Why It’s Worth It | You know that feeling when someone asks about your life goals and you automatically think: be happy, find meaning, make a difference? Here’s what’s fascinating: we might be missing an entire dimension of the good life. After studying happiness for 20 years, psychologist Shige Oishi had a mid-career crisis. He was happy with his wife and kids, found his teaching meaningful, but something felt incomplete. Laurie Santos explores with Shige his discovery of what he calls the “psychologically rich life”: a third way of living that values interesting experiences and perspective changes over comfort or purpose.

Shige starts by contrasting his life with his father’s. His dad, now 90, has lived his entire life in the same small Japanese farming town, surrounded by the same people, going to the same hot springs, living what Shige calls “a really cozy life.” Meanwhile, Shige chose to leave his hometown at 18, moving from Tokyo to Minnesota to Virginia to New York to Chicago, constantly seeking new education/teaching opportunities and new experiences. Meanwhile, his father has no regrets and feels content. So Shige wonders: is stability and happiness enough? When he asked his students whether happiness plus meaning equals a complete life, half said yes, that’s plenty. The other half sensed something was missing.

The conversation digs into what Shige calls the “happiness trap.” Americans especially equate happiness with success, so when we’re not happy, we feel like failures. His students at elite schools feel tremendous pressure to appear happy all the time. In Japan, when someone asks how you are, saying “so-so” is normal; people commiserate. But in the US, everyone says “great!” This pressure to feel happy actually increases rumination about small failures, which can lead to depression. There’s also a “meaning trap”: we think meaningful lives require changing the world like Martin Luther King Jr., setting ourselves up for failure. Or we go too narrow, focusing only on our small in-group while showing antagonism to outsiders.

Laurie and Shige explore what makes experiences psychologically rich through a clever study. Shige asked students about their weekends: what made them happy (favorite restaurant), what felt meaningful (church, helping friends), and what felt psychologically rich? One student described seeing a shirtless man typing in public on a cold day: novel but not rich. Another attended a professional wrestling match, expecting lowbrow entertainment but discovering WWE’s anti-bullying campaigns and seeing how kids genuinely looked up to these wrestlers as heroes. Her stereotypes shattered; her worldview shifted. That’s psychological richness: not just novelty, but experiences that change how we see things.

To measure how common this is, Shige’s team analyzed New York Times obituaries. About 32% were rated as having lived happy lives, 32% meaningful lives, and 15% psychologically rich lives. Some had combinations; two people had all three. But in obituaries in a smaller town, only 5% were rated as psychologically rich, possibly because prominent figures lead more dramatic lives or because detailed obituaries reveal more texture. The key insight: psychological richness isn’t about accumulating material wealth but accumulating interesting experiences and stories, building what Shige calls our “psychological bank account.”

Background | In this episode, Laurie Santos hosts Shige Oishi, professor at the University of Chicago and author of Life in Three Dimensions: How Curiosity, Exploration, and Experience Make a Fuller, Better Life. Highlights include:

• Find open, curious friends: The easiest path to richness is having friends who drag us to new experiences. If we’re agreeable, we just say yes when they suggest trying that new restaurant or going on that hike we’d never do alone.
• Embrace playfulness: Elite athletes who play multiple sports before specializing outperform those who specialize early. Nobel Prize winners studied multiple fields before their breakthroughs, unlike their more specialized peers. Playfulness prevents burnout and keeps curiosity wide.
• Welcome serendipity: Our most interesting experiences rarely come from plans made six months ahead. Leave space for spontaneous coffee chats, random encounters, and unscheduled conversations. Over-scheduling kills psychological richness.
• Seek awe through art: We can live 4,000 lives by reading 4,000 books. Movies, literature, and art transport us to experiences we’d never have firsthand, expanding our horizons in just hours instead of years.
• Explore within routine: Change your commute route, get off the train early, enjoy getting lost. Even familiar things reveal newness … like Shige discovering his wife could paint after 20 years of marriage when he suggested buying art.
• Transform adversity: Earthquake survivors report lower life satisfaction but become more altruistic and gain confidence in humanity. Even everyday failures can add texture when we ask: What did I learn? How did this change my perspective?
• Start where you’re comfortable: If new experiences feel scary, dig deeper into familiar things. Listen to your favorite Beatles song for something new, reread beloved books, ask old friends new questions. Richness can come from depth, not just breadth.

About | Laurie Santos is a Yale professor, researcher, and happiness expert who studies how psychology can guide us to make better choices and live happier, more fulfilling lives. Her course on happiness, the most popular course at Yale in over 300 years, is offered in an online version, The Science of Well-Being, on Coursera. Laurie also hosts The Happiness Lab, a podcast that focuses on changing how we think about happiness. Laurie’s core belief is simple: What our minds tell us will make us happy is often a lie.

Source | The Happiness Lab: How to Lead the Richest Life Possible – Season 10, Episode 8 (February 17, 2025)