Cultivating a sense of meaning and purpose is developmentally salient for university students as they navigate independence, vocational and career paths, and other identity-related issues. Although the importance of meaning for the wellbeing and health of university students has been extensively studied, few interventions to bolster meaning have been designed for this population. The Manifesting Meaning Workshop (MMW) is an experiential program designed to aid students in exploring key facets of their sense of meaning. It is based on the three primary tenets of meaning: namely comprehension, purpose, and significance (Martela & Steger, 2016). MMW is a scripted, in-person, group-based workshop comprised of six, 50-minute sessions delivered weekly by two trained facilitators, and each session focuses on a specific topic related to meaning and purpose. In a pilot trial with university students in the United States, the workshop was feasible and acceptable and there were large improvements in physical health and moderate improvements in presence of meaning (O’Donnell, Morse, & Steger, in press).

The purpose of this apply presentation is two-fold: 1) To discuss the process of designing and implementing this meaning theory-based workshop, and 2) To provide conference attendees an opportunity to experience a portion of the workshop. In the process portion of the presentation, we will highlight how we selected activities, utilized feedback to make modifications, trained facilitators to deliver the workshop, and ultimately piloted the full program. In the experiential portion of the workshop, we will take audience members through the first module of the workshop, in which we define meaning, share examples of meaningful living, and perform an interactive meaning-based activity. The overarching purpose of this presentation is to support conference attendees who are interested in developing positive psychology interventions and to provide an opportunity to engage in a meaning and purpose experiential activity.