Exploring Meaning, Calling, and Self-Transcendence ✨

Exploring Meaning, Calling, and Self-Transcendence ✨

What do you aspire toward?

• Anita is motivated to make a positive difference by helping hungry people in her community.
• Julie aspires to shift her career direction and become a top-notch personal trainer.
• Fred hopes to produce a best-selling album.
• Connor wants to make the varsity baseball team.
• Carolyn aspires to walk/run a 5K race in the aftermath of her surgery. 

I was in college when I first read about humanistic psychologist Abraham Maslow, PhD’s, hierarchy of needs and began contemplating the existence of exciting possibilities for self-actualization, peak experiences, and human potential (Maslow, 1987).

These new understandings awakened me to think about potentialities I had not yet imagined, opening paths forward toward greater meaning, fulfillment, and a better life. I began to discern that there was more to life than simply my day-to-day, more than what I could see with my eyes. There was all that I could begin to imagine from my early adulthood vantage point.

Since that time, I’ve lived with a multitude of thoughts, emotions, ideas, and experiences. Many of these encounters with what if’s simply happened and then passed beyond my awareness, leaving little or no lasting impression. But some have stayed with me, for better or worse, provoking varying permutations of learning, memories, and sometimes transformative possibilities for personal growth and contributions out in the world beyond simply me.

Psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl, MD, (1985) offered many important contributions to our understandings about meaning. His writings explored the deep human need to reach beyond our self-interest toward something more than ourselves that strives for greater good. Frankl’s concept of a will to meaning invites us to reach toward self-actualization and becoming more fully human in all the complexity this process invites.  Paul Wong, PhD, (2016) points out that self-actualization is only possible through engaging with living, loving, seeking meaning, and devoting oneself wholeheartedly to service.

Wong (2016) proposes three levels of pursuing meaning and self-transcendence, offering ideas for ways to move toward this way of being present in our daily lives.

Level 1: Pursuing meaning in the transcendent big picture. For example, spiritual seeking, purposeful living, compassion, creativity, beauty, and truth.

Level 2: Exploring meaning in the present moment or situation with openness, mindful awareness, interest, kindness. There are many pathways toward strengthening awareness in the present moment, including mindfulness, meditation practices, and engagement or flow states (Csikszentmihaly, 1990; Kabat-Zinn & Hanh, 2009; Siegel, 2010).

Level 3: Searching for your sense of calling, such as in life, work, or other endeavors. Moving toward your values, passions, sense of purpose, or serving the common good in your personal life, role, job, or responsibilities (Dik & Duffy, 2009; Wong, 2016).

In conclusion, wherever you find yourself on life’s meandering path, it’s never too late to pause, and look within. You might consider what is personally meaningful to you, what you feel called to explore, or where you might serve the greater good.

If you’d like to offer yourself some time and space to consider your own meanings, peak experiences, and potential, perhaps these self-inquiries may offer you companionship on your exploration:

• What experiences in your life have stayed with you in a way that you find interesting, motivating, or would you like to explore further?
• When do you feel the most fulfilled? The least fulfilled? (Berns-Zare, 2019).
• What are some of the most important lessons you have learned in your life? 
• What thoughts, beliefs, ideas, and actions feed your spirit? 
• If you feel inspired to further explore meaning or self-transcendence, how might you call yourself to further reflection or action?

For more powerful questions to awaken your full potential, here’s a link to my free resource guide, 

25 Powerful Questions for Awakening Meaning in Life and Work: A guide to awareness and action.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only. No content is a substitute for consulting with a qualified mental health or healthcare professional.

© 2025 Ilene Berns-Zare, LLC, All Rights Reserved

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References:

• • Berns-Zare, I. (2019). 25 powerful questions for awakening meaning in life and work: A guide to awareness and action. https://ibzcoaching.com/25-powerful-questions-meaning-life-work/
  • Csikszentmihaly, M. (1990). Flow: The psychology of optimal experience. New York, NY: Harper & Row.
  • Dik, B. J., & Duffy, R. D. (2009). Calling and vocation at work: Definitions and prospects for research and practice. The Counseling Psychologist, 37(3), 424-450.
  • Frankl, V. E. (1985). Man’s search for meaning. New York, NY: Simon and Schuster.
  • Kabat-Zinn, J., & Hanh, T. N. (2009). Full catastrophe living: Using the wisdom of your body and mind to face stress, pain, and illness. New York, NY: Delta Books.
  • Maslow, A.H. (1987). Motivation and personality. (3rd ed). New York, NY: Harper & Row.
  • Siegel, D. (2010). Mindsight: The new science of personal transformation. New York, NY: Bantam Books Trade Paperbacks.
  • Wong, P. T. (2016). Meaning-seeking, self-transcendence, and well-being. In Logotherapy and Existential Analysis: Proceedings of the Viktor Frankl Institute Vienna, Volume 1 (pp. 311-321). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-29424-7_27

  
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