The Power of Meaning
Crafting a Life That Matters
Lavin Exclusive Speaker
Meaning, not happiness, is the key to a good life. That’s the vital message at the core of Emily Esfahani Smith’s book, The Power of Meaning, which outlines four pillars essential to living a life that matters: belonging, purpose, transcendence, and storytelling. From her popular TED main stage talk—viewed over 7 million times—to her viral Atlantic article “There’s More to Life Than Being Happy,” Smith helps us develop genuine cultures of meaning: both at work, and in our lives at large.
We’re all striving for happiness—but our culture’s obsession with instant gratification is only making us miserable. Drawing from over one hundred interviews, and years of research into positive psychology, neuroscience, and philosophy, Emily Esfahani Smith has discovered a more enriching way to live a good life: through the search for meaning. It’s the subject of her compelling and acclaimed book The Power of Meaning: Crafting a Life That Matters: called “persuasive” and “elegant” by the Wall Street Journal, and “a life-transforming experience” by Susan Cain, it’s now been published in over 15 languages. In keynotes, Smith offers methods for individuals to let go of unreasonable, unattainable standards of happiness, and pursue goals that reward over the long haul. And for organizations, it means embedding a sense of purpose into corporate culture—making beliefs and values align for personal wellbeing as well as the bottom line.
With a TED main stage talk listed as one of the top ten most popular of 2017—and currently viewed over 7 million times—Smith is a keynote speaker who helps us think differently about the stories we tell ourselves and help us identify what makes life worth living.
The former managing editor of The New Criterion, Smith’s articles and essays have appeared in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, and other publications. Her articles for The Atlantic “There’s More to Life Than Being Happy” (about the Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl) and “Masters of Love” (about romance and marriage) have reached over 30 million readers. In 2017, The New York Times published her article about rethinking success called “You’ll Never Be Famous—And That’s OK.” And her profile for the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine of Joe Rago, a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who tragically died at the age of 34, was shortlisted for a Folio magazine award in 2018.
Smith is a reporter for the Aspen Institute’s Weave project, an initiative founded by The New York Times’ David Brooks to address the problems of isolation, alienation, and division. At Weave, Smith finds and tells the stories of people who are working to rebuild the social fabric. She served as an instructor in positive psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. Smith graduated from Dartmouth College and earned a masters of applied positive psychology from the University of Pennsylvania.