5 design principles to feel fully alive |
5 design principles to feel fully alive
Designers start in reality and meaning shows up right there in the mix.
[Photo: Klaus Vedfelt/Getty Images]
BY Next Big Idea Club
Below, co-authors Dave Evans and Bill Burnett share five key insights from their new book, How to Live a Meaningful Life: Using Design Thinking to Unlock Purpose, Joy, and Flow Every Day.
Dave and Bill are co-founders of the Stanford Life Design Lab and co-authors of the New York Times bestseller, Designing Your Life.
A meaningful life isn’t something you discover once or achieve at the top of a hierarchy. It’s something you design through daily practices, mindsets, and experiences.
Listen to the audio version of this Book Bite—read by Dave and Bill—below, or in the Next Big Idea App.
1. What’s better than fulfillment? Learning to become fully alive
People want their lives to make an impact and to achieve fulfillment. What is it people are looking for when they speak of fulfillment? They’re looking for what Abraham Maslow told them they ought to be looking for: self-actualization.
Going back to 1943, Maslow said, “Self-actualization is the apex of the human experience.” According to him, if you accomplish self-actualization by becoming “all that one can be,” then you will experience fulfillment.
But what we’ve learned in the Life Design Lab over 20 years is that everyone contains far more aliveness, far more human potential, than one lifetime will allow you to express. There’s no way all of you is going to get all the way out in the world.
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