This Might Be the Missing Link to a Good Life | Shigehiro Oishi

0:00Jonathan Fields: So, have you ever felt like something kind of crucial was missing from your life, even when you achieved success and hit all the, quote, happiness milestones? Maybe like a voice inside whispered, there must be something more, a richer, more vibrant way of moving through the world. Well, if that's been your experience, my guest today just may blow open your concept of what it truly means to live a rich, fulfilling existence. Renowned psychologist Shigehiro Oishi exposes the pitfalls of rigid happiness chasing and reveals the radical path to a psychologically rich life, one brimming with novel adventures and diverse emotional textures and profound perspective shifts.

0:40Jonathan Fields: And you'll discover really powerful mindset pivots to navigate uncertainty with curiosity instead of anxiety, plus simple strategies to savor and embed life's richest moments into lasting personal growth. Shane Hero is a professor of psychology at the University of Chicago and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences who has received numerous honors, and his trailblazing research explores the components of a truly rich life across cultures. His insights really shatter conventional wisdom around happiness and meaning, and he reveals how aesthetic experiences and playfulness can unlock untapped dimensions of vitality, sharing three essential ingredients for curating a psychologically rich existence.

1:22Jonathan Fields: So excited to share this conversation with you. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project.

1:32Jonathan Fields: This episode is brought to you by Choiceology, an original podcast from Charles Schwab, hosted by Katie Milkman, an award-winning behavioral scientist and author of the best-selling book, How to Change. Choiceology is a show about the psychology and economics behind our decisions. Hear true stories from Nobel laureates, authors, athletes, and everyday people about why we do the things we do. Listen to Choiceology at schwab.com slash podcast or wherever you listen. Good Life Project is sponsored by Quince. So you know those pieces that you keep reaching for, the sweater that goes with everything, the jeans that always fit right?

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3:59Jonathan Fields: That's what good design does. And Kohler has been doing it, refusing to accept that every day has to be ordinary for over 150 years. Discover Kohler smart toilets at Kohler.com. Super excited to dive into your work. I spent a considerable amount of time talking to so many folks who I would imagine in some way you consider colleagues, folks in the world of social sciences, positive psychology, and really deepening into what makes a good life, which is really what this show has been all about for so many years. We've explored happiness a lot. We've explored meaningfulness a lot. We've explored relationships.

4:35Jonathan Fields: And you introduce sort of like a third element, psychological richness, which super excited to dive into. Before we get there, though, let's talk about a couple of other things. One of the things that you speak about is this tension between a life of stability, of certainty, of predictability, and a life of openness, a life of exploration. Tease this out a bit for me. Yeah, I think to me, a lot of like important life decisions about the Clash's famous song, should I stay or should I go? I mean, you have a job, then the big question, especially when there is something new opportunity comes around, then should I stay with what I have?

5:20Or should I go? And a relationship, of course, is the same way buying a new house or not is a new way. But even the small everyday decisions, I think, is really about, or should I go to my favorite restaurant again? Or should I try something new? So I think the life of stability versus adventure is not just about the entire life, but also everyday life. And it turned out, I mean, what was really surprising to me after doing happiness research for over 20 years was that usually the correct of the happy life, a more stable type of life. Like number one predictor, as you know, is a close relationships.

6:06So obviously the more stable it is, the better it is for your happiness, right? So I think this stability, stable life versus life of explorations or adventure is indeed at the core of what is good life. And maybe, you know, some happiness is a little bit lean toward the stable life. Meaningful life is probably lean toward the stable life because in order for you to feel like you're making a difference in the world, you cannot just volunteer once or twice. You have to do it week after week for a long, you know, extended period of time. So that's what sort of motivated me to think about, oh, if all the good things about like happiness and the meaning revolving around the stable life, then what about those people who have like really adventurous life?

7:01are they not leading a good life? You know, Anthony Bourdain, for instance, it's like crazy life in many ways, but a lot of people admire that type of life as well as life of mother theorists and, you know, and so forth. So anyway.

7:18Jonathan Fields: Yeah, I mean, it is really interesting. It's interesting that you bring up this notion of equating happiness and equating meaning with stability. My personal experience, it's changed over the seasons of my life. I think when I was younger, I probably made less of that correlation. You know, for me, it was like, let me try new things. Let me play. Let me start a new company. Let me go, you know, do all these different things. That sort of freewheeling creative expression, you know, like changing jobs, changing careers. For me, that was the root of happiness. That was the root of like, I found meaning.

7:49Jonathan Fields: I found expression. I found significance and change and a lack of stability. And then, you know, I move into a later season of life where I become married. I become a parent. And something, it's like a, you know, switch flips. in me. And all of a sudden, I'm like, oh, the carless for happiness and meaning. So I wonder if you see this sort of like a seasonal change in these things. Definitely. And there are individual differences too, that the sensation seeker, we have a paper about sensation seekers and how daily physical pleasure really matters to them. Whereas those of us who are not really sensation seekers, like a physical sensation of pleasure doesn't matter that much day to day.

8:33So there are individual differences. Of course, there is a life stage differences. The younger people need a lot more stimulation than the older people. So I think it is true that on average, there are life stage differences, individual differences in terms of preference for the stable factor versus more unstable or unpredictable or challenging factors. At the same time, which way is easier for you to get to sort of the state of happiness, then I think overall, actually for you, it is probably easier for now, feel like you're satisfied with your life, you find your life to be meaningful and so forth.

9:13When you are just changing the job and starting a new company and so forth, there's excitement probably, but were you really content and peaceful and satisfied with your choice at that moment? Maybe, but maybe not. you know, I don't know. I mean, were you completely happy at the time?

9:34Jonathan Fields: It's fine. Of course, there are windows of just profound unhappiness mixed in with profound happiness, especially when you're an entrepreneur. There's, you know, wild swings up and down and there's, it's a very jagged curve. But you brought up this phrase sensation seekers, which now I'm really curious about. Tell me more about what you mean when you use the phrase sensation seekers and how do you know if this is you? Yeah. Oh, so sensation seeking is well, there is a famous scale, like self-report scale. So those people who score high on sensational seeking is constantly seeking new stimulation.

10:09So going to, you know, bungee jumping and dangerous skateboardings and surfing. And so essentially sort of that you look at the checklist of things you really like to do and how dangerous are they? And if for you, the things you really like to do are very dangerous, then that's probably your sensation seeker. On the other hand, what you really want to do is sit in a quiet room and read Jane Austen, then probably you're not sensation seeker. So there are scales to measure that.

10:43Jonathan Fields: I'm going through my head and I'm thinking there are times where I actually like to do that. Like as we have this conversation, I'm just back from three days of snowboarding at altitude in Colorado. And I also just want to up on my couch later this afternoon and spend hours just diving into a new book. So is it more a state or a trait? There are state, but also trait as well. I mean, some people need constant stimulation, right? So let's say you just did the snowboarding, but then after just a day or two, oh, I just need something else. I feel bored. So it's almost combined with the boredom ploneness that you need this high in order for you to get going.

11:27Whereas other people are like, occasionally, yeah, they enjoy this skate, you know, snowboardings or skating or whatever. But then it's not like a, you know, after a week or so, they feel like deprived. The true sensation seekers always feel deprived after like, you know, not doing these kinds of things for a while. So you can think of this almost as an addiction to, you know, three seeking, essentially. You just need the thrills.

11:56Jonathan Fields: Right. Yeah, that would not be me, actually. That's the sort of trait sensation seeker versus sort of the state, occasional, you know, sensation seeker. So I was speaking of those trait sensation seekers. Right, where you sort of open your eyes in the morning and this is like your dominant mode. I need to go out and have this super heightened level of sensation and stimulation. Yeah, that's right. And potentially risk, it sounds like, as a part of that in some way, shape, or form. Yeah, risk is part of that too. Yeah, for sure. You brought up happiness and meaning. And again, some of the things that you talk about are some of the mythology around it.

12:35Jonathan Fields: You literally label both as being, happiness isn't necessarily a bad thing, but there is a happiness trap. Meaning isn't necessarily a bad thing. but like there can be a trap side. Walk me through, let's start with happiness. What are we talking about when we're talking about a happiness trap? I think when we are talking about happiness trap, it's the sense that you have to be happy. And also another thing I think is that very interesting fact is that traditionally happiness was essentially about good luck and fortune. So English word, hap, right? Hapless, hap was luck. If you look at the Webster unabridged dictionary from the 1800s, that's the definition.

13:19But in 1962, they essentially said good luck and fortune is the archaic definition of happiness. So it became sort of out of fashion. Now the happiness is defined as something like the satisfaction of one's desires and needs. and even more if I ask American audience what is happiness to you what kind of words do you sort of associate with the word happiness or somebody being happy a lot of people say oh somebody who is really successful and you know happiness is a sign of personal success or one person even wrote victory, you know, and that's fine. There's nothing wrong with that. But now you really clearly see if you're seeing the happiness as a sign of personal success, then you're much more likely to see unhappiness as a personal failure, right?

14:18And it's really, really painful then to accept these negative events. And as we know, negative things happens. Like look at the LA's, like, you know, wildfires. That's not your fault at all, but just these things happen. And when you're trying to, you know, tell yourself, oh, I have to be happy. I should be happy about my life. And so it is really difficult to take this negative. Now consider happiness is a good luck and fortune. Then unhappiness is simply you're being unlucky. Then negative events and things like that are quite easy to accept. And you're not going to get down. You know, it's like, oh, it's just it was a bad luck.

15:03So I'll try again. But if you think that happiness is a sign of personal success and I don't feel happy about my life, then I feel like a loser. And that really is not a good way to move forward. So that's why I call it, you know, happiness trap. And indeed, interestingly, the research shows that the Barry Schwartz famous, you know, maximizing versus satisfying research that actually those satisficers who can say, oh, this is good enough, are way more happier than people who are just constantly thinking about and seeking what is better out there.

15:42Jonathan Fields: I mean, it's so fascinating when you do equate happiness with success. And then, like you said, then you find yourself not happy, maybe through circumstances entirely outside of your control at this particular moment, that there's a script running that says, well, then I'm not successful. I'm not living a successful life. It's like it piles on. It creates this downward spiral. It really does. Also, just make you avoid the potential danger. So I feel like, you know, John Hyde talks about the anxious generations. And I think anxious generation is really the generation they try to be happy. And they know, once they go outside of their comfort zone, then they could encounter something I expected, something they might not like, then they don't want to do it.

16:35That's another element of sort of the happiness trap that because you're so focused on maximizing positive emotions and minimizing negative emotions, you're just staying within the comfort zone and you're not challenging enough. And current generation, unfortunately, is not like you when you are young trying all kinds of new things and then they're becoming much, much, you know, less adventurous and risk seeking.

17:02Jonathan Fields: That's so interesting. So you're basically saying that if you view not being happy as, quote, some sort of personal failure, then that may sort of make you less likely to start to try all these different things that may add incredibly to your life, but you see them as having a risk of failure because you don't want to have that failure because that means you're not happy. And that translates to being not successful. And then the eyes of your peers around you. Yeah, that's so interesting the way it all ties together like that. Rather than saying, I may try this thing. It may not work. I may not be happy for a moment in time.

17:37Jonathan Fields: And that's actually okay. That's just part of the human condition. You see, like I've been teaching at the university for so long. So always some students, first question is, is this class easy? Can I get an A in this class, right? There are always students like that. But I feel like more and more students are so concerned about the grades. And yes, it is competitive. You have to have a very high GPA to get into consulting firm or whatever. But that's the same phenomenon. Like you're trying to maximize happiness and trying to maximize your GPA. then what happens is that you're not taking challenging classes or the courses that really truly interest you perhaps rather you're choosing the easy a unfortunately those are a lot of psychology courses so i welcome those in in some way but at the same time i feel like they should be ready for a challenge yeah that's so interesting and we'll be right back after a word from our sponsors.

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20:48Jonathan Fields: That's faire.com slash goodlife. Terms may apply. Good Life Project is sponsored by Ernesta Rugs. So if you ever had a space that was almost right, not wrong, just close enough, for me, that's our front porch. It's where I go to think and have my coffee. but every rug we put out there has been whatever size was available. So it just kind of floats. And I kept putting off fixing it because getting the right size felt like a whole project. Then I found Ernesta. They make designer quality rugs custom cut to the exact size of your space. So it actually fits instead of almost fits. Their design team even helps you nail the size completely free.

21:27Jonathan Fields: And you can order five oversized samples to set right next to your furniture, plus get$50 towards any rug you choose. Our porch rug is on its way and I can't wait to step outside and think, yep, that one feels like ours. Visit Ernesta.com and order five samples for only$10 and you'll get$50 toward any rug of your choice. That's E-R-N-E-S-T-A.com. You also speak to what you describe as a meaning trap. There's sort of almost like a risk of obsessive meaning seeking. Take me deeper into this. I think the trap one part is that when you think about somebody who led the meaningful life or leading meaningful life, we often think about super famous person like Mother Teresa obviously led the life of meaning.

22:17I mean, she just worked and worked for the others in Calcutta entire life. Or Steve Jobs, who changed essentially the world, right? So oftentimes, I think in graduation speech, the speaker always says, find your passion, go out there and change the world. But I mean, how many people can do that, really? So it's setting up a really, really high bar for the meaningful life. So a lot of us feel like, oh, maybe my life is not that meaningful because what kind of difference am I making in the world? But at the same time, ironically, just like a happiness trapped, you know, empirical findings about meaning is very, very different from this pre-notion of meaningful life is something grand.

23:09Actually, 90 % of Americans say their life is meaningful. How could it be, right? Like 90 % of Americans really making a huge difference in the world. Right.

23:19Jonathan Fields: I mean, by definition, you can't be that outlier if you're 90%. So what they find meaning is a small thing in life, right? Raising kids, of course, it takes a lot of time. And every day you're just trying hard to help them or, you know, helping out aging parents or just doing, you know, coaching little league baseball. You know, those are the things that gives you a sense of meaning, but that's a pretty small, like you have to choose one or two particular causes, right? In order to do it repeatedly, making a difference and seeing the difference that effort, you know, gave rise to. So that's perfectly fine.

24:03I have nothing against happiness or nothing against meaning. Indeed, 25 years, I still do happiness research. I still do meaning. I think the happiness and meaning important path to the good life. But the recent findings, and this was really disturbing to me personally, that Laura King's lab found that those people who endorse right-wing authoritarianism, I mean, this right-wing authoritarianism scale is like you have to obey to the authority no matter what. I mean, it's like very extreme. And it turned out those people who endorse those items tend to report that their lives are more meaningful than the people who do not endorse right-wing authoritarianism.

24:51So what's happening is that some cases you can just draw narrow sort of the in-group. These are the people I care. And I draw meaning. I find meaning from, you know, helping these small number of, but then sometimes these people don't care about others. So that's the potential misplaced meaning in life that sometimes meaningful life seems to be very, very narrow, in some cases might be harmful to, you know, others.

25:22Jonathan Fields: I mean, it's so interesting, because when you hear the conversation around meaning, it's pretty much always framed in a positive. You know, this is and you're not saying that meaning is a bad thing. You're saying like meaning is important. Meaning matters. We all want more of it. It's a part of a life well lived. But there is a almost, I would almost describe it as like there's an overexpression or an extreme expression or a particular expression of meaning seeking that can become very insular and very isolating. Even though when you're in it to you, it feels deeply meaningful, but it makes your world smaller and potentially even can end up causing harm to those outside of that small world.

26:01Jonathan Fields: Did I get that right? Yeah, definitely. I mean, extreme example is really like why some people join terrorist organization. And, you know, one of the reasons is that terrorist organization, of course, gives you the guiding principle of how you live your life and how you sacrifice your life for the greater, you know, good. But sometimes, of course, If it's a terrorist organization, you have the target group to harm. So maybe this is obviously extreme case, but you don't have meaning in life. Therefore, you join a particular group and then you feel like you're enlightened. And now you have a sense of mission.

26:43I know how to devote my life. But some case that could hurt the other people who are not within your group. So that's the part of the meaning trap. I mean, extreme case.

26:57Jonathan Fields: Yeah, yeah. No, of course. If we accept that happiness matters to a life we live, accept that meaning matters to a life we live, then also that both of those, there's a potential dark side. I would imagine there is to anything that is expressed in a dysfunctional way, right? Definitely. Then you introduced this third concept, which I think is really fascinating, which is this idea that you call psychological richness. So take me into this. Yeah. So we define psychologically rich life as a life filled with interesting, unusual, diverse experiences. And oftentimes these experiences come with the change in perspective.

27:36And here we are talking about, you know, a lot of changes in your life and, you know, your experience in different things in the different phase of your life or, you know, different years. and in things like that. So isn't that much of stability in your life? Maybe, but instead you, you know, one year you study abroad in Mexico, you know, another year there's a job offer from Singapore and my move to Singapore. And it's kind of interesting. The people who do study abroad, for instance, I mean, study abroad is hard. If you don't speak the language there, all of a sudden you feel like you're the dumbest person on earth.

28:20So that in terms of happiness, it's not happiness maximizing strategy to do study abroad. If you're not being able to speak the language, for instance, or don't know that custom. And sometimes, you know, if you live in a different culture, your meaning system and beliefs are challenged. So sometimes you feel like, oh, what am I doing? What I believe to be the meaningful path might not be the necessarily meaningful path. But these students, after the study abroad, come back with a fresh new perspective. And then they know, oh, I learned really something new. I didn't know, you know, these things happens and, you know, could be valuable and so forth.

29:02So the experience like study abroad, it is very hard to quantify. What's the utility? What's the value? If you measure happiness, not much there. If you measure meaning, not much there either. But if you measure in terms of psychological richness or richness of experiences, then definitely study abroad is adding a lot. Moving to new city is another one that it doesn't really make people happy. So this is a prediction error oftentimes, right? People take a job.

29:35Jonathan Fields: It's like, I'm going to go to this new place. Everything will be better. Yeah, exactly. More exciting, more friends. Exactly. Oh, I'm going to make a lot more money and it's going to be great. And it's like, okay, you have a new job. Yeah, your pay might have increased, but well, you have to get to know all the new people. You don't know how things work and it's really frustrating and so forth. So if you look at the happiness, I mean, some move obviously is happiness producing, but some moves and many of them are not very much happiness enhancing at all. These kinds of decisions people make, like, should I go?

30:16Should I stay? And then when they go, if you just look at this as a happiness, as a ultimate outcome, then it's not a good decision. But at the same time, if you use this third dimension of psychological richness, do you have more interesting stories to tell? Probably, yes. Was it hard? Yes, very, very hard. Would I do it again? Maybe. Psychological richness to me is just trying to capture the aspects of life that people admire, but not really well captured by the existing concepts like happiness and meaning. And particularly experience like a study abroad or taking a job abroad, moving to a new city, putting yourself in a new environment.

31:02Those are the things that I think people admire. Objectively speaking, there is something admirable about those kinds of life. If you just measure happiness or meaning, you're not capturing those. So my hope is to capture these kinds of adventurous life as a third way and third path to a good life.

31:24Jonathan Fields: It is so interesting, right? Because so often we judge what we've done by, did it make me happy or was it meaningful? Or when we're looking at something to potentially and asking ourselves, should I do this or should I not do it? We're like, well, do I think it'll make me happier? Do I think it'll have meaning in it? And you're offering like a third metric here. You're saying, well, it actually might not have either, at least in the moment. But if it adds adventure, exploration, stories to your life, it adds to this experience of psychological richness and that that is on par with these other elements of happiness and meaning in what actually makes for a life well lived.

32:06Jonathan Fields: So this is something to consider in your decision making process as well. Yeah, that's what I'm trying to say. Sort of in the long run, if you lived a very comfortable life and you're already happy, happy with what you have. And at the end of life, at deathbed, you might say, yeah, I had a good life. I was happy. On the other hand, if you let that life and never challenge yourself went beyond the comfort zone, then would you become a wise person, wiser than you could have been? Probably not. So I feel like as somebody who led the psychologically rich life, they might not necessarily say it was fun.

32:49I led a happy life. But at the same time, I think they can say that, oh, I learned a lot. I feel like I'm much wiser. So the wisdom to me is the big sort of the reward for leading a psychologically rich life. But at the same time, some people are so stressed out and they want to be, you know, happy. So then there's a good strategy already, right? Just have coffee with your friends, enjoy your dinner with your wife or, you know, siblings. That's great. That's great. You should do it. But if that's not for you, then maybe there's another way as well.

33:28Jonathan Fields: And I'm glad you actually shared that because there will be some people who are listening to this saying, I'm feeling like life isn't quite what I want it to be. And I'm wondering what else could be a part of it. And so you offer this notion of psychological richness and exploration. And at the same time, it's almost like in Buddhism, like you have a monastic path and a householder path. And in either way, it's sort of saying like you're still doing the thing. But everyone comes to this moment, to this season of life with a different history, with a different set of expectations and with different set points for what will make them feel nourished, make them feel like they're flourishing.

34:03Jonathan Fields: So maybe there are folks who are actually just having a very quiet, deeply connected life with people around them and with a place where they are. That actually is enough. That's really good. Yeah, that's great. So I think that, I mean, those people who are completely content, satisfied with what they have, and they know exactly what they want. So like oftentimes, right, like international survey of happiest country, those are like Finland, Norway and so forth. But then you read about them, like what's the secret to happiness? And they all say, oh, we don't expect too much. We know what's enough.

34:38So I think if that's what you want and then that's exactly like what you should be pursuing, that's great. And you know exactly what you like and you can get it because we know how to get there. Yeah.

34:52Jonathan Fields: I mean, that brings up another really interesting point was this notion that happiness or fulfillment, the definition of that varies dramatically based on culture. One culture may say like, you know, you keep your expectations pretty low and then it's easy to hit that bar. And then you feel like, good, like I'm doing the thing, you know, I'm succeeding. I'm checking those boxes. Whereas you get another country or another culture, maybe just another community or a group which has a completely different bar. And you feel like, well, it's almost unattainable so that I'm not living that life that I want to live.

35:25Jonathan Fields: And it speaks to how subjective this often is. It really is. And I think the Williams James said it really nicely that you can increase. So he was talking about self-esteem, but I'm just replacing self-esteem with the happiness. But you can maximize happiness by achieving all your ambitions you had, right? So that's sort of the American approach. I have these kinds of ambitions and I want to achieve them. And when you achieve them, yeah, you're probably happy, at least for a while. Other way to do it, why do you need to achieve all those? Just reduce the ambition to one or two manageable ones.

36:05Then all you need to do is achieve just the two things and then you're equally happy. So these are two completely different approaches. There are cultural variations. There are individual differences. you know, developmental stage differences, but it is interesting. And I do a lot of cross-cultural research. So one really interesting research here is that we just ask my colleague in 30, you know, different countries, what is happiness, the word happiness in your own language? And then just, could you look it up, the definition of happiness in the most authoritative dictionary in your own language, and then just could you translate that into English?

36:46So we can look at the meaning. 24 out of 30 countries, primary definition of happiness are still good luck and fortune. And six countries are not. And of course, the US is one of them.

36:58Jonathan Fields: Of course, right. The US is like more stuff. Yeah, more stuff. Satisfaction of my needs. Right, right, right. Not that either one isn't necessarily good or bad. It's interesting to see how the cultural differences really can affect those definitions. And those definitions affect how we perceive ourselves and what we strive for. Exactly. The approach to happiness is completely different. As you said, the Nordic approach to happiness is appreciating what you have. And traditionally, American approach is just go out there and pursue actively and try to achieve as many things as possible. So that could be very exhausting path to happiness.

37:42Jonathan Fields: And I think a lot of people are finding that right now. They're finding they're burned out, they're exhausted, they're overwhelmed and trying to figure out why am I feeling this way? And there may be probably checking so many of the boxes that they aspire to check, yet they're not feeling the way they want to feel. And it's like, well, maybe our fundamental definition of is in some way off because it's not, we're doing all the things, but we're not feeling the way that we want to feel. Exactly. And just to be fair, really one of the earliest, most important finding from happiness research was exactly that, right?

38:19Like Dan Gilbert's affective forecasting error. Like we think the promotions or wedding or something like that will make us happy. Not really. I mean, It does make us happy, but it doesn't last that long. And what makes us happy is the little thing. So happiness is not an intensity, but the frequency of the positive emotions. So that's why interpersonal relationship is so important, because your friends and your partner will make you happy every day. Promotion, I don't know. How often do you get promotion? I don't even know. Like once every five years, 10 years? So you shouldn't depend your happiness on that infrequent, intense events.

39:03You should really focus on everyday experiences. And that's the key. If you want to be happy.

39:11Jonathan Fields: I remember reading Dan's work on effective forecasting and was blown away when, if I have this right, I remember he was saying that the research shows that we tend to think that 20 years out, we're really good at predicting how we would feel if we check these spots. If we have a partner, if we have a job, if we have certain money in the bank, if we have a house, and we are notoriously horrible at that. In fact, from what I remember, the research showed that if we ask a stranger who's 20 years further down the road, who has those things we aspire to, how they feel, their answer is going to be more accurate than our answer would eventually be for ourselves in that time window because we're just terrible at figuring out how things will make us feel.

39:51Yeah. And in my lab, when I was in graduate school at Dina's, looked at the longitudinal studies about the life events. And essentially, the effect of these engagements or promotion, it lasts only three months to six months. That's it. So we just adapt. Hedonic adaptation is everywhere. So it is really difficult to rely on these big events. But the little one, it happens often. So that's the reliable source of happiness.

40:18Jonathan Fields: Yeah. So let's drop a little bit more in detail into this experience of psychological richness. It sounds like, okay, so here's an, it's effectively like, here's another bucket that we can explore filling to feel the way we want to feel and live the life we want to live. So what are the ingredients here? It sounds like one of them is probably some level of novelty, like something new and different. It's interesting. We started out with the focus group. So I asked undergraduate in my lab. So just think about what you did last weekend. What was the happy event? You know, the usual thing. And then the meaningful event, the usual thing.

40:51I said, okay, what was the psychologically rich event? What I mean is something interesting, you know, something unusual. And then the one person, Grace, did this interesting thing. Over the weekend, she went to a professional wrestling match. And she never had, you know, been to that kind of stuff. So she had the, you know, stereotype. Oh, these are like orchestrated violence with just a fake stuff. But she went there and realized that, you know, there are a lot of little kids. And why are there little kids in the professional, you know, wrestling match? And then later, she realized that WWE is really doing huge anti-bullying campaigns.

41:34So these bullied kids come here and root for these professional wrestlers. And wrestlers are the hero for them. So she came back. This is very unusual experiences. You don't go to professional wrestling match every day. Indeed, this was the first time she went there. She experienced a lot of different kinds of emotions and, of course, came back with a completely perspective, completely different perspective on professional wrestlers and professional wrestling organization. So this was really psychologically rich experiences because there were these three ingredients. Another student, Rachel, the same weekend, she reported this interesting, unusual experience, which is she lives in an apartment.

42:22She went to the lounge and then she found this guy typing something, but completely naked. So it's like she's wondering, like, what is he doing here? Naked typing, right? Like weird guy. but then she thought is it hot no it's not even hot is he hot i mean that physically attractive no he's not even like a well-built this this guy is not like showing off his muscle anything like that so she reports coming back that was really weird and interesting unusual experience right is this psychologically rich experience no because this experience did not change her perspective in life or perspective on young men or whatever at all.

43:06So obviously the novelty, unusualness, and things like that are important ingredient. But I think crucial difference, what makes some experience really psychologically deeper and interesting versus not is the variety of emotions experienced during the activities. But also you really have to have something like change. So we earlier talked about, you know, study abroad. And what's amazing about study abroad is, of course, you're so frustrated. You have really diverse, different kinds of emotions, right? And also, you really often come away with a very different perspective in life. So I think the psychologically rich experience has to have those novelty, diversity of sort of the emotional experience, some complexity, but also sort of this new perspective changing insight.

44:05Jonathan Fields: Yeah. I mean, so that's so interesting. So effectively three ingredients, if I have it right. One is novelty. So it's got to be new and different from what you would normally do. The second is a variety or diversity of emotions wrapped up in it. And the third is perspective changing. Like you can't walk away kind of feeling the same way about yourself or the world, like something has to shift. That's right. It's fascinating. Because when you think about, you know, the thing that pops to my mind that sort of checks those boxes for a lot of people is travel. You know, I think that's why a lot of people go to and travel to places which are not sort of necessarily comfortable for you, maybe to another country with a radically diverse culture, a language that you don't understand or speak.

44:45Jonathan Fields: And then rather than just going on the tourist bus and checking the boxes, but actually spending time with people and understanding the culture, it's really uncomfortable oftentimes. But if you're there long enough and you're curious enough, you come away, not just with great stories to tell, but you really like you see yourself and the world differently. But the thing that was popping into my mind also, because a lot of people may be listening to this, well, that's lovely for those who can like do that type of travel. But what about the rest of us? And I would imagine, you know, like, you can get similar experiences all day, every day, just in your local community.

45:21Jonathan Fields: So this is not a thing where you have to have resources or privilege to actually drop into this. Yeah. I mean, good Will Hunting is a good case, right? Will Hunting said famously, you don't have to spend$150 ,000 for the fancy education. All you need is a library card and maybe$1.50 late charge. And you can go to library and read incredible novels, go through right? Unbelievable amount of, I mean, Anna Karenina, for instance, I mean, just go up and down emotionally and, you know, come away with a completely different concept of love or your life and things like that. So definitely you can do it without spending a lot of money.

46:03I mean, movie nowadays is expensive, but even movie, right? Some movie is just like fun and you just come away and spend two hours like it was fun whereas some movie is really deep disturbing sometimes but does change you remains you stays with you so i think there are a lot of opportunities out there without spending too much money to expose yourself to the different kinds of experiences vicariously and you can really really feel like oh i see the world in a very different way now I can see that viewpoint.

46:42Jonathan Fields: I love that because it's so accessible. You think about books that take you somewhere and leave you changed. Think about documentaries, like fantastic documentaries where you're just like, wow, I recently watched a documentary about waste actually. And my mind was blown. It wasn't something I've ever been exposed to before in that way. And I was like, I have changed my behavior since. I've seen things differently and it really affected me. So I love this invitation that says that you don't necessarily have to be the protagonist in the story. You can be the one who's the witness. And that experience can also have this effect.

47:16Yeah, definitely. And some of the experiences that are probably most psychologically rich are not even intentional ones. A lot of people say, oh, when I was in fifth grade, there was a huge earthquake. And I lost my house and everything. So it's a terrible story at the beginning, but then oftentimes they see something really unusual, right? The neighbors that they never talked to came over and helped us search our dog. And then you really see the humanities in a very, very different way. So over time, you can reconstrue that earthquake experience as a psychologically rich experience. Is it a painful experience?

48:03Of course, it's extremely painful experience. Does it add to your meaning? Not really. But you have some extraordinary experience in your pocket and you see the world thanks to that very differently. And my research also showed that those people who experience natural disaster, they tend to become way more pro-social. They're much more likely to seek pro-social occupations. So social workers, teachers, the probability of then becoming those are much, much higher compared to those who never experienced. So to me, the psychologically rich experiences or opportunities are out there. Not necessarily you have to just constantly seek yourself.

48:51Right.

48:51Jonathan Fields: Sometimes they're just things that happen to you or around you. Exactly. I think it also speaks to the role of potentially adversity. And it gives us a frame. It gives us a way to frame adversity potentially as we're not saying this is a good thing. You should go seeking horrible things. But if you're alive long enough, bad things happen. But if you have the frame that says, as I meet adversity, whether I invited it or not, that maybe there is a way for this to actually affect me in a way that it adds to my experience of life. It changes my perspective. It's novel. All the emotions are there. It shifts my perspective.

49:28Jonathan Fields: And I didn't ask for it. I didn't want it. But when I moved through it, that it actually has added in a meaningful way to the way I'm living my life from that moment forward. Yeah, exactly. As you're describing that, I was living in New York City for many years and I was there during 9-11. My experience there was profound, profound horror and shock and upset and knowing people who didn't come home that day. But being in New York then has changed me. It gave me a worldview that says we are promised nothing. There's an urgency, not a frantic urgency, but there's an urgency to the way that I've lived my life since that is different in a noticeable way, I think.

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52:40Jonathan Fields: On the flip side of this, and this is one of the things that you speak about and write about is this notion of playfulness as a quality that folds into psychological richness. Tease this out for me a bit also. So playfulness is, according to Eric, you know, Erickson, is that the escape from social and economic realities. We adults have so many responsibilities, like for me, I have to teach, I have to grade, obviously, I have to do a lot of things. But But playfulness or being playful means you take some time out from these realities. And he says reside in somewhere in between reality and fantasy.

53:25And of course, if you have a dog, right, then the dog lives in this area every day when he chased a tennis ball. If you have five years old, every day live in this reality and fantasy world in between, just that we adopt a lot of serious business to take care of. So we forget how to be playful. So being playful is really being like five years old, being like a dog and do a lot of pretend and just forget about what other people think about, which is actually very difficult things to do.

54:02Jonathan Fields: Yeah, I think by the time we get older, we're so bound by social propriety. And so often a part of that is there's a seriousness, there's a gravitas to the way you live your life. The playfulness is the thing that you did when you were a kid. And when you start to be that way, you almost feel uncomfortable because it's been trained out of us. Oh, it is very uncomfortable. Right. But I wonder if you're in a place where everybody is doing that, where it becomes normalized. And all of a sudden, it's like, those are the moments where, you know, if you're at a concert for someone like you love, and just like, you know, there are tens of thousands of people all lost in the moment and singing and dancing, even though like your normal life, you would never do that.

54:41Jonathan Fields: But everyone around you is doing it. So you're like, oh, I'm okay doing this. And it can reconnect you like, oh, I can feel this way. And that matters. Definitely. I think historically, if you look at like festivals, right? Festival where like New Orleans, of course, you know, like you just like put the mask and just go crazy. And that's really organized way, like cultural defense against monotonic, like boring life. And the culture often creates the opportunity for everybody to be playful. Japan is an extremely serious country, as you might know. But then there's Obon Festival where we all just dance together.

55:23And of course, there's a karaoke box where you can go and sing and go crazy. So I think that it would be nice to have some easy outlet, like culturally approved outlet, like a concert. like the karaoke box and festivals. And those are the things that you can do. But then you can just sort of imitate that at home and you can easily do the singing parties or dancing. It is difficult for like 50 something years or like myself, but I think you can and we should occasionally for sure.

55:59Jonathan Fields: Yeah, so great. And I think some of us touch, if you're fortunate, if you make a decision to become a parent and you have like a young child in the house, You drop into that just because that's what you do with a young kid. You know, it's like, that's, you know, you're kind of in it together. But then they reach a certain age and like, they, you know, it starts to like shift a little bit and you're like, oh, I guess I'm not doing that anymore. And you probably never realized how much it added to your life to just be able to like have that freedom too. Definitely. Definitely. So parenting is extremely difficult.

56:29Like happiness researchers knows that, you know, being parents is not really happiness producing activities at all. meaning, yes. But I think when the kids are small, it is really enrich your life because you play with kids and then you become kids. What you have to do is even when your kids became teenager, you just have to find somebody to play with and be playful yourself.

56:53Jonathan Fields: Yeah. You can't do it around them anymore because all you get is rollbacks. Yeah. I know. Teenage years are hard. It's like, drop me off two blocks from school. Yeah. Teenagers are hard. I mean, hard. One of the other things that you explore under the umbrella of psychological richness is the notion of aesthetic experiences I thought was really interesting, like the value of beauty and art. You know, I personally love going to museums. So I've been thinking about like, what's the role of art? And does it increase happiness? Some? Yes, right? Monet's, you know, beautiful painting might do, but at the same time, Picasso's and something like that would not necessarily do.

57:39And essentially, I came back and think that, yeah, I think the art is not really made to boost happiness or even give you a sense of meaning per se. Obviously, most of the artists just had something inside they wanted to just express. So they just did it, not for others, but oftentimes for themselves. but some art really resonates right the way you feel about or just make you think about the life in a very different way the Picasso's like two women like sitting together in one figure and you know in Chicago Institute there's one piece by Picasso two women and from one angle it's his wife and from the other angle it's his lover and then it's he created this right because he was so conflicted about should I stay or should I go and these things right like when you see it initially it's like what is this weird you know painting but then you learn about it and it's like oh wow and now I see this and you know you think about your conflict or something like that so I think those are the thing again it's new and gives you a new perspectives and sometimes you feel like oh yeah now I get it oh you have to see it from this way and then there's a behind the story like this so how many things we do day to day gives you the opportunity to think about that heart and think about like these kinds of diverse you know perspectives so I think art is just a wonderful way to transcend yourself and transport yourself detached from the everyday realities and just live again in a fantasy world a little bit.

59:34And then you can just come back safely and then move on with your life. So that's really a wonderful way to, I think, enrich your life.

59:42Jonathan Fields: Yeah, I so agree with that. I'm somebody who tends to love different forms of art also. And it's funny because I'll sometimes have a conversation with somebody and they'll say, I'm not an art person. I don't get art. Art's not my thing. And I'm always kind of raising an eyebrow at that because I'm thinking to myself, well, that's like saying I don't like food. Okay. So maybe you don't like this kind of food or this particular chef or this restaurant or this type of cuisine, but there's such a diversity of expression and sharing and beauty that is created and offered out. And when you find that one thing, when you're walking through a museum and maybe there are 40 exhibits and 39 just do nothing for you.

1:00:25Jonathan Fields: And then you stop in this one tiny one and your jaw drops and you're having trouble breathing and your heart is beating. You have no idea what's happening to you. And you're like, oh, wow, this matters to me. It's just so deeply powerful. But I think similar to what we've been talking about here, let's bring this down to the everyday level. We can have that aesthetic experience sitting on a front porch and just being present to what's around us. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, you can just look up the sky and sometimes the crowd looks like a human rabbit or whatever. And sometimes you find something new, right and you don't have to just go to the museum all the time but I think if you pay attention enough in summer I volunteer to water a street tree around and you know like once you start doing that every day all of a sudden it becomes my tree and it's just like oh my gosh I see the new leaves here and so forth and then you know those those are the completely like new things you can add to your life without any money or anything.

1:01:32Just pay attention and then you find something.

1:01:35Jonathan Fields: Yeah, I love that. Because it also brings in this idea that to experience psychological richness, pretty much everything that we've talked about, it feels like to me, I'm curious how this lands with you, that a unifying element is attentiveness, is awareness, is actually not spinning about the future or the past, but if you can really bring your attention to the moment and just become aware of like, what am I actually experiencing? That there's probably so much more opportunity to experience these things all around us all day, every day than most of us even imagine. Yeah, definitely. It has a lot to do with attention.

1:02:13It has a lot to do with whether you talk about your observations. So it is nice to have partner or friends or kids who listen to you that, look, I heard this interesting talk today, or I saw this, something like that. And you know, the memory, the way it works is unless you rehearse and you talk about it, it doesn't stay with you. You just forget. And once you forget, you're not really accumulating these experiences. So to me, psychological richness is just like material wealth and material richness. The materially rich people have a lot of assets or money in their banks and huge portfolio. Just like that, psychological richness is the currency now is instead of dollar, we're talking about the experience and the story.

1:03:06So then if you can just accumulate these interesting experiences and you have a lot of stories, then you have a very, very rich, psychologically rich portfolio. you. So in order to have that, that's why the sensation seeker, they do experience a lot of things, but they don't necessarily reflect upon and really keep it and, you know, store it in your memorabilia. So that's the things that you need to pay attention, but also you have to cherish that experience and you really have to, you want to store in your memorabilia and adds up so that psychologically speaking, you are a really wealthy person.

1:03:47Jonathan Fields: Do you have a practical take on how to do that? I mean, journaling, is it something where? So I think if you can do journal, I think that really, really helps. I'm the same. I've tried it, just like it's never taken. I just cannot never do it. But at the same time, I feel very fortunate that I can talk to my wife and often, you know, reminiscence and recall this trip. And, oh, do you remember that trip when we went this and that? And, you know, when you do it, you're just bringing back and then just like, you know, bringing this almost receding memory into back so that you don't, you know, lose these experiences.

1:04:29So I think, you know, to me, I just try to like talk about the interesting experience I had every day. And that's one way to sort of keep stock of these interesting experiences. But if you're a conscientious person, I think the journaling will work. If you are sort of more visual person, taking photo, you know, every day or when you find something interesting and then keep it, then you have album of memorabilia for the future. So I think there are many different ways you can do it.

1:05:04Jonathan Fields: No, I love that idea. I wonder if in the age that we live in also, just like we were talking about earlier in our conversation, there are potential certain risks to aggressive happiness seeking or aggressive meaning seeking that there's also potential risk to aggressive recording of what you're experiencing. I think we see it now with people, you know, you're at that concert and everybody's there having the time of their lives and you're obsessed with getting just the right picture or just the right video because you want to post it on whatever your platform is and share it and get, you know, credit for having been there.

1:05:38Jonathan Fields: And, and rather than just being in the moment and enjoying it, you know, like part of your brain is sitting there saying, how do I capture this and share it in a way that is the best possible? So I feel like there's, you know, there's the, the aggressive overexpression of that, that we're seeing a lot of also, which just takes us out of the experience itself. I mean, the step one is you have to do the experience part. So it always drives me crazy when I go to Chicago Art Institute. Some people just go there, take picture, move on, take picture, move on, take picture. And I know they are not going to look at it afterward.

1:06:15Plus, if you really wanted to look at it, all these photos are already there. So you can find it, right? So I feel like you do have to experience first. You have to immerse yourself. And that is, you know, number one key. Just like a good memory, in order for you to remember that encoding is extremely important. So you have to have the full encoding experiencing. If you're just like, oh, taking picture, then you're just already outsourcing. So you're not deeply processing this initial, you know, experience. So number one, you have to pay attention, deeply absorb, and then you can move on to sort of how to store that experience.

1:06:58Jonathan Fields: Yeah. As you're describing that, literally just a few weeks ago, I was at the local art museum and I wandered into an exhibit of somebody I'd never heard of before. And it was just mesmerized by her work. and I literally, I felt the impulse as I stood in front of each painting to reach down, take my phone out of my pocket, take a picture and I had to keep telling myself, no, no, no, like if you want to go back afterwards and just capture a few because, you know, to remember it, great, but just be here now. Like for now, just move through it, take your time, breathe, sit, be affected by the aesthetic experience and then if I want to go back and just capture a few on my phone camera afterwards, then I will actually have the emotional imprint of that aesthetic experience that I can tie to the image when I look at it again.

1:07:51Jonathan Fields: But if I never allowed myself to actually have that imprint, then the image, it just reminds me that I did the thing, but the thing becomes hollow. Right, right, exactly, exactly. I'm just so deeply fascinated by this work and excited to continue to deepen into it. In actually the appendix of your recent book, you developed a psychologically rich life questionnaire. Tell me about where this comes from and how people might be able to actually tap it to bring more of this into their own lives. Yeah. One of the first thing we did was just try to define what we mean by the psychological rich life.

1:08:28And then we just generated as a lab members, like we had maybe 10 or 15 of us, just write a sentence that capture what we think is a psychological rich life. So we had like 85 items. And then, you know, just get rid of redundancy and so forth and ended up with 17 items, which is in the appendix. We are self-report, but asking, you know, what do you think? When you die, do you think you will say that you had an interesting life? Do you have a lot of interesting stories to tell? And things like that. So definitely people can take that question here. I still haven't done this, but I will put it on my website so that people can just answer and then get the feedback, you know, where they are, whether they're leading really psychologically rich life, average or relatively psychologically poor, you know, life.

1:09:25So yeah, that's just really one way to quantify and one way for me and us to just study what predicts really the psychologically rich life? What are the core rates? So what I talked about today have a lot to do with this, essentially the data that we collected using these questionnaires. We also coded all kinds of obituries so that we know what kind of life each person led. So we do, you know, in different ways to capture psychologically rich life, but questionnaire is one easy way to do it.

1:10:00Jonathan Fields: Yeah, I love it as just a tool to get a baseline. It's not a judgment. It's just saying, okay, so here's an interesting insight. Do with it whatever feels right to you. It feels like a good place for us to come full circle as well. So I always wrap these conversations with the same questions. So in this container of good life project, if I offer up the phrase to live a good life, what comes up? I think you have to ask yourself, what do you care? What kind of life is the ideal life for you? And I think it's all about your honest answer to it. and I would say the fulfillment of whatever you care, whatever you value is a good life.

1:10:41And for some, I think it's a happiness. For some, it's a meaning. And for others, it's, I think, the psychologically rich life or adventurous life or curious life. And I think for others, there might be something else. And I think it will be interesting to figure out what's the fourth dimension, fifth dimensions, and sixth dimension. So I'm not constraining myself to be just a three. But I think that three provides a little bit bigger, wider range of what is a good life than just two.

1:11:15Jonathan Fields: Thank you. Hey, if you love this episode, say that you'll also love the conversation we had with Corey Keyes about escaping the epidemic of languishing. You can find a link to that episode in the show notes. This episode of Good Life Project was produced by executive producers, Lindsay Fox, and me, Jonathan Fields. Editing help by Alejandro Ramirez and Troy Young. Christopher Carter crafted our theme music. And of course, if you haven't already done so, please go ahead and follow Good Life Project in your favorite listening app or on YouTube too. If you found this conversation interesting or valuable and inspiring, chances are you did because you're still listening here.

1:11:53Jonathan Fields: Do me a personal favor, a seven-second favor, share it with just one person. I mean, if you want to share it with more, that's awesome too, but just one person even, then invite them to talk with you about what you've both discovered, to reconnect and explore ideas that really matter, because that's how we all come alive together. Until next time, I'm Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project.

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