Hello and welcome to Speaking of Psychology, a bi-weekly podcast from the American Psychological Association.

I'm your host, Caitlin Luna.

Before we dive into our conversation, I want to remind you, our listeners, that we love to hear from you.

If you have any comments, questions, or ideas for us, please email me at K-Luna at APA.org. That's K-L-U-N-A-A-A-D-org.

Now on to the conversation. We all want to find meaning in our lives, our reason to get up in the

morning, yet doing so may not be so

easy. What is meaning in life and how do we find it for ourselves? Our guest is Dr. Clara Hill,

an APA fellow and professor of psychology at the University of Maryland. Dr. Hill recently published

a book, Meaning in Life, a Therapist's Guide, which assists therapists as they help

clients find a meaning in their lives. Today's conversation will examine the concept of

meaning in life and ways to find it. Welcome, Dr. Hill. Thank you. It's delightful to be here.

So there's a lot of talk out there about finding one's purpose or calling, passion, you know,

meaning in life. So what are your thoughts about

those conversations that are happening out there in the world? Well, I think it's terrific because

I think people really need to focus on finding meaning in life. And the emphasis on it is even more now

than I think it used to be, which is interesting. I think in the past, people often

just took their meaning in life as their religion or their job and didn't have much opportunity

to think about it. I think they still had meaning in life. It's just they didn't have an opportunity

to have as many choices about meaning in life. And I just they didn't have an opportunity to have as many choices about meaning

in life. And I think as particularly as religion declines and as job security is so flexible,

I think people really have to spend a lot more time trying to think about what did they want

in life and how are they going to go about getting it? Is meaning in life an eternal question?

...