What Is Your Life For? From Hidden Brain

Summary

Revisionist History: "What Is Your Life For?" – A Deep Dive into Purpose and Resilience

Episode Release Date: July 31, 2025
Host: Shankar Vedantam
Guest: Victor Strecker, Public Health Researcher at the University of Michigan

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Introduction

In the episode titled "What Is Your Life For?" from the acclaimed podcast Hidden Brain, host Shankar Vedantam engages in a profound conversation with Victor Strecker, a public health researcher whose personal journey intertwines deeply with his professional exploration of purpose. This episode delves into the intricate relationship between life's purpose, emotional resilience, and overall well-being, offering listeners both heartfelt narrative and scientific insights.

Victor Strecker’s Personal Story

Julia’s Early Battle and First Heart Transplant

Victor Strecker’s journey begins with the harrowing experience of his daughter Julia’s health crisis. In 1990, shortly after Julia’s birth, she developed a severe respiratory illness that escalated into a dire cardiac condition. “[...] she doesn't look quite right. Took an echo machine, an echocardiogram, and did the echo on her. And I'll never forget this [...] your daughter's heart is ruined" ([05:39]).

Faced with bleak statistics—only a 25% chance of living to six years old after a heart transplant—Victor and his wife grappled with the decision to proceed with the transplant. This pivotal moment forced Victor to contemplate the essence of a meaningful life beyond professional ambitions.

Second Transplant and Julia’s Unexpected Miracle

Against the odds, Julia not only survived her first transplant but thrived until the age of nine. During a routine softball game, Julia suffered a severe heart attack, leading to another critical situation where she was declared brain dead. However, in a miraculous turn, Julia exhibited signs of consciousness by squeezing Victor's hand four times when prompted with Roman numerals, defying medical expectations ([12:33]).

This miracle not only saved Julia's life for a few more years but also profoundly impacted Victor, reshaping his understanding of purpose and resilience.

Julia’s Legacy and Untimely Passing

Julia’s resilience saw her through high school, where she pursued nursing inspired by the caregivers who supported her. Tragically, at nineteen, Julia succumbed to another massive heart attack during a family trip to the Caribbean, leaving Victor to navigate profound grief and redefine his life's purpose ([24:51]).

Impact on Victor’s Life and Career

Victor’s personal tragedy catalyzed a reevaluation of his professional and personal priorities. No longer viewing his career advancements as a mere game, Victor began contemplating the legacy he wanted to leave behind. “[...] I have this one life to live. I don't know how long I'm going to live [...] I'm going to have to live this life as if this is all I have” ([10:54]).

His grief led him to retreat briefly to a cabin in northern Michigan, where through a vivid dream and introspective reflection, Victor confronted his despair and recommitted himself to finding and living his true purpose ([26:47]).

Research on Purpose

Defining Purpose and Its Importance

Victor’s research underscores the critical role that a sense of purpose plays in enhancing longevity and quality of life. He emphasizes distinguishing between self-enhancing (hedonic) values and self-transcending (eudaimonic) values, where the latter—focused on compassion, kindness, and contributing to something greater than oneself—are linked to better emotional and physical health outcomes ([50:57]).

Emotion Regulation Strategies

Victor explains that individuals with a strong sense of purpose employ healthier emotion regulation strategies. For instance, positive strategies like taking walks in nature or engaging in family rituals are positively associated with purpose, whereas negative strategies like drinking or venting are not ([41:11]).

Purpose and Resilience

Research highlighted in the episode indicates that a strong sense of purpose equips individuals with greater resilience against life’s adversities. People with purpose are more likely to experience post-traumatic growth, transforming hardship into personal strength ([44:24]).

Shift and Persist Strategy

Victor introduces the "shift and persist" strategy, which involves adapting to stressors (shifting) while maintaining a steadfast focus on long-term goals (persisting). This approach is particularly beneficial for individuals with limited resources, promoting acceptance and sustained hope despite challenges ([48:29]).

Practical Steps to Finding Purpose

Identifying Core Values

One of the first steps in discovering one's purpose is identifying core values. Victor suggests examining what individuals prioritize in their lives, often reflected in everyday choices like smartphone wallpapers. Recognizing whether these values are self-transcending or self-enhancing can guide the formation of a meaningful purpose ([57:02]).

Self-Affirmation

Writing about why each identified value is important serves as a self-affirmation exercise, reinforcing the foundation upon which one's purpose is built ([58:29]).

Headstone Test

Victor introduces the "headstone test," encouraging individuals to consider what they would want written on their headstone or memorial service. This introspective exercise helps clarify what legacy one wishes to leave behind ([59:26]).

Purposeful App Development

To assist individuals in this journey, Victor and his collaborators have developed an app called Purposeful. This tool helps users identify their core values and articulate a specific, authentic purpose statement, avoiding vague or generic declarations ([60:37]).

Conclusion and Legacy

Victor Strecker’s narrative is a compelling testament to the transformative power of purpose. From the depths of personal tragedy, he emerged with a focused mission to help others find meaning in their lives, mirroring the resilience he cultivated through his daughter Julia’s legacy. His research not only advances the understanding of purpose's role in health and well-being but also offers practical tools for individuals seeking to lead more fulfilling lives.

As Victor poignantly reflects, “[...] Julia is still living through me” ([65:28]), encapsulating the enduring impact of purpose on personal legacy and the broader human experience.

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• Victor Strecker ([05:54]): "If you have this one life to live. I don't know how long I'm going to live. Maybe I'll die in six years or sooner."

• Victor Strecker ([10:54]): "I have to live this life as if this is all I have."

• Victor Strecker ([26:47]): "I started eating and drinking myself to death. I started watching TV all the time."

• Victor Strecker ([50:57]): "What we value have different outcomes for people. People with transcending values do better."

• Victor Strecker ([59:26]): "What would you want people to say about you a hundred years from now?"

• Victor Strecker ([65:36]): "I try to live my life in a way that Julia would have wanted me to live my life."

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Final Thoughts

"What Is Your Life For?" is a poignant exploration of how personal loss can lead to profound self-discovery and contribute to broader scientific understanding. Victor Strecker's story and research offer invaluable insights into the human quest for meaning, demonstrating that even in the face of unimaginable grief, a purposeful life remains attainable and essential.

Transcript

[Narrator]

Pushkin. Pushkin. When we're kids, there are certain things we think we're going to stop worrying about as we get older. You probably no longer fret about falling into quicksand. Maybe you no longer check under the bed to make sure those dust bunnies are not, in fact, monsters. And surely you don't ask yourself, what am I going to do with my life? Is this really all there is? Well, okay, maybe you do. Angst seems to be one of those things that annoyingly can follow us all throughout our lives. Luckily, there are people out there studying how we can confront that dread rather than pushing it under the bed. Along with all the other monsters down there, one of them is a researcher named Victor Strecker, who studies the topic of purpose. Victor recently joined my friend Shankar Vedantam as a guest on Shankar's podcast, Hidden Brain. If you don't know Hidden Brain, it's a show that's all about human behavior. And because human behavior is endlessly complicated and contradictory, Shankar and his team have been at it now for 10 whole years. If you've ever wondered what's happening in someone's mind when they're fantasizing about revenge, or why humans take pleasure in doing things that are painful or scary, Hidden Brain has you covered. And in this conversation with Victor, they dive into purpose, why it matters, and how to cultivate it in your own life. So without further ado, here's Hidden Brain's recent episode, what Is yous Life for?

[Shankar Vedantam]

This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta. I recently found myself speaking to a group of high school students. There were lots of questions about the worlds of podcasting and journalism, about the rise of AI, and about physical and emotional well being. But looming over all the questions was the big one. What should I do with my life? High school students are not the only ones with that question. Young adults in college agonize about their majors. 30 and 40 somethings worry about whether they are on the right track. 60 and 70 year olds look back on their lives and ask, is this all there is? At every age and every stage, many of us are intimidated by the question of what we should do with the remaining days we have left. The older we get, the more we realize that time is fleeting. A lifespan of a few decades is but a blink of an eye in the grand scheme of the planet, to say nothing of the universe. How can we spend this time meaningfully? This week on Hidden Brain, and in a companion story on Hidden Brain, we explore the science of finding a life that is meaningful. There is no one size fits all answer for everyone. But there are scientifically tested ideas about how we can feel more in harmony with ourselves and the world, and what happens to our minds and bodies when we come to see our lives with pride and happiness rather than regret. This is an I Heart podcast.

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[Shankar Vedantam]

Imagine for a moment that you've inherited an extraordinarily complex and mysterious contraption, one that arrives without operating instructions. In the absence of a manual. You'd have to figure out how it works, the most skillful way to operate it, and most importantly, what it's for. This is the situation all of us find ourselves in with our minds. The human brain is capable of extraordinary things. It can invent new products, dream up new ideas, cultivate relationships. With so many options before us, many, many of us ask, what is it that I am meant to do? At the University of Michigan, Victor Strecker has pondered these questions for many years. Vic Strecker, welcome to Hidden Brain.

[Victor Strecker]

Thank you so much. Happy to be here.

[Shankar Vedantam]

Vic. I want to talk about your own journey to discover what you should be doing with your life. In 1990, your daughter Julia was born. Tell me about the first few months of her life.

[Victor Strecker]

Yeah, well, Julia was born, as she used to like to say, a 10 out of 10. So she was born healthy. I was a professor, an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. And soon after she was born, we went to the Netherlands, where I was doing a research sabbatical. Soon she started getting sick. Doctors there diagnosed it as just having some type of respiratory illness, but it seemed to keep getting worse. Finally, she ended up in the hospital in The Netherlands. And she was there for a few days, and they just didn't know what to do. And then late one evening, a cardiologist just happened to walk by, looked at her and said, she doesn't look quite right. Took an echo machine, an echocardiogram, and did the echo on her. And I'll never forget this, because it was very late at night. He called a resident in, brought us to a small room, and said, I'm really sorry to tell you this, but your daughter. Your daughter's heart is ruined. And he described it almost as, you know, a chicken breast that's been smashed down, pulverized to make it tender. Said her heart is really completely destroyed, and she has no more than a month or two to live.

[Shankar Vedantam]

Devastated by the news, Vic and his wife flew back with Julia and her older sister to the United States. They rushed Julia to the medical school at the University of North Carolina. The doctors there confirmed the urgency of the situation. But they offered a silver lining.

[Victor Strecker]

After doing a lot of tests, they said, you know, her other organs have not failed. She might be okay and eligible for a heart transplant. And we have a new surgeon who just came from Stanford. He's not done a heart transplant yet here. And this would be the first heart transplant in the southeastern region of the United States. Wow. There was one girl waiting for a heart transplant, and she died waiting. So if you'd like to do that, we could put her on a list. Well, our world was kind of turned upside down. First it was turned upside down thinking that she was going to die. The second part was turned upside down because now she might have a chance to live, but what kind of life would that be? So I went to the medical school library, and I started reading through, you know, pediatric heart transplantation. And the first thing I realized is that we were on the front wave of heart transplants for kids in 1990. Not that many had been done. There weren't that many studies. But the studies that I did Read said roughly 50% of children waiting for a heart die before they get one. And then if they did get a new heart, their chance of surviving five years was 50%. So you can do the math yourself. It's 50% times 50%. Her chance of living to be six years old was 25%. And so we had dinner table conversations. Should we do this? Should we get a transplant?

[Shankar Vedantam]

I understand that when you and your wife and your older daughter Rachel were talking about this, the gravity of the situation also meant that you were asking yourself even bigger questions. You know, what does it mean to live a good life? What is a life worth living?

[Victor Strecker]

It's exactly we started asking ourselves, what is a big life? If she does live to just be six, could we give her a life still worth living? If she died at the age of six and we all got together at the dinner table, what we like to call our gathering place, and we decided, yes, we can give her a big life, not just with within our family, but hopefully she'll have friends. Hopefully she could engage in activities that other children engage in. Hopefully she could develop great friendships and new passions in her life, no matter how long she lived.

[Shankar Vedantam]

So I understand you went ahead and got Julia the heart transplant, but this also changed the way you were thinking about your own life, your own career troubles or challenges, your own anxieties. How did it change how you approached your life? Vic?

[Victor Strecker]

It's so funny. As an assistant professor, I was so interested in moving up, getting tenure, becoming an associate professor, getting grants. You know, I thought that was the game. That's what I had to play. And I viewed it kind of as a game. And I was, quite honestly, fairly good at that game. And so I enjoyed it. I spent a lot of my time on it. And suddenly when Julia got sick, it really changed that. It stopped becoming a game. And I started thinking, I have this one life to live. I don't know how long I'm going to live. Maybe I'll die in six years or sooner. I'm going to have to live this life as if this is all I have. And once I started doing that, I started taking my life much more seriously, to be honest. I started thinking more about, well, what would people say about me after I die? What would be on my headstone? What would people say at my memorial service? What kind of legacy would I leave? And I started realizing that this is the life we live, and we better make the most of it, given the situations that we're in.

[Shankar Vedantam]

So Julia ended up beating the odds in many ways because the heart transplant she got lasted way more than five years. But by the time she was 9, doctors were telling her that she might need to get a second heart transplant. What happened, Vic?

[Victor Strecker]

Well, I remember when she was nine, I was coaching her softball team. And by the way, she was a terrible softball player. I think in an entire season, she got one hit, and that was a fluke. So not very athletic. At the same time, she loved being with her friends and loved being part of the softball team. And I loved coaching. And I remember after one game, we were walking home and she passed out. And I realized, oh, something wrong is happening now. So, you know, took her to the docs and the cardiologist gave her a careful exam and said, yeah, she is going to need a new heart.

[Shankar Vedantam]

Julia got on the heart transplant list again. She moved into the hospital, but she wasn't high on the list because her medical condition was not dire. Keeping in mind his commitment to give Julia as normal a life as possible, Vic helped Julia keep up with what her classmates were learning at school.

[Victor Strecker]

We were doing Roman numerals. We were studying because she would take her books from school and we would take them to the hospital. So we were learning Roman numerals. And, you know, that was great. She was really good at math. And then the nurses kindly let me sleep in a room next to her, so it was empty so I could sleep in the bed. And I remember staying up watching the US Open tennis tournament, and I watched this tennis player, Todd Martin, play against the player, and he was down, I think, two sets to nothing. And I just watched this whole thing, and it went deep into the night. And I just remember thinking, wow, if Todd Martin could win after being downed by two sets. And he's throwing up on the side of the court, too. He was so sick and so tired. He came back to win that match. And I thought, maybe, maybe she can win. Well, it's funny, that evening I was asleep and I was woken up by the nurse around 1 o' clock in the morning. And the nurse had tears in her eyes and I knew something was wrong. Said, julia's had six heart attacks since you've been asleep and they've been working on her, but things don't look good. I went down to where they were working on her in the icu and doctors took me aside. I called my wife. She drove in from home and. And the doctor said, it looks like she is brain dead. Her eyes are fixed and dilated. She hasn't responded to a test where they take a scalpel and scrape the bottom of your foot, which is torturous if you're awake. And they. They were talking about next steps, what to do. And so we went in to see her, and it didn't look like she was there. Her eyes were wide open, her pupils were fixed, dilated. She had no response. And we came back and talked to the doctor and Jerry, my wife, had the foresight and I think transcending foresight, to ask the doctor, is there any hope for donating her organs to other people? Because she was at the time on a respirator and we were talking about the possibility of pulling the respirator out and just letting her go peacefully. And the doctor said, well, yeah, that is possible. Some of her organs might be donated to other people. It'll take a while, though, because the harvest team needs to fly in to do that. They call it a harvest team. Interesting. And so they would need to fly in. So while the harvest team was flying in, which is going to take a matter of hours, we walked into the arboretum at the University of Michigan. It's a beautiful park. And I remember we looked up into the sky, and I said, you know, we're not going to be a. We're not going to be a foursome anymore. We're going to be a trio, but we'll still make good music. And we came back and saw her cardiologist, the senior cardiologist, who said, before we do anything, maybe you just want to see her one last time. And so we. We went down to the icu. And I'll never forget this. She was moving. Her eyes were still wide open, fixed, dilated, but she was moving spastically. And a neurologist was studying her and examining her. And we said, what is that? Said, this could be the last throes of life. This often happens where you become kind of spastic in your movements. So I just held her hand, and I just said, julia, if you can hear me, squeeze my hand. And I thought I felt a really, really light squeeze. And I turned to the doctor and said, I think she squeezed my hand. And the doctor said, okay. And you could tell what he was thinking. You know, everybody feels that squeeze, probably. And I was thinking, okay, what if she can. If she's somehow functioning inside? If she's mentally impaired now because she's gone through six cardiac arrests over a period of five hours. If she's mentally impaired, she'll never get a new heart. She'll be dropped from the list. And I don't want her to go through more suffering. So what kind of tests could I provide to her right now in this case? So I whispered in her ear, if you can hear me, Julia, squeeze my hand IV times in Roman numerals. And she squeezed my hand four times. And I turned to the doctor and said, she squeezed my hand four times. And the doctor turned pale. And suddenly there were about 10 people working on her. They had already pulled all her tubes out. And they put all the tubes back in, basically. And the doctors said, this has never happened to us before. We've never seen this happen. And I didn't blame them whatsoever. They did everything according to protocol. They did everything, everything that was supposed to be done. And yet somehow she was in there and she was alive. And gradually she started coming back, started asking her things and she could nod her head. Gradually she started, you know, being able to communicate with us. She couldn't speak because she had, I'm sorry, she couldn't speak because she had a respirator. She was blind. And in fact she was blind for at least a couple of days because the part of her brain that relates to sight actually didn't get enough oxygen. So I was also making, you know, my own calculations. Okay, so maybe she'll be blind. We can manage that for sure. But she knows what her Roman numerals are. So I think she is not cognitive. She's not cognitively impaired. So she waited for a heart for a couple days. She was placed number one in the country for a heart transplant and she received a new heart. Her blindness went away and even within a week we brought a small electric piano because she'd been learning to play the piano and she was sitting up, she was playing Bach on the piano and the head of cardiology walked in and as she was playing Bach on the piano, she's only nine years old, the doctor just started crying and just said, I think this is a miracle. I don't know how else to say it.

[Shankar Vedantam]

When we come back, Julia's journey changes how Vic decides to live the rest of his life. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta.

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[Shankar Vedantam]

This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta. Victor Strecker's daughter was a fighter. Julia received a heart transplant before she was a year old and another one at age nine. She made it through middle school and high school. Inspired by the many nurses who had cared for her, she enrolled in nursing school.

[Victor Strecker]

When Julia was in nursing school her first year, she was really struggling. The first semester, she was having a hard time. She had a lot of headaches. She was pretty sick quite a bit, but she was trying to work through it. She lived in a dorm, and I would meet with her every once in a while because I was a professor there at the university, so we could have lunch together. And she was having a tough time. So I said, well, how about if we go down to the Caribbean, we go to someplace warm because it's very cold. And, you know, I think she was feeling the cold weather much more than other people, maybe because her heart was having a hard time. She had passed other tests of her heart, but this was 10 years past her previous heart transplant. She was 19 years old. So we took her to the Caribbean along with her sister, and we took their boyfriends with us as well. And I remember on the third night, we were all out on the beach at the gathering place. We had a table out on the beach, and we were just enjoying it, and. And we were walking back, and she turned to her boyfriend and she said, I'm so happy now that I could die. And it turns out that those were her last words that I heard, because she died in the middle of the night that night of a massive heart attack, very suddenly and very unexpectedly. So at 19, that was the last time we saw her.

[Shankar Vedantam]

So about a month after Julia died, you were giving a talk about health and wellness. This is the focus of your research. And right before your talk, another researcher was talking about the effects of stressful events on workplace productivity. What did he say, Vic?

[Victor Strecker]

Well, I remember he start talking about different stressors, like if you get sick, you will lose on average this many days of work. If you have other issues happen to you, if you get a divorce, you'll have this many days on average loss of work. If you lose a loved one, you lose this many days on average of work. And then he stopped for a second and he said, but if you lose a child that exceeds all other amounts of work that you lose, you're kind of lost for a very, very long time. And most people don't ever come back to work fully after losing their child. And I had just lost my child. I wanted to say, you know, I'm sorry, buddy, but I'M not going to be one of those people you're talking about. And I completely disagree that you have to assume that you're not going to continue working and thriving and continuing with your life. You can do that. And I didn't say that in my own speech, but I sure felt it.

[Shankar Vedantam]

At the same time. Vic, you and your family had made Julia the purpose of your Life for essentially 20 years, and Julia was gone. Now, I understand that at one point, you retreated alone to a cabin in northern Michigan. What did you do there?

[Victor Strecker]

You know, when Julia died, I remember my wife and I went to a therapist, a grief counselor who was also a marriage counselor, which is great. And I remember being the smart professor that I am. I went in and said, well, I've done the research, and I've read that 80% of couples who lose a child break up.

[Shankar Vedantam]

Wow.

[Victor Strecker]

And so that's why we're seeing you, because we want to make sure that our marriage continues to survive. And she kind of smiled gently and said, well, you know, Vic, 50% of marriages end up in divorces anyway. So I forgot to realize that. And of course. So there certainly is a greater risk of getting a divorce if you lose a child, but it doesn't go from 0 to 80%. But then she turned to me and said, but I will tell you this. If you judge how your wife, Jerry, is grieving, or if she judges how you're grieving, maybe you're not grieving enough. Maybe you're grieving too much. Maybe you're doing this and it's not good for you. Whatever, you'll split up. So what I recommend you do is you go on your own journeys of grief. You respect the other person's journey of grief. You communicate, but you may end up doing things differently. My wife, who's a sculptor, an artist, and a gardener, started sculpting and gardening more in Ann Arbor. I went up to northern Michigan to a cabin we had right on Lake Michigan. And I was by myself for long weeks at a time. And I basically started eating and drinking myself to death. I started watching TV all the time. It didn't matter what I was watching, not at all. I just started finding myself almost dissolving. It was like entropy was occurring in my body. It felt like every atom of my body was just kind of diffusing.

[Shankar Vedantam]

After Julia died, some of Vic's friends sent him books to read. He had taken some of these on his solitary trip to the cabin. Now and then, he would dip into the books.

[Victor Strecker]

One book was a book of poetry by the Persian poet Rumi, a 13th century poet, an amazing poet. And I wasn't into poetry. I'll be real honest. I didn't read poetry. But I just started paging through it and it seemed like there were letters. Rumi was writing to me. And before I went to bed, I read this amazing poem. And if it's all right, I'd like to read just the first piece of this poem. The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you. Don't go back to sleep. You must ask for what you really want. Don't go back to sleep. People are going back and forth across the door sill. Where the two worlds touch. The door is round and open. Don't go back to sleep. That night I went to sleep and I had a dream that I was with Julia. We were rollerblading in the Netherlands, in this small, beautiful medieval town called Maastricht. And we were rollerblading together. She was only nine years old. And we looked out and we saw this beautiful. What looked like a place of worship. It could have been a mosque, it could have been a synagogue, it could have been a church. Whatever it was, it was beautiful. And marble, stone. It was huge and it was glowing. And we rollerbladed there. And then we went into the entrance. And right in the entrance was a spiral staircase that went down infinitely. And she said, we need to go down there. And I said, julia, we can't. We have rollerblades on. And we started floating down this spiral staircase. It was a very vivid dream. And we, we ended up in this large marble hall room, giant room with a big hallway. And as we entered the room, there are these three beautiful women. And they're all wearing exactly the same dress. They came up and I turned to look at Julia. And suddenly she was wearing exactly that dress. And she was 19. Suddenly. And she said, I have to go. And she turned from me and she walked with these three people. And they all disappeared. I woke up, it was five o' clock in the morning. And my, my pillowcase was just soaked with tears. And I, I, I thought, I want to go back to sleep. I want to see her again. It was such a vivid dream. I was talking with her. I think I might be able to go back to sleep and talk to Julia. And I remembered the roomie poem that said, don't go back to sleep. So I looked out right onto Lake Michigan. And it was still dark, but I could tell that Lake Michigan was exceedingly calm. Usually they're big waves. It looks like an ocean. Usually but it was glassy smooth and I was just sleeping in a boxers and a T shirt. But I decided to pop out of bed and I hopped in my kayak. It was still dark, it was still spring. And I started paddling out into the middle of Lake Michigan. I just thought, I'm just going to keep paddling. This is so beautiful out here. The water was so cold. I knew if I fallen in I would. I would probably drown. I didn't care. I just kept paddling and paddling straight out toward Wisconsin. And Wisconsin is 86 miles away, by the way. But I was thinking, I was about two miles out as far as I could tell. And I was thinking, maybe I'll just keep going. This is so beautiful. And I really don't have anything to live for right now. Suddenly, the sun came up. It was 5:15 in the morning. And I saw all the water shimmering around me. I don't know how to explain this, but you know, water will shimmer when it's very, very smooth. And the sun was just coming up and everywhere around me it felt like it was glowing. But then suddenly I felt my daughter Julia inside me. I don't know how else to put it. She was in me. And I felt her say, dad, you've got to get over this. And it wasn't like she was looking at me going, you have to get over this. It was more, you have to get over yourself. You have to get over your ego, you have to get over your grief and think about things bigger than yourself. But you have a choice right now. You can decide to continue on to Wisconsin. And you'll never make that, of course. Or you can turn back. But if you do turn back, you're going to have to change your life. I stayed out there for quite a few minutes thinking about this. And the sun was coming up. It was beautiful. And I decided to turn around. I went back. I was cold, kind of damp. I went right to our kitchen. I pulled a sheet of paper out and said, vic, you have to help yourself. And I don't know how to explain this either, but it was almost as if I was looking down on myself from the ceiling and just looking at my head, looking at the piece of paper and pen and saying, what are you going to do to help yourself? Vicious. Almost like I was my own therapist. And I said, maybe the first thing I need to do is write down what matters most in my life. And so I literally just started writing my family, Jerry, my wife, Rachel, my daughter. I started writing down my mom, my dad, my siblings. Then I wrote down my friends. Then I started asking myself what matters at work. They've given you this semester off from teaching. They even gave you the next semester if you need it off from teaching. They said, you lost your daughter. It's one of the hardest things you can go through. But I started asking myself what matters most. I do a lot of research, but I said of everything, my students matter most. And then it dawned on me, I need to get back to teaching. So that morning I called the school and said, I know you gave me this semester and even next semester off if I need it. But quite honestly, it's not the advice I need. I really need to teach. And I want to teach every one of my students as if they're my own daughter Julia. And that changed my life.

[Shankar Vedantam]

When we come back, Vic starts to see connections between the changes he is making in his own life and the things he is studying as a scientist.

[Victor Strecker]

People with transcending values have less activation in a part of the brain that relates to fear and aggression called the amygdala. They have more more activation in a part of the brain that relates to long term orientation, a future orientation, and that's called the ventral medial prefrontal cortex.

[Shankar Vedantam]

You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta.

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[Shankar Vedantam]

This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta. Victor Strecker is a public health researcher at the University of Michigan. After his daughter's death, he started to explore the science of purpose. He found that a sense of purpose was closely linked to Many of the goals of public health research to help people live longer, better lives. Vic, one of the people you studied was a man named Jerry Hirsch. Tell me his story.

[Victor Strecker]

Yeah, Jerry, out of the blue, called me and he said, I'm in my late 70s or early 80s, it was a while back. And he said, I've built a lot of Kmarts around the Phoenix area. I live in Phoenix, and I've become very wealthy as a result of that. And I decided, finally, is this my legacy? Basically, you know, before there was Jerry Hirsch, there were 423kmarts. Now there are 667kmarts. Is that what I want my legacy to be? And he said, there has to be something more than that. What will I want on my headstone? And he had created a foundation that helps philanthropies, you know, really positive. And he said, I have to tell you, I found that having a strong purpose is the most important thing that I've ever done in my life. I was severely depressed. I realized that money wasn't going to make me happy, especially with the amount I already had. More money wasn't going to make me happier. I didn't need to be the richest person in the graveyard. And so I found this purpose, which is to help build philanthropic organizations and to support them. And he said, this is actually very selfish. Having a purpose is good for me. So for us, we kind of shared this common perspective that having a purpose can bring you out of depression. And I've had since then, many people write to me from around the world, frankly, about how finding purpose brought them out of depression. And some people would say better than any drug, better than any psychotherapy I ever engaged in.

[Shankar Vedantam]

So your research has found that people with a greater sense of purpose employ different emotion regulation strategies than people who have a weaker sense of purpose. Can you describe this finding? And also, what are emotion regulation strategies and why are they important?

[Victor Strecker]

Well, first of all, we all have stressors in our lives, right? All of us. And the question really is, how do you cope with those stressors? Turns out that of 16 coping strategies that we looked at, strategies like drinking alcohol or eating too much or venting were negatively associated with sense of purpose. Whereas seeing a big picture, knowing this won't last forever, taking walks in nature, engaging in a family or religious ritual, those were strongly associated with a sense of purpose. And along with that, emotional self regulation. I remember I was talking to a colleague in the business school at Michigan, and he said his son has a child who is in Montessori School 5 year old child comes home and they're getting in a big argument and they're almost, you know, yelling at each other and finally the five year old child says, you know what? I'm going to change my own weather. And suddenly they have an adult conversation. And I was thinking, I wish a lot of senior leaders had that ability to change their own weather, going from cloudy to sunny. And so what that requires, I think, is a sense of understanding what your emotion is and also having the agency to be able to change it.

[Shankar Vedantam]

There's been work that looks at the relationship between having a sense of purpose and feeling more energy and willpower. And in some ways it makes sense. If you're actually driven by something, it feels like you should have more energy and willpower to stick at it.

[Victor Strecker]

Studies show that if you put a backpack on a person that's 25 pounds and say this backpack is just dead weight, or put another backpack on another group of people and say this backpack has important scientific equipment that you're carrying, it's a very important purposeful backpack. And you put both of them on a ramp and they estimate how steep the ramp is. The group carrying the purposeful backpack, even though it still just had dead weight, it wasn't carrying scientific equipment. The people carrying that backpack perceive the slope to be far lower, in fact, as if they weren't carrying any backpack. So I think when you have a sense of purpose, just think about if you're trying to swim as a child underwater as far as you can, you might say, okay, I'm going to try to swim as far as I can. Or I might say, I'm going to touch the other side of the pool. When you're trying to touch the other side of the pool, you're going to swim further, you're going to devote more persistence to it, you're going to put up with more pain, you're going to be able to do that. You may not even touch the other side of the pool. But having a goal like that, and that's what purpose is all about, it helps you organize the important goals in your life. It helps you really direct your inner resources, your energy toward that.

[Shankar Vedantam]

One other finding that researchers have made is that purpose seems to be linked to a sense of resilience. There was a study in the wake of a devastating earthquake in Pakistan that tracked 200 survivors, most of whom had lost a relative. Tell me what this research study found, Vic.

[Victor Strecker]

This research and other studies of tsunamis, earthquakes, you know, large tragic events to large populations have shown that the people With a stronger sense of purpose are far more resilient than if you lose purpose. Another good example of our soldiers in the Gulf war, Coming back from the Gulf war, Many of these soldiers lost their purpose because they had a great sense of purpose while they're at war. In combat, if a person could come back and develop a stronger sense of purpose, they actually were more likely to develop growth, what we'd call post traumatic growth. And so I think that this idea of going through something difficult, There's a possible challenge for you where you could end up becoming a stronger person as a result.

[Shankar Vedantam]

Is it possible that purpose is primarily a luxury good? You know, in other words, once you have your basic needs taken care of, your food, your shelter, your security, then it's time to think about purpose.

[Victor Strecker]

I know that's a common belief that having a purpose is almost on the top of Maslow's hierarchy. One good friend of mine, James Aaronateway, grew up in a rural part of Uganda. Both of his parents died when he was very young. I believe by the time he was five, his parents were both dead. He was often called an aids orphan. His grandmother took care of him. And his grandmother said, I'm going to give you an education. So walked him 300 miles. Maybe there is a bus or two in between, I don't know. But he basically said that they essentially walked 300 miles to Kampala, the capital of Uganda. And they went to the palace, and she talked to the palace guard and said, my son needs to talk to the prime minister and because he needs an education. And the guard said, of course, well, they can't see you. And she said, I'll just wait here. And so they waited for weeks. They literally camped out by the palace. And every day they would ask, the grandmother would ask to see the prime minister. And finally the guard came out and said, you know, we've talked about you, and the. The prime minister's wife would like to see you. So suddenly, this is James's chance, goes in and says, I would like an education. And sure enough, he ended up getting an excellent education at a private school in Kampala. He later on got an advanced degree. And then he decided that everyone should have an education developed, teach for Uganda. It's become very successful. And that has been his purpose. He's an amazing person. He laughed when I asked him whether he thought purpose was only for people who had everything else. He said, well, I don't think you westerners really understand this. Purpose gives poor people hope, hope for their families, hope for the future. Purpose is absolutely essential for the poor.

[Shankar Vedantam]

So researchers have suggested that something called a shift and persist strategy may help explain why a sense of purpose exerts these effects. What is the strategy, Vic?

[Victor Strecker]

Well, the idea is that coping efforts that help you accommodate to stressors as opposed to just trying to change stressors may be an important thing for people who don't have resources for dealing with the stressors or when those resources are really limited. So if you're poor, you might not be able to control everything in your life. In fact, none of us control everything in our lives. Some therapies work really hard on having you try to control stressors, understand what the stressors are and control them. I think in shift and Persist, the idea would be the more you're trying to control everything in your life, it's almost like trying to struggle out of quicksand. It may actually have you sink deeper. Not good. But if you try to accommodate the stressors, you accept the fact that you will have stressors and at the same time you want to develop a strong purpose in life that helps you hold on to hope despite adversity. So this is what shift and persist is. The persist part is having a purpose, persisting on the focus of that purpose, helping you organize the important things that matter most in your life. I'm reminded as you're asking this question, there's a type of broken pottery art in Japan called Kintsugi. I believe it's Japanese for golden repair, where you are mending broken pottery with a precious metal and it treats breakage and repair as part of the history of an object rather than something to disguise. It happened in my own life too, with my daughter. I mean, we talk about it because it's part of our lives. We don't want to disguise it. It's part of our history, but I think it's also part of our strength.

[Shankar Vedantam]

When people think about purpose, they sometimes confuse purpose with having a goal. You know, I want to make a million dollars, I want to become the governor of my state. You say it's important to have a self transcending purpose. What do you mean by that idea?

[Victor Strecker]

Vic, whenever we talk about purpose, we have to talk about what we value. What are the core values in our lives? And if you're asking what do I value, maybe the first place to look is on the wallpaper of your smartphone. When you turn on your smartphone, what's there? For me, it's my two granddaughters, but for other people, it might be their sports car. It could be a work of poetry. It could be a work of art. There are many things, a work of nature, many things people put on their smartphone. But what that tells me almost right away about a person is what they value. Our core values could be very transcending and related to peace, kindness, love, compassion, or they could be very self enhancing. It could be related to my appearance or my wealth, or what other people think about me. And it turns out that those values have different outcomes for people. People who tend to care more about these self enhancing or what we might call hedonic values tend to not do as well as people who have self transcending values. Even Aristotle said we all have hedonic values and we all have what he called eudaimonic values. Eudaimonia is being in touch with your inner daemon or true self or godlike self. The daemon was almost an angel that lived inside of us in ancient Greece. And he said we all have both of those. But if we only live according to hedonic values, then we are like, and I'm quoting him from Nicomachean ethics, then we are like grazing animals, we all like to graze. But at the same time we need to transcend and live to this higher self, which is what aristotle talked about 2,400 years ago and now turns out to be true scientifically. People with transcending values have less activation in a part of the brain that relates to fear and aggression called the amygdala. They have more activation in a a part of the brain that relates to what our self is. Executive decision making, long term orientation of future orientation. And that's called the ventral medial prefrontal cortex, right up in the front of the brain. It's a very modern part of the brain. Humans have more than any other animal by a large amount.

[Shankar Vedantam]

You told me that after Julia passed away, you made your purpose. Trying to teach every student who comes your way as if he was your son or she was your daughter. How successful have you been at doing this, Vic?

[Victor Strecker]

Well, of course I don't really want to be their parent and they don't want me to be their parent. So I should state that at the outset. At the same time, if a student comes to me and says, I really need your attention, I really need to see you and I'm very busy and I'm maybe writing a grant proposal and I feel I just don't have time to see this person. Then I ask what would I, if I were the parent of that son or daughter, what would I want that professor to do? And so if at all possible. I make time for that student. I'm not perfect at that by any means, but that is my goal and it actually helps focus my attention and my energy. These very important resources that I have in my body, my attention and my energy and it defocuses around things that are not important really and yet we spend so much of our time engaging in.

[Shankar Vedantam]

When we come back how to identify a purpose for your life and align your everyday activities with your reason for living. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta.

[Victor Strecker]

Foreign.

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[Shankar Vedantam]

This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta. Victor Strecker is a public health researcher at the University of Michigan. He's the author of Life on Purpose How Living for what Matters Most Changes Everything. Vic, you say that one of the first steps to finding our purpose is to determine what we value. You suggest people pick a few things from a long list of possibilities. What's on this list?

[Victor Strecker]

When people think about their values, it could be values that are like money. It could be appearance, it could be what people think about you. You know there are a lot of hedonic values and everybody has those to some extent. But there are also transcending values, self transcending values, meaning values that are bigger than yourself. So values such as compassion. I really think one of the most moral values to consider is kindness to strangers. We're all kind probably or most of us are kind to our family members, our loved ones. But can you be kind to people you don't know? I think that's a very self transcending value. The things that people value very often aren't Things, they're people. But when they're people who go beyond your direct sphere of knowledge and you can build purposes around that, that's what I would call a truly self transcendence purpose.

[Shankar Vedantam]

You said that once people identify their top values, the top things they care about, they should spend some time thinking about, or better yet, writing about, why each value is important to them. Why is this? What does that do?

[Victor Strecker]

This is a process we call self affirmation. So the idea of affirming who you are, when you're affirming your core values, it's almost like you're affirming, these are the roots in my tree, of my tree. This is like the bedrock of who I am. From that, my strengths grow kind of the trunk of the tree, and from that, my behaviors and my emotions develop and respond, which are almost like the branches of our tree. But I like to start not with the behaviors, but with that root system and starting with our core values. That is where we build our purpose.

[Shankar Vedantam]

You see that another step is to boil down our values into a statement of purpose, what you call. Call the headstone test. What is the headstone test?

[Victor Strecker]

Well, I think the idea is, what would you want people to say about you a hundred years from now, 200 years from now? You know, Jonas Salk once said late in his life, we should all be good ancestors. And I love that quote because I think back, you know, I would think back to times I've walked through a cemetery. I love walking through a cemetery, and I love looking at really old headstones and seeing what's on those headstones. But even more importantly, what would be said at your memorial service? What kinds of people would be at your memorial service? What kind of legacy are you leaving? When you start thinking about that, you start then thinking about how you live your life. As I was writing my book, Life on Purpose, the editor gave me really good advice. He said, write your book review first before writing your book. And I said, why? I don't even know what I'm going to write. He said, exactly. I want you to write about what you want people to think and feel as a result of reading your book. And it turned out to be fabulous advice.

[Shankar Vedantam]

I understand that you are working with collaborators to develop an AI system that can help people identify their goals. Tell me about this work.

[Victor Strecker]

Well, yeah, we've developed an app called Purposeful. And Purposeful helps identify what your core values are, first of all, and what areas of purpose you want to focus your attention on. It could be your family. It could be Your work, it could be the environment, many other things, and you can choose more than one thing. And then it starts identifying areas of growth you'd like to engage in. But importantly, for the last year, we've been working on an AI coach to help you write a purpose statement. Because one of the things we've encountered is so many people have a hard time getting over that hump of actually writing a purpose statement. They say, well, that's too hard, it's going to be too big, it's going to make me stressed out. Or very often those purpose statements look like Hallmark cards. You know, I want to change the world, I want to help people. They're too vague. It's nice to have an authentic and specific purpose. And the purpose can be in multiple domains, like your work, like your family, like your community, like your own personal growth. You can set goals and set a purpose around each of those domains. So to make a statement that's specific motivates you, and it actually motivates you to take better care of yourself.

[Shankar Vedantam]

One essential component of pursuing a purpose driven life is to not spend a lot of time on things that are not aligned with that purpose. Can you talk about this? That it's not just following what we should care about, but it's also not following what we shouldn't care about.

[Victor Strecker]

I wonder if we did a time motion study of everybody's lives and could parse out the part that really matters a lot to us and the part that really doesn't matter to us, that we're doing just due to habit. Maybe there's social media engagements that don't really matter. Maybe I am worried about what Kim Kardashian is wearing today. Whatever those things are, you have to stop and ask yourself, are these really important to me? Are these important to my purpose and my goals that I've set in my life? Are they important to my core values? And I would guess that a large portion of our time is spent engaging in things that are not all that important. Now, sometimes you need downtime, sometimes you do need to just chill out and do something or watch something that may be meaningless. I understand that. But at the same time, how much do we spend, how much effort do we spend on those activities?

[Shankar Vedantam]

So I understand some time ago you were somewhat obsessed with frequent flyer miles. Was this connected to your purpose? Wicked.

[Victor Strecker]

You know, as a public health professional, I was traveling around the world a lot and I started, you know, counting my frequent flyer miles, which is certainly a goal, right? How many frequent flyer miles I want to get to this status. I want to get to this status. And finally I started realizing, wow, I'm going to go to my grave with the number of frequent flyer miles on my headstone. It'll just say, he got palladium status. He got to fly the plane, he got to dance with the flight attendants. He got to play any music he wanted. You know, things like that. And I thought, oh, my God, this is maybe not what I want in my headstone.

[Shankar Vedantam]

How did you switch off from that habit?

[Victor Strecker]

After a while, I try to be a researcher of myself. And I hope everybody listening to this may think, can I become a better researcher of myself? And all that means is carefully observing your life and what matters to you, what you're spending your time on, what you're spending your time thinking about, what you're obsessed with. Are those the right things to be obsessed with? And some of them may well be, and some of them may well not be. And then you have to say, my life is very finite. I'm here for this very brief time on this planet, an infinitely brief time. And what am I going to do with that brief time? Am I going to really spend a lot of time on social media or watching a lot of TV that I really don't care about, or spending my time in arguments or spending my time listening to things that I have no control over? Maybe I do have control over certain things. I have some agency over certain things. And maybe I can make a difference in this world during this brief time that I'm here. Maybe I can leave a legacy. Maybe I can be a good ancestor.

[Shankar Vedantam]

I'm wondering what you think your daughter Julia would make of the way that you have lived your life since she passed away. Vic.

[Victor Strecker]

I try to live my life in a way that Julia would have wanted me to live my life. Very often when I'm conflicted about something, I turn to her and I ask, what should I do? How would you recommend I make this decision? And it's very helpful in that way, I think Julia is still living through me.

[Shankar Vedantam]

In our companion story on Hidden Brain plus, we look at some of the surprising findings about the effects of having purpose on our immune systems and our brains. If you've ever found yourself worrying about Alzheimer's disease or heart attacks, you might want to listen to this one. If you're a subscriber to Hidden Brain plus, that episode should be available in your feed right now. It's titled U2.0 the Power of Finding Purpose. If you're not yet a subscriber, please sign [e-mail] if you're using an Apple device, please go To Apple Co HiddenBrain Victor Strecker is a public health researcher at the University of Michigan. He's the author of Life on Purpose How Living for what matters most Changes Everything. Vic, thank you so much for joining me today on Hidden Brain.

[Victor Strecker]

Thank you. It was a real pleasure.

[Shankar Vedantam]

Do you have follow up questions for Victor Strecker? If you'd be comfortable sharing those questions with a Hidden Brain audience, please record a voice memo on your phone and email it to [e-mail] that email address again is ideashiddenbrain.org use the subject line Purpose. Hidden Brain is produced by Hidden Brain Media. Our audio production team includes Annie Murphy, Paul, Kristin Wong, Laura Correll, Ryan Katz, Autumn Barnes, Andrew Chadwick, and Nick Woodbury. Tara Boyle is our Executive producer. I'm Hidden Brain's executive editor. Next week in our U 2.0 series, how important is it to feel that you have a calling? We explore the role of passion in how we think about our lives. We also look at ways to regenerate interest in things that no longer excite you. I was feeling really low. I had a hard time to motivate myself to do more. Like I would stare at my computer screen in my cubicle and I just would ask myself what the heck I'm doing. That's next week in the second part of our U 2.0 series. I'm Shankar Vedantam. See you soon.

[Narrator]

I hope you enjoyed this episode of Hidden Brain. If you like what you've heard, find more from the Hidden Brain team wherever you get your podcasts.

[Shankar Vedantam]

This is an iHeart podcast.