Welcome. I'm Kevin Miller and this is a podcast about how we make meaning of our lives and how to

elevate our lived experience. In this episode, how to design a meaningful life. People say that what we're

all seeking is a meaningful life. I don't think that's what we're really seeking. I think that what

we're seeking is to actually feel the rapture of being alive. So that's a quote by Joseph Campbell

that kicks off the book by my guest in this episode. A key aspect of me, my personal and professional

devotion is how we make meaning of life, which you'll be hearing much more about in the coming weeks and months.

In this episode, I have with me the director of the Life Design Lab at Stanford University, Bill Burnett.

Bill is a guru of design.

He worked previously at Apple designing laptops. He spent years in the toy industry, designing things like Star Wars action figures. But he's been at Stanford, he says, since the dinosaurs roam the campus. Dave Evans is also a master designer and a lecturer at Stanford. And together, they lead students in designing their

lives. They recently co-wrote a book titled How to Live a Meaningful Life, Using Design,

Thinking to unlock purpose, joy, and flow every day. So Bill joined me to discuss how we view

meaning in our lives. Bill says meaning is how we experience

our felt response to an encounter that matters to us. Bill and Dave literally go through steps

to design a meaningful life in their book, drawing from the same guidance that they give students

at Stanford. But I spent most of my time, as you'll hear, talking with Bill conceptually, about how we perceive

of and pursue meaning.

One thing Bill said that stuck with me, and I've been discussing a lot since then, is that

in his 40-plus years at Stanford, they're experiencing the loneliest student

population ever, which correlates to what we're seeing in the general populace. So I interested

myself with the correlation between both our feelings of increased loneliness and our lack

of felt meaning in life.

You can also connect with Bill and Dave and their work at designing your.

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