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Living a Purposeful Life: An Existential Analysis

Introduction

Human beings have asked questions about life’s meaning for thousands of years: What is a meaningful life? What makes life meaningful? How to live a meaningful life? These questions lie at the heart of philosophy, religion, psychology, and existential analysis. Today, in an age of material abundance yet spiritual uncertainty, many people feel lost or disconnected from a deeper sense of purpose.

We can feel very lost when we do not have a direction in our life and we feel as if we have no life purpose. The best place to start with living a purposeful life is to understand the foundations of a meaningful life.

This article explores the existential foundations of meaning through the work of Viktor Frankl, a Holocaust survivor and founder of logotherapy, and Alfried Längle, a contemporary Austrian psychiatrist and psychotherapist who developed Existential Analysis. Along the way, we will weave together ancient stories, psychological theories, and modern perspectives to ask what makes life meaningful and how we can each live a life with purpose.

Ancient Questions of Meaning

The search for meaning is not new. In the early story of Gilgamesh, dating back to roughly 600 BC, we encounter a half-human, half-god king who struggles with the same questions we face today.

“For whom have I labored? For whom have I journeyed? For whom have I suffered? I have gained absolutely nothing for myself. What does it mean, our struggle through life if in the end we die, if in the end we make mistakes?”

Here we have a powerful demigod with incredible gifts at his disposal, yet he yearns for an answer to meaning and confronts his mortality. The questions he raises remain strikingly relevant: What is a meaningful life? How do we live a life of meaning?

Viktor Frankl: Meaning Amidst Suffering

Viktor Frankl (1905–1997), an Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist, survived Auschwitz and other concentration camps. His experiences shaped his central conviction: even in the harshest circumstances, life holds meaning, and each individual can discover it.

Frankl wrote in his seminal work Man’s Search for Meaning:

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

This insight underscores a crucial truth: meaning is not found in external circumstances but in our response to them. Even amid suffering, Frankl argued, people can live with dignity if they recognize the freedom to choose their attitude and pursue a life purpose.

He observed three main ways in which meaning can be found:

1. Through work or deeds – creating, achieving, or contributing.
2. Through experiences and relationships – love, beauty, and connection.
3. Through attitude toward unavoidable suffering – finding courage, dignity, or transformation in hardship.

For Frankl, the essential task is not to ask what we expect from life, but rather to recognize that life is asking something from us. Our responsibility is to respond authentically.

Alfried Längle and Existential Analysis

Alfried Längle, a student of Frankl, expanded existential thought into what he calls Existential Analysis, a therapeutic approach that focuses on helping individuals live authentically and in harmony with their values.

Längle suggests that a meaningful life emerges when four fundamental motivations are addressed:

1. Existence (I am alive, do I have space to be?) – Recognizing and affirming one’s right to exist.
2. Life (I like to live, do I find value in life?) – Experiencing life as worthwhile and emotionally fulfilling.
3. Self (I am authentic, do I have a place where I belong?) – Living in line with one’s true self and values.
4. Meaning (I want to be, for what purpose do I live?) – Finding a deeper “why” that provides direction.

By clarifying these motivations, Längle emphasizes that living a purposeful life requires aligning our inner values with the outer world. When we ask, what is a meaningful life? existential analysis encourages us to explore our unique values and commitments.

The Foundations of a Meaningful Life

Returning to the guiding questions—What makes life meaningful? How to live a meaningful life?—we can identify several foundations from Frankl and Längle’s work:

1. Responsibility – Frankl stressed that freedom must be paired with responsibility. We cannot control everything, but we can always control our attitude and decisions.
2. Authenticity – Längle emphasized the importance of living in accordance with one’s values rather than external pressures.
3. Connection – Meaning is often discovered in relationships—love, friendship, community.
4. Creativity and Contribution – We find purpose in creating, building, and contributing beyond ourselves.
5. Transcendence – Both thinkers highlight that life’s meaning often extends beyond the individual, connecting us to a greater whole, whether spiritual, communal, or existential.

Positive Emotion and Community

Having meaning can not only help us in times of suffering, but it can also help us create positive emotions and stronger communities. Barbara Fredrickson’s Broaden and Build Theory shows how positive emotions expand our awareness (broaden) and enable us to develop enduring resources such as resilience, creativity, and relationships (build).

From an existential perspective, this means that living a purposeful life is not only about surviving hardships but also about thriving in community. By cultivating positive values and engaging in social relationships, we reinforce meaning in both personal and collective ways.

Practical Steps: How to Live a Meaningful Life

While the philosophical grounding is important, many people ask for practical steps: How do I live a life of meaning? Building on existential analysis, we can suggest several directions:

1. Clarify Your Values – Write down the principles that matter most to you. Ask: What would I stand for even if it were difficult?
2. Set Purposeful Goals – Align your daily activities with long-term values. Frankl often spoke of life as posing a “question” to us; our task is to answer with responsibility.
3. Embrace Responsibility – Recognize your freedom to choose your response in every situation.
4. Deepen Relationships – Love and friendship are central sources of meaning. Invest in them.
5. Find Meaning in Suffering – Instead of denying pain, explore what it teaches and how it can refine your values.
6. Engage in Service – Contribution to others, whether through work, volunteering, or kindness, provides lasting fulfillment.

Returning to Gilgamesh and Frankl

Going back to the early story of Gilgamesh, although we will suffer at times in life, although we will lose loved ones, although we may feel we have lost hope, although we are physically small in the universe, we still matter.

The choices we make in our own present moment matter, and our meaning is unique. If we live a life of meaning and have purpose, no matter what challenges we may face, we have a unique identity and a choice to choose our own way.

Frankl echoed this truth:

“Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by a lack of meaning and purpose.”

In this sense, the search for meaning is timeless. Gilgamesh, Frankl, and Längle all point us toward the same conclusion: a meaningful life is not handed to us but is discovered, chosen, and lived.

Conclusion

The question what is a meaningful life? cannot be answered with a single definition because meaning is deeply personal. Yet existential analysis, from Frankl’s logotherapy to Längle’s existential analysis, teaches us that living a purposeful life is possible for anyone.

We live meaningfully when we take responsibility, align our lives with authentic values, nurture relationships, create, contribute, and accept suffering as part of existence. To live without meaning is to drift; to live with meaning is to embrace life’s challenges with purpose.

The existential journey invites each of us to continually ask: What makes life meaningful for me, here and now? The answer will not be final but evolving—just as our lives are. And in that very search, meaning itself is born.

References

• Frankl, V. E. (2006). Man’s Search for Meaning. Beacon Press.
• Längle, A. (2003). The Search for Meaning in Life and the Existential Fundamental Motivations. Existenzanalyse, 20(1), 4–14.
• Längle, A. (2013). Fundamentals of Existential Analysis. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 53(2), 173–189.
• Fredrickson, B. L. (2001). The role of positive emotions in positive psychology: The broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions. American Psychologist, 56(3), 218–226.
• Steger, M. F. (2012). Making meaning in life. Psychological Inquiry, 23(4), 381–385.
• George, L. S., & Park, C. L. (2016). Meaning in life as comprehension, purpose, and mattering: Toward integration and new research questions. Review of General Psychology, 20(3), 205–220.