaning.
This can be difficult to accept. People who are struggling often worry that they are a burden. They may withdraw because they do not want to inconvenience others.
But relationships are not meaningful only when we are strong, useful, or self-sufficient. Letting someone listen, care, teach, accompany, or support us can also be meaningful for them.
This does not mean we owe anyone access to our life. It means that receiving help is not always a one-way act. Meaning can move in both directions.
We find meaning by being part of other people's stories. We also create opportunities for meaning when we allow trustworthy people to be part of ours.
Meaning Does Not Require Losing Yourself
Helping others can give life meaning, but it can also become unhealthy if our identity depends entirely on being needed.
There is a difference between contribution and self-erasure. Meaningful support does not require rescuing everyone, taking responsibility for another adult's choices, ignoring your own needs, tolerating harmful behaviour, remaining in unhealthy relationships, overworking to prove your worth, or making other people dependent on you.
You can care without controlling. You can support without rescuing. You can contribute without abandoning yourself. You can matter to someone without becoming responsible for their whole life.
Healthy meaning includes boundaries. The goal is not to disappear into other people's stories. It is to participate in them while remaining connected to your own.
Meaning Can Come From Responsibility
Responsibility is not always appealing. It can feel heavy, inconvenient, or demanding. But responsibility often gives shape to life.
A person may find meaning through caring for a pet, supporting a family member, completing work that others rely on, attending recovery meetings, contributing to a team, helping maintain a home, keeping appointments, mentoring someone, volunteering, being present for a child, or maintaining a commitment.
Responsibility says: my presence makes a difference.
This does not mean taking on more than you can manage. A meaningful responsibility should connect you to life, not crush you beneath it. The right responsibility may be small. It may simply be something that gives you a reason to get up, participate, and follow through.
Meaning Can Come From Contribution
Contribution is wider than helping one person. It may involve contributing to a family, a workplace, a recovery community, a neighbourhood, a culture, a cause, a creative project, a shared tradition, a body of knowledge, or the care of the natural world.
You do not need to make a large or permanent impact. Contribution may be temporary. You may organise one event, help one person, teach one skill, write one useful article, repair one problem, or bring steadiness to one difficult situation.
The scale does not determine the meaning. What matters is the connection between your action and something you genuinely value.
Meaning Can Already Be Present Without Being Noticed
Sometimes people believe their lives lack meaning because meaning does not feel dramatic. They expect purpose to arrive as a powerful certainty.
But meaning may already be present in ordinary places: the person who calls you when they need someone trustworthy, the meal you prepare for your family, the work you complete carefully, the meeting you attend, the animal that depends on you, the person you encourage, the skill you share, the promise you keep, the way you make a room feel safer, the example you set, or the support you accept.
These moments may not feel extraordinary. But a meaningful life is often built from ordinary acts repeated with care.
A Practical Reflection
You do not need to decide whether your life is meaningful as a whole. Instead, look at the three areas separately.
Coherence: what parts of my life currently make sense to me? What experiences still feel disconnected or difficult to understand? What story am I telling myself about this period? Is that story complete, or is it only one interpretation? What has remained true about me through the changes?
Purpose: what am I moving toward right now? What do I want to protect, rebuild, create, or strengthen? What value do I want my actions to reflect? What responsibility gives some direction to my week? What is one step I could take?
Significance: whose story have I been allowed to be part of? When has my presence helped someone, even briefly? Who has played a meaningful role in my story? Where do I feel useful, trusted, or connected? What could I contribute without taking over? Who might I allow to support me?
One Small Experiment
Choose one action this week from one of the following areas.
To create coherence:
Write about a difficult experience as one chapter rather than the whole story. Establish one small daily routine. Speak with someone who helps you make sense of what you are experiencing.
To create purpose:
Choose one goal connected to a value. Make one decision that moves you toward something important. Take one step you have been postponing.
To create significance:
Help someone with one practical task. Contact someone who may need connection. Contribute to a group or community. Share something you have learned. Allow a trusted person to help you.
Then notice — not whether the action made you happy, but whether it made you feel more connected, directed, or significant.
A Note on Support
This article is meant to support reflection, not replace professional care. If you are navigating grief, trauma, loss, or a mental health condition alongside these questions, a therapist or support network can help you work through them at a pace that is right for you.
If things ever feel unsafe or urgent, please reach out to a crisis line or trusted professional right away. In the U.S., you can call or text 988 (the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline) at any time, day or night.
Meaning Grows Where Our Stories Meet
A meaningful life does not require fame, certainty, or one grand purpose.
Meaning may grow when your life makes some sense, when you have something to move toward, and when you know that your presence reaches beyond you.
Sometimes you are the main character. Sometimes you help someone through one chapter. Sometimes another person helps you through yours.
Meaning grows in that exchange. It grows through the ways our stories meet, shape one another, and continue.
You may never know the full effect of the role you played. That does not make the role unimportant.
Sometimes being part of the story, even for a short time, is enough to remind us that our lives matter.