Move
Looking for purpose? Move your body.
If you’re feeling a little untethered and directionless after the roller coaster of a year we’ve all just weathered, you’re not alone. As Adam Grant wrote in the New York Times, so many of us are languishing—experiencing a sense of stagnation and emptiness—that it “might just be the dominant emotion of 2021.”
That’s why a recent study caught our attention. Conducted by Dr. Ayse Yemiscigil and Dr. Ivo Vlaev, the study looked at the relationship between exercise and a sense of purpose—and the findings were fascinating. The researchers found that not only do people with a sense of purpose exercise more, but also that people who exercise more have a greater sense of purpose. In other words, if you’re struggling to find your way, working out regularly can help you get there.
Curious to learn more, we chatted with Dr. Yemiscigil, a postdoctoral researcher at the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard University. Read on to learn why she wanted to study the link between exercise and a sense of purpose, how exercise routines help organize our lives, and what surprised her about the study’s findings.
B3 MAGAZINE: As someone who works in and writes about the fitness space, I’ve seen countless studies about the positive correlation between physical activity and our mental state, but I’ve never seen a study that examined the relationship between physical activity and a sense of purpose. I want to dive into what inspired you to study this, but before we do that, can you talk about how you defined a sense of purpose for this study?
DR. YEMISCIGIL: Sense of purpose is a state of well-being that comes from having goals and aims that give direction and meaning to life. When people have meaningful commitments that organize their lives and spend time in worthwhile activities, they are expected to feel a sense of purpose in life.
B3 MAGAZINE: Thank you! Now we can dive into the why: What gave you the idea to study the relationship between physical activity and a sense of purpose?
DR. YEMISCIGIL: I primarily study well-being, and my main topic of interest is sense of purpose in life. Like many other young adults, I have struggled to find my way during emerging adulthood and endured a challenging period of purposelessness. I didn’t know back then that what I was experiencing had a name. It was when I was doing my master’s degree that I found out about research on this concept “purpose in life” and realized that we could empirically test how important this outcome is and what we can do to promote it. That is when I decided to do a Ph.D. on purpose.
As a behavioral scientist, my first aim was to examine what a powerful grip purpose could have on important behaviors that are difficult to change. So I set out to show whether and how sense of purpose could be linked to exercise behaviors. The idea that the reverse may be true and that exercise can also predict a stronger sense of purpose in life came about during the review process of the article. There were interview studies with active adults, especially older adults, where participants were talking about increased sense of purpose as a primary driver of their exercise habits.
B3 MAGAZINE: How interesting that one of the most fascinating findings of the study came later in the process! Can you give a quick overview of how the study worked and what you found?
DR. YEMISCIGIL: We looked at two large-scale datasets with over 18,000 adults who were surveyed up to three times in intervals of 4 and 9 years. We found that those individuals who reported a higher sense of purpose in life at the initial wave of the survey were more likely to increase their engagement in activity over the 4-9 years, no matter what their activity levels were at the baseline.
At the same time, those who reported higher levels of activity participation were more likely to report increases in their sense of purpose in life over time, no matter what their initial sense of purpose was.
B3 MAGAZINE: I’m especially interested in the bidirectional aspect of your study. We often look at things from a chicken-or-the-egg perspective, but in this case, it’s a little of both: people with a sense of purpose exercise more, and people who exercise more have a greater sense of purpose. I’d love to look at this from both perspectives: First, for someone who already feels a sense of purpose, how can exercise support that? And second, for someone who doesn’t (yet) feel a sense of purpose, how can exercise help them find it?
DR. YEMISCIGIL: Exercise routines organize our lives, giving us plans to look forward to and social communities to be a part of—not to mention the feeling that we get from having done something meaningful and worthwhile with our precious and scarce resource, time. Through these ways exercise can help people maintain their sense of purpose or even increase that into the future.
B3 MAGAZINE: For you, what was the biggest or most surprising take away from your findings?
DR. YEMISCIGIL: I was expecting to find sense of purpose to predict increased activity given the motivational benefits of purpose, but I was surprised that we found an equally important relationship from activity to purpose in life. I think when we are trying to motivate ourselves (or others) to exercise, our default is to emphasize the health and mood benefits of it. Thinking about exercise as a route to meaning and purpose is a new way of thinking, and it could change the way we think about exercise and motivate those who have been reluctant to get active.
If you’d like to learn more about Dr. Yemiscigil’s study, you can access it here. And if reading about the fascinating link between exercise and a sense of purpose has you eager to move your body, press play on an online workout or book a class at your local studio today!
If you’re feeling a little untethered and directionless after the roller coaster of a year we’ve all just weathered, you’re not alone. As Adam Grant wrote in the New York Times, so many of us are languishing—experiencing a sense of stagnation and emptiness—that it “might just be the dominant emotion of 2021.”
That’s why a recent study caught our attention. Conducted by Dr. Ayse Yemiscigil and Dr. Ivo Vlaev, the study looked at the relationship between exercise and a sense of purpose—and the findings were fascinating. The researchers found that not only do people with a sense of purpose exercise more, but also that people who exercise more have a greater sense of purpose. In other words, if you’re struggling to find your way, working out regularly can help you get there.
Curious to learn more, we chatted with Dr. Yemiscigil, a postdoctoral researcher at the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard University. Read on to learn why she wanted to study the link between exercise and a sense of purpose, how exercise routines help organize our lives, and what surprised her about the study’s findings.
B3 MAGAZINE: As someone who works in and writes about the fitness space, I’ve seen countless studies about the positive correlation between physical activity and our mental state, but I’ve never seen a study that examined the relationship between physical activity and a sense of purpose. I want to dive into what inspired you to study this, but before we do that, can you talk about how you defined a sense of purpose for this study?
DR. YEMISCIGIL: Sense of purpose is a state of well-being that comes from having goals and aims that give direction and meaning to life. When people have meaningful commitments that organize their lives and spend time in worthwhile activities, they are expected to feel a sense of purpose in life.
B3 MAGAZINE: Thank you! Now we can dive into the why: What gave you the idea to study the relationship between physical activity and a sense of purpose?
DR. YEMISCIGIL: I primarily study well-being, and my main topic of interest is sense of purpose in life. Like many other young adults, I have struggled to find my way during emerging adulthood and endured a challenging period of purposelessness. I didn’t know back then that what I was experiencing had a name. It was when I was doing my master’s degree that I found out about research on this concept “purpose in life” and realized that we could empirically test how important this outcome is and what we can do to promote it. That is when I decided to do a Ph.D. on purpose.
As a behavioral scientist, my first aim was to examine what a powerful grip purpose could have on important behaviors that are difficult to change. So I set out to show whether and how sense of purpose could be linked to exercise behaviors. The idea that the reverse may be true and that exercise can also predict a stronger sense of purpose in life came about during the review process of the article. There were interview studies with active adults, especially older adults, where participants were talking about increased sense of purpose as a primary driver of their exercise habits.
B3 MAGAZINE: How interesting that one of the most fascinating findings of the study came later in the process! Can you give a quick overview of how the study worked and what you found?
DR. YEMISCIGIL: We looked at two large-scale datasets with over 18,000 adults who were surveyed up to three times in intervals of 4 and 9 years. We found that those individuals who reported a higher sense of purpose in life at the initial wave of the survey were more likely to increase their engagement in activity over the 4-9 years, no matter what their activity levels were at the baseline.
At the same time, those who reported higher levels of activity participation were more likely to report increases in their sense of purpose in life over time, no matter what their initial sense of purpose was.
B3 MAGAZINE: I’m especially interested in the bidirectional aspect of your study. We often look at things from a chicken-or-the-egg perspective, but in this case, it’s a little of both: people with a sense of purpose exercise more, and people who exercise more have a greater sense of purpose. I’d love to look at this from both perspectives: First, for someone who already feels a sense of purpose, how can exercise support that? And second, for someone who doesn’t (yet) feel a sense of purpose, how can exercise help them find it?
DR. YEMISCIGIL: Exercise routines organize our lives, giving us plans to look forward to and social communities to be a part of—not to mention the feeling that we get from having done something meaningful and worthwhile with our precious and scarce resource, time. Through these ways exercise can help people maintain their sense of purpose or even increase that into the future.
B3 MAGAZINE: For you, what was the biggest or most surprising take away from your findings?
DR. YEMISCIGIL: I was expecting to find sense of purpose to predict increased activity given the motivational benefits of purpose, but I was surprised that we found an equally important relationship from activity to purpose in life. I think when we are trying to motivate ourselves (or others) to exercise, our default is to emphasize the health and mood benefits of it. Thinking about exercise as a route to meaning and purpose is a new way of thinking, and it could change the way we think about exercise and motivate those who have been reluctant to get active.
If you’d like to learn more about Dr. Yemiscigil’s study, you can access it here. And if reading about the fascinating link between exercise and a sense of purpose has you eager to move your body, press play on an online workout or book a class at your local studio today!
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