你有“目标焦虑”吗？心理学家谈如何寻找人生目标

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What they did not realize was that they were each struggling to find a life purpose, she said, which is sometimes referred to as “purpose anxiety.”

Purpose is one of the most important ways in which we make meaning out of our lives. Once established, “it becomes the architectural framework, the blueprint for how to organize your life,” said Todd B. Kashdan, a professor of psychology at George Mason University who studies how people seek and live out purpose.

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That assumption “can make people really anxious, like, ‘Oh, how am I ever going to move up to that bar or meet that threshold?’” said Patrick Hill, a professor of psychological and brain sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, who has studied purpose for more than a decade.

But your purpose can be smaller and less ambitious, the experts said. It can also change throughout your lifetime, and you can have more than one purpose at the same time.

For the last decade, Daryl R. Van Tongeren, a psychology professor at Hope College in Holland, Mich., has found purpose in planting pepper seeds, nurturing their tender stems and then harvesting them to make hot sauce for his family and friends.