Life stance
A person’s overall orientation toward life, encompassing beliefs, values, and assumptions about meaning and how to live.
Worldview: A comprehensive framework of beliefs and assumptions through which a person interprets reality. A life stance draws on assumptions about what is real and how the world works.
Religious humanism: A humanist approach that combines ethical commitments centered on human welfare with religious community or practice. It shows that human-centered values and religious forms can coexist in one stance.
Moral decision-making: The process of choosing among actions by considering moral principles, consequences, and duties. A life stance supplies assumptions and priorities that inform moral choices.
Spirituality: A search for or experience of connection with what a person regards as sacred, transcendent, or ultimate. Spiritual commitments can provide a sense of purpose and orientation toward life.
Values: Principles or standards that guide judgments about what matters and how to act. Values give a life stance practical priorities for choices and conduct.
Secular humanism: A nonreligious outlook that emphasizes human agency, reason, and ethical responsibility. It offers a nonreligious example of an integrated orientation toward meaning and conduct.
Personal development: The ongoing effort to develop abilities, habits, self-understanding, and life direction. Reflection on a life stance can influence the goals a person pursues.
Religious identity: A person’s self-understanding shaped by affiliation with or commitment to a religious tradition. It shows how a life stance can be reinforced by belonging to a tradition.
Meaning of life: An account of what makes human existence significant, purposeful, or worth living. A life stance often includes an answer to what makes life meaningful.
Atheism: The absence of belief in the existence of gods. Atheism alone is a position about gods, not a complete account of how to live.