How to live a good life

0:00A biotech firm scaled AI responsibly. A retailer reclaimed hours lost to manual work. An automaker now spots safety issues faster. While these organizations are vastly different, what they have in common sets them apart. They all worked with Deloitte to help them integrate AI and drive impact for their businesses. Because Deloitte focuses on building what works, not just implementing what's new. The right teams, the right services and solutions. That is how Deloitte's clients stand out. Deloitte together makes progress. I think it's fair to say that we all want to live a good life. But what does that actually mean?

0:50This is a question that has preoccupied people for centuries. So much of philosophy and religion has been trying to figure this out. And more recently, science has also chimed in. So it's basically, you know, this big question that we all contemplate from time to time. Is the life I'm living right now one that I want to live, one that's worthwhile for me to live? This is my colleague Richard Seema. He is a neuroscientist, and he writes the Brain Matters column for The Post. And it's also a question that psychologists have sort of taken from a bottom-up approach, asking regular people, not, you know, these bearded philosophers, about, yeah, what do you find as a good life?

1:33And basically, there's three main dimensions or paths, I think, to a good life that people bring up. This is what I love about science is it's like, what does it mean to live a good life? Well, there are three ways. Like, there is an answer. It's quite concrete.

1:49I'm Maggie Penman. It's Saturday, January 17. I'm a reporter for The Optimist, A section here at The Post devoted to bringing you good news, hopeful, inspiring stories about things that are going right in the world. There are actually things that are going right, believe it or not. And today, at a time of year when a lot of us are taking stock and reflecting, thinking about our goals, I wanted to explore the research into what makes a good life. I talked to my colleague, Richard Seema, as well as a couple of researchers who study this. And we're going to break down the three paths psychologists have identified to a good life and what we can all do to move closer to whichever one sounds like the kind of life we want.

2:34First, here's a bit more of my chat with Richard.

2:45So what are the three paths that we could take towards a good life? Yeah, I mean, one that many people, especially in America, think of is a happy life. You know, it's something that's comfortable, something that like gives you a sense of satisfaction. It's a lot more positive emotions than negative emotions, you know, more joy than sadness overall. all. And the second is a meaningful life. So you're thinking about making the world a better place. You have a sense that your life matters. You're doing significant things for the people around you, for yourself. It's also purposeful. You have a direction in life that you're working toward.

3:22And the third path is called psychological richness. And it's basically having these interesting perspective changing experiences. And it sort of goes against some of the types of lives that might be happy or meaningful because happy and meaningful lives are more stable. Like you might have more routine, you know, you're seeing friends a lot, you're volunteering a lot. But what about the adventurous life? What about people who might move away from their established social networks or take on a new job in a new field? These things that are challenging and uncomfortable. So, you know, these three dimensions like sort of do present different paths.

4:03They might overlap sometimes, but also like are kind of distinct. Yeah, it's so interesting how much of this seems to be almost about like the narratives that we have for our lives. Like not only is it about having a life that's happy or meaningful or purposeful or psychologically rich, but it's also about the stories we tell ourselves about our lives and having that sense that like your life makes sense to you. Yeah, your life makes sense to you. And like, how would you try to sum it up up to this point? And actually, when I was speaking with these researchers, one way they were thinking about it is like, oh, yeah, at the end of your life, you know, how would you try to sum it up?

4:42And a happy life might end with something like, oh, it was really fun. A meaningful one is like, wow, like I made a difference. Well, psychologically rich life might be what an adventure. And, you know, Yeah, that's the person who on their deathbed is like, I had a good run. I hiked the Appalachian Trail. I saw every country or every state or whatever it is. Yeah. Yeah, I backpack around like Southeast Asia and like, you know, live nomadically or something. Yeah. Yeah. I just sort of picture these different styles or flavors of life. So you've adopted the Good Life Scale, which is actually this tool psychologists use in their studies, into a quiz that our readers can actually take to find out which path they're on.

5:26Why do you think this is helpful to people to know what path they're on and how they might switch gears if they want to? You know, it's a time for reflection. This is a tool for helping you reflect on where you are in your life and what you value. It's very easy to get caught up in the everyday to-do list, the errands, the responsibilities, and not really have that moment to think like, hey, is everything I'm doing going toward something that I want to look back on fondly and a life that I want to live? So it's like, it's a good way to check in on each of these different paths and where you are and where you want to be.

6:04Yeah. Okay. So tell me about these researchers who actually did this study. Yeah. So I spoke with Shige Oishi. He's a psychologist at the University of Chicago. And he's studied happiness and meaning for many decades. I've been studying sort of formally in graduate school since 1995, so the last 30 years. And initially it was happiness, so what makes people happy. But then when I got a job in 2000 at the University of Minnesota, my graduate student, Mike Steger, wanted to study meaning in life. And I said, don't do it because it's just too complicated. There's no way I can do this in five, six years.

6:47But he was very persistent. So he did it, and essentially for his dissertation, he created the questionnaire, Meaning in Life questionnaire, which is cited 7 ,000 times. So since 2000, I started studying meaning in life as well.

7:11I spoke with Shige too, and he told me that about 10 years ago, he was thinking about all of this research he and his colleagues had done into happy lives and meaningful lives. And he wondered, were they missing something? When September came, in my first lab meeting, graduate students and postdoc, I just asked, if somebody is happy, somebody feel their life is meaningful, is it the full life? And the half of them say, don't be greedy. Shige, I mean, that's great. If somebody's happy and meaningful, then that's great. But the other half are actually like me. It's just, yeah, maybe something is missing.

7:52So that's when I started, you know, thinking about alternatives. He and his colleagues started thinking of examples. And they could come up with so many figures from history and literature who maybe didn't have the happiest lives, who maybe didn't make the world a better place exactly, but they had an adventure.

8:16Shige Oishi did this research with Erin Westgate at the University of Florida. And Richard and I both interviewed her too. Erin was doing research on boredom at the time. And I'll explain the connection between boredom and the good life in just a minute. But Erin had just done this study where people were left alone in a room with the option to think quietly or shock themselves. And a surprising number of people, about two-thirds of men and a quarter of women, chose to shock themselves, including one guy who shocked himself 190 times. So Erin did this research with her grad school advisor, Tim Wilson, at the University of Virginia.

8:56And, like, it was so cute because Tim was devastated by this finding, and I thought it was hilarious. Like, I was like, this is great. And he said, no, it's so bad. Like, it's so bad. It's so bad. It's so bad. It feels so human. You're like, oh, yeah. It is. It's so relatable. But one of the things that just struck me so much, both in the sort of scholarly academic discourse about this study, but also in participants' own responses, is one of the counter arguments was like, well, they're just talking themselves because they're bored. And I'm like, wait a minute. That's not an explanation at all.

9:36Right. Like, oh, you're bored, so you shock yourself? Like, why is it worse to be bored than in pain? Exactly. And the fact that everyone just would sort of nod when this was proposed, like, oh, well, yes, that's understandable. I'm like, no, it's not. This is wild. And so I ended up sort of pivoting and doing a lot of work and a lot of what I do now is on boredom. Around the same time, Erin started working a lot with Shige. She gave us like, do you think you can have a happy, boring life? And I'm like, yeah, probably. And he's like, what about a meaningful, boring life? And I was like, yeah. And she goes like, then there's a problem.

10:15Because like, you know, if happiness and meaning are what the good life is about, but you can have a happy, meaningful, boring life, something's missing, right? Something's missing from our conception of what it means to lead a good life. So, you know, what is the opposite of a boring life? He was like, well, the opposite of a boring life is a psychologically rich life. In looking for examples of good lives, whether that meant a meaningful life or a happy life or a psychologically rich life, the researchers looked at obituaries. And what we found was that there was there were really three distinct groups that there were people that had happy lives or people that had meaningful lives.

10:56But there were also people like, actually, one of my childhood heroes, Eugenie Clark, was a marine biologist who studied sharks. And she was one of the first women in marine biology at the time. She traveled all over the world. She was married a bunch of times, divorced a bunch of times, had a lot of experiences with discrimination and sexism in the field. but also had all of these incredible, intellectually challenging, novel, exciting experiences, diving underwater, traveling everywhere, learning new things, swimming with sharks. You know, she led this whole life that was unimaginable to women, other women in her generation or before it, right?

11:43Mm-hmm.

11:47So maybe this is a silly question, but like, how do we know that that is a desirable life? It's not a silly question. It's not a silly question. Because I think when you describe it, I'm like, yeah, that does sound really important. And like, I'm really glad that some people have done that. But like, I'm not sure that I want to be married five times or like, you know. Yes. It's a completely valid question. And my very quick answer, and then I'll give you the longer answer. My very quick answer is that it's not a good life for everybody. And I think one of the biggest, to me, contributions that me and Shige's work has had isn't necessarily like, oh, you should all go have rich lives, but that we can want different kinds of lives.

12:32and that those different wants are valid, that you might want a meaningful life and I might want a rich life and my friend Robert might want a happy life. And they're all sort of forms of the good life, but they're not necessarily all the same path to getting there. I have a friend left a happy married life with kids in the Midwest, successful career, to basically move to Florida and become a cave diver. Wow. Yeah. And I was telling her about the work on richness and she kind of stopped and was like, oh my God, let's say that again. Because she's like, I've always felt like there was just something wrong with me.

13:09There's a real validation in being able to name it and say, no, there's not something wrong with me. I just wanted a different kind of a good life than what I had. When the researchers asked people if they could choose just one type of good life, happy, meaningful, or psychologically rich, Most people choose happiness, about 60 % of us. And then another 25 to 30 % choose a meaningful life. But there is a small group, about 12 or 13%, who choose psychological richness. What's really interesting, though, that Shige Oishi told me is if you ask people to look back on their lives and think about what they regret, People usually regret not doing the things that would have made their lives richer.

14:02Not going to college. Not moving abroad. Not traveling. Essentially, that's what's bad for psychological richness, right? You could have done it, but you didn't do it.

14:20After the break, we'll return to my conversation with Richard about the good life quiz he adapted for The Post. and we'll talk about what to do if you take it and find that you're not on the path you want to be. We'll be right back.

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15:33Well, they will find not only, you know, their average score for a happy life, meaningful life, and psychologically rich life, but we actually have a data set from these researchers that they provided. So you could sort of compare where you are against other Americans, a representative swath of research participants. to sort of get a sense of like, yeah, like, am I in the middle? Am I a little above average? And then we're also going to ask, what is your ideal life if you can only pick one? Even though these are not mutually exclusive, but it sort of gives you a sense of like what you most value.

16:08If you could be happy, but, you know, not live a meaningful or psychologically rich life, will you pick that versus the other paths? And then hopefully we give you some good advice about, yeah, like this is what you value. How do you get there? Yeah. So that's my next question. Let's say I take this quiz and I learn that I'm on the path to a happy life, which sounds great. But let's say I want more meaning. How would I make adjustments in my life to kind of shift gears towards a more meaningful life? Yeah. So it was funny when I spoke with Shige, he was like, yeah, unfortunately for this, there's no like one easy thing.

16:45Because to change the world, you sort of have to keep on working on it. You can't just volunteer one time. You can't just like. Darn it. Yeah. But like an easy, tangible way is like, you know, all the relationships you have, the people that you love and care for, like continue to support them. And similarly, it's not like you just show up once and it's over with, but you keep on, you know, strengthening those ties and keep on supporting them. And that's that's one smaller way that still changes the world and ripples outward. And what about a psychologically rich life? Can you talk a little bit about what that would sound like and feel like and how if I was interested in moving more in that direction, I might go about doing that?

17:28Yeah. So that's a life of more curiosity, spontaneity and maybe playfulness. So it's sort of like goes against like, oh, yeah, you have this routine that you always stick to, which might be really good for optimizing your efficiency in life, your happiness and pursuing these meaningful activities. but it's like you're trying new things that you know you might not be good at which is uncomfortable you're going to new places which in and of itself could be uncomfortable if you don't know how to navigate this new city like take in this new culture but on the day-to-day like you could sort of plan in these moments of spontaneity and one advice i've been trying to do that i got from shige was on your commute like something that you're doing regularly but maybe try going a different route and just see like, oh yeah, there's a new neighborhood that, you know, has its own little world that you weren't aware of, even if you've driven by them every day.

18:24But it gives you some insight into a larger world and, you know, and sort of enriches like what you're aware of. One other piece of advice that I want to try to do more is journaling about these experiences. The way Shige put it was like, you know, happiness is sort of like your batting average of like good experiences, whereas psychological richness might be your career highlights. It's like, oh wow, this really cool moment, you know, I saw the total eclipse, like these moments that like are perspective changing, but, you know, sort of fade with time or like fade with your memory. And journaling is a way to keep them fresh because, you know, what are, what's the point of an experience if you don't hold on to it and if it, if you don't know what you got out of it, I guess, in the long run.

19:07That makes a lot of sense. Yeah. So this conversation reminds me a little bit of a question that one of my friends used to ask us. He would ask, if you picture yourself in five years, 10 years, 15 years, 30 years, what do you want? And I think it's really hard and sometimes overwhelming to think about like, oh God, like, am I on the path towards a meaningful life? Or like, am I doing enough challenging things to give me that psychological richness? And so I wonder for someone who might be having a little bit of an existential crisis right now. If you have any advice for how to kind of like think about this in a way that feels approachable.

19:46Yeah, it's difficult thinking that far in the future and be like, oh man, like am I on the right path? And if I'm not, therefore at the end of my life, I'm going to be like upset with myself. Or it reminds me of a conversation I had with an Uber driver who was talking about going back to school, but saying like, oh yeah, I'm already 40. Like I'm, you know, know it's probably too old like i'll be done at 45 and like is it worth it and it's like but you're gonna be 45 anyway like you if this is what you want like taking a step in that direction now is is is worth it because it's still your life you're still living it but maybe a more more um maybe reframing it as like you know it's the journey of a thousand miles right like you're taking one step, it's take it one day at a time.

20:35Like just see that you're going down this path that you want to go. You don't have to jump all the way to the end in one fell swoop, right? But there are many ways to build toward it that are small and manageable. And also like one of the most interesting things about happiness research is it's not about those big, you know, intense moments like, you know, the birth of your child or a big promotion or winning the lottery. The Research actually shows that like those big moments, like, yeah, it feels amazing in the moment, but it actually fades relatively quickly. Surprisingly quickly, you go back to baseline.

21:11Instead, it's about the frequency of, you know, these small joys that you could have, these joy snacks that you could keep doing in your day to day. You could get that coffee with that friend, you know, you could take a walk outside when it's sunny and nice. so maybe that's similar to these um thinking about you know your path to a good life is you're taking these small steps but that adds up over the course of your life another thing that i really like about the like psychological richness in a way it does almost take the pressure off because it's like if your goal is to have a psychologically rich life then like going back to school is a great idea and it doesn't really matter if it results in a new career or not like it's going to be a psychologically rich experience yeah you'll have the challenge you'll have you know the difficulty but you also like have an expanded worldview of something that you wanted to study you want to find out yeah and travel is also a great one like it might be difficult backpacking around thailand but you'll have new experiences and come out a different person at the end yeah yeah it's it's like a less um goal-oriented way of thinking about life like It's not like, oh, you have to achieve X, Y, and Z.

22:21It's just like you have to have a kind of rich set of experiences. Yeah, and it might change who you are, but that's not necessarily what you're going for. It's like, oh, this is interesting. This world is so big, and how can I explore these different parts of it? Yeah, and make some of it part of me. Love it. All right. Well, thank you so much, Richard. This is so lovely. Oh, thank you. I love talking to you. I always feel better after. Thank you. Same. Richard Seema is the Brain Matters columnist for The Post. Before I let researcher Shige Oishi go, I had to ask him, what kind of life did he have?

23:00And what did he aspire to? I feel that I had a rich life, psychologically rich life, so I want a happier life. You're like, I'm good on that. Yeah, I've done this, like, too much. That makes sense. I want to go back to Japan and go to a hot spring and relax.

23:24I'm Maggie Penman. I'm a reporter for The Optimist. If you want to hear more stories like this one on the weekend, please send me an email. You can reach the whole team at podcasts at washpost.com or just me at maggie.penman at washpost.com. Today's episode was produced by me with help from Renny Svernofsky, who also mixed the show. It was edited by Ariel Plotnik and Alison Klein. If you want more optimistic content, check out our newsletter. I'll put a link in the show notes where you can subscribe. Thank you for listening and have a great rest of your weekend.

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