Speaker 1: Pushkin Positive psychology, The field that studies the science of happiness,
Speaker 1: has made a lot of progress in the last few decades,
Speaker 1: so much so that we've only been able to scratch
Speaker 1: the surface on all the cool studies out there. Even
Speaker 1: in the hundreds of episodes I've hosted in the five
Speaker 1: years of the show, we've spent time looking at the
Speaker 1: positive effects of treating yourself better and being kind to others,
Speaker 1: but we haven't talked as much about the happiness boost
Speaker 1: we can get from getting out of our comfort zones
Speaker 1: and taking on unfamiliar or even uncomfortable things. Some people
Speaker 1: seem to love pushing these boundaries, you know the type,
Speaker 1: someone who treks across an entire continent, sets up a
Speaker 1: wildlife sanctuary, patents some new invention, and drops everything to
Speaker 1: become a novelist. These people can seem larger than life,
Speaker 1: but they do exist, and one expert in well being
Speaker 1: science thinks we should pay more attention to them.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for having me on. Sorry, I'm
Speaker 2: just running.
Speaker 1: Out this stuff. Yeah, I really enjoyed the new book.
Speaker 2: Oh thank you.
Speaker 1: She gay Owishi teaches psychology at the University of Chicago,
Speaker 1: and he's argued that past measures of happiness have missed
Speaker 1: something really important, what he calls the psychologically rich life.
Speaker 1: What is psychological richness?
Speaker 2: Well?
Speaker 1: She Gay explains this concept in his new book Life
Speaker 1: in Three Dimensions, How curiosity, exploration, and experience make a fuller,
Speaker 1: better life. She Gay's book explains that even if we
Speaker 1: can't all become globe trotting and ventor poets who hang
Speaker 1: out with movie stars, we can make some modest changes
Speaker 1: to mix up our lives a bit. So get ready
Speaker 1: to hear his strategies as she Gate teaches us how
Speaker 1: to live the richest life possible. She Gay first began
Speaker 1: thinking about psychological richness during about of mid career self reflection.
Speaker 2: I studied happiness since nineteen ninety five. At the time,
Speaker 2: there are very very few labs studying happiness, and we
Speaker 2: did all kinds of studies about happy what makes people happy.
Speaker 2: And in twenty fifteen, you know, at the time I
Speaker 2: already had ten ure. I was for professor at the
Speaker 2: University of Virginia, and it just hit me that, oh
Speaker 2: my gosh, I've been studying happiness for twenty years. You know,
Speaker 2: what do we learn and what was the biggest debate
Speaker 2: in the field, and I have to say I was
Speaker 2: really sort of sad to realize that we've been debating
Speaker 2: this which way is more important personal happiness, to make
Speaker 2: yourself happy, maybe even at the expense of others sometimes,
Speaker 2: or to make others happy, even at the expense of oneself.
Speaker 2: In the end, the result of this twenty years debate
Speaker 2: was like, of course both are important, happiness and the meeting,
Speaker 2: and I was like, wow, did I waste my twenty
Speaker 2: years pursuing this question? But then the next question came up.
Speaker 2: I'm not happy with my life and I was pretty
Speaker 2: happy with my wife and kids, and I found my
Speaker 2: life to be pretty mean for I mean, my social
Speaker 2: psyde class was very popular, I played baseball with my kids.
Speaker 2: I felt like I have some roles in the society.
Speaker 2: But then when I asked this question of if I'm
Speaker 2: happy and find my life to be meaningful, is it
Speaker 2: a complete life? And at that point I couldn't say yes.
Speaker 2: So when the semester started, I just ask students, what
Speaker 2: do you think if you have happiness and meaning is
Speaker 2: it a complete life? And a half of them were like,
Speaker 2: of course, don't be so greedy. I mean, like that
Speaker 2: that's a lot, but then the other half was like, yeah,
Speaker 2: maybe something is missing, and we started to look at
Speaker 2: those missing parts and also the reverse that somebody who
Speaker 2: doesn't feel their life is happy or meaningful, but maybe
Speaker 2: still leading good life. And in the end we were
Speaker 2: able to find a lot of examples of that, like
Speaker 2: Oliver Sacks Life or Anthony bou Ding. We decided to
Speaker 2: call this a psychological rich life. So my book is
Speaker 2: entitled Life in Three Dimensions. So we got the first dimension,
Speaker 2: which is happiness, and the second dimension, which is a
Speaker 2: meaningful life, and the third dimension, we think is a
Speaker 2: psychologically rich life. And essentially, even if you don't have
Speaker 2: happiness or meaning, perhaps there is a third good life.
Speaker 2: And if you have happiness and meaning, then richness will
Speaker 2: add something. And you got it all you lived in
Speaker 2: three dimensions. So that's the basic trends.
Speaker 1: I love that. And so in the book, you started
Speaker 1: with this comparison between your life and your dad's life.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you're comfortable sharing that story.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So my dad is nineteen years old. He was
Speaker 2: born and raised in this small town in southern island
Speaker 2: of Qusha. Like his father, grandfather, great grandfathers and all
Speaker 2: the ancestors. He essentially became a full time bomber when
Speaker 2: he was fifteen, and he lived his life in the
Speaker 2: same town, surrounded by the same people he grew up with.
Speaker 2: He got married when he was twenty seven. He still
Speaker 2: lived with my mom, and he loved life on the farm.
Speaker 2: He loves hot Springs, so he goes to Hot Springs
Speaker 2: with his wife and family friends and it's a really
Speaker 2: cozy life. And meanwhile, I was born to the same
Speaker 2: family obviously, so I was expected to take over the farm.
Speaker 2: But from early on I show no interest in farming. Indeed,
Speaker 2: I hated it. So I knew from early on I
Speaker 2: got to get out of here. As soon as I
Speaker 2: graduated from high school, I left my hometown for Tokyo,
Speaker 2: which is like seven hundred miles away, so very very
Speaker 2: few people from my high school went to Tokyo. So
Speaker 2: my dad and mom like, when they said, yeah, you
Speaker 2: can go to college, I think they were expecting me
Speaker 2: to stay in that region because there are a lot
Speaker 2: of good college there too, But just I left as
Speaker 2: far as I can, as quickly as I can. After
Speaker 2: graduating from college, I got my first job in Minnesota,
Speaker 2: moved to Virginia, moved to New York City, went back
Speaker 2: to Virginia, and moved again to Chicauggle. So you know,
Speaker 2: if my dad's life is life of stability, familiarity, tradition,
Speaker 2: probably my life is complete opposite, constant move, move, move,
Speaker 2: on the go. You know, sometimes I really feel like, wow,
Speaker 2: why did I do this? You know, like I could
Speaker 2: have just stay there, hubsake every night, chat with my
Speaker 2: old friends, And indeed, I think that's a good life.
Speaker 2: My dad doesn't have much regret, is very content, but yeah,
Speaker 2: it is very, very, very different.
Speaker 1: And so I love that story because it so nicely
Speaker 1: illustrates the sort of distinction of a psychologically rich life.
Speaker 1: But I want to start by unpacking the sort of
Speaker 1: first two ideas of my happiness and that we've sort
Speaker 1: of had so far. The first is this idea of happiness,
Speaker 1: maybe just going to give me a sense of what
Speaker 1: we mean by happiness, like or like scholars mean by this.
Speaker 2: Right, So we don't mean happiness by the just a mood,
Speaker 2: temporary mood, but it is really about whether you're happy
Speaker 2: about your life, how it's going, how it has turned out.
Speaker 2: So it's very similar to a sense of satisfaction with
Speaker 2: your life, and it turned out that a lot of
Speaker 2: factors that are associated with happiness are something to do
Speaker 2: with the stable life. So stable relationship is the number
Speaker 2: one predictor of happy life. So close relationship with your friend, family, mairit,
Speaker 2: or satisfaction a partner satisfaction is extremely important. And more
Speaker 2: and more, the financial securities and stability is very very important.
Speaker 2: So this is kind of interesting. Back in nineteen ninety five,
Speaker 2: correlation between household income and happiness a life satisfaction was
Speaker 2: like zero point one five, which is not that strong,
Speaker 2: But we looked at historically it last fifteen years or
Speaker 2: so from the nineteen seventy saves, and we see the
Speaker 2: correlation going up. So financial stability is very very important.
Speaker 2: That actually means that a lot of people are financially struggling,
Speaker 2: a lot of people have relationship issues, so happiness has
Speaker 2: become sort of out of reach for them. So that's
Speaker 2: another reason why I thought maybe there is another way
Speaker 2: to conceptualize a good life that doesn't rely on this
Speaker 2: sort of life of stabilities and comfort.
Speaker 1: You've also argued that we sometimes face what you've called
Speaker 1: the happiness trap. Yeah, that when we focus on certain
Speaker 1: aspects of happiness, we get it wrong. What are the
Speaker 1: parts of this happiness trap?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think happiness trap is particularly serient phenomenon in
Speaker 2: the United States. So when you ask Americans, what do
Speaker 2: you associate when you hear the word happiness, People often
Speaker 2: talk about success or reward for all hard work. So
Speaker 2: when you equate happiness with success, then when you're not happy,
Speaker 2: you're failing. And this is really unfortunate. And this is
Speaker 2: something as a cultural site was just I found very
Speaker 2: puzzling too. When I came to the United States. I
Speaker 2: asked frand how are you, and everybody say great. In Japan,
Speaker 2: when somebody said how are you, I say, okay, so so,
Speaker 2: and the conversation goes, yeah, me too. It's like we commiserate,
Speaker 2: and that's the cultural lam. So there is no pressure
Speaker 2: to be happy. Especially when you're not feeling happy, you
Speaker 2: can say I'm not happy. But in the state, especially
Speaker 2: college students, maybe elite college students in particular at your
Speaker 2: institution like Yale, I think there's a tremendous pressure to
Speaker 2: feel happy. And what I mean by happiness trap is
Speaker 2: that people think that because happiness is an indicator of success,
Speaker 2: I shouldn't be feeling these negative emotions, and that's the
Speaker 2: really the difficult and dangerous part of this trap. Stuff
Speaker 2: happens to everyone, right, that events happen to the good people,
Speaker 2: And when things happen, if you don't have this pressure
Speaker 2: to feel happy, you are just much more naturally accepting
Speaker 2: of this particular minor bump in the world, Whereas if
Speaker 2: you feel like you have to be perfect, you have
Speaker 2: to be successful, you have to be happy all the time,
Speaker 2: then you really ruminate these little failures, and rumination, of course,
Speaker 2: is the precursor to depression. So that's what I mean
Speaker 2: by happiness tramp.
Speaker 1: So that's just kind of solely going for this idea
Speaker 1: of happiness is or feeling good in your life doesn't work.
Speaker 1: But you've also argued that seeking meaning might not go
Speaker 1: as smoothly as we often assume, either, that there might
Speaker 1: be some challenges with seeking out a meaningful life too.
Speaker 2: What do you mean, Yeah, so any graduation speech you
Speaker 2: hear is like, be great, go out there and change
Speaker 2: the world. You guys are so smart, which is true,
Speaker 2: But when you think about somebody who changed the world,
Speaker 2: Martin Luther King, Junior Rosa Park Gandhi, Sure can I
Speaker 2: do that probably not. I think when we think about
Speaker 2: the meaningful life, we often think about somebody who made
Speaker 2: a huge difference, and I think that will set yourself
Speaker 2: up for the failure that you are not leading a
Speaker 2: meaningful life. So that's one part. But the other part
Speaker 2: is that if you look at the people who are
Speaker 2: actually reporting that they are leaning a meaningful life, they
Speaker 2: are not making that kind of differences. They're really focusing
Speaker 2: on their neighborhood, their churches and things that is small,
Speaker 2: and they can go to soup kitchen every Thursday and serve,
Speaker 2: and of course you do that over the years, then
Speaker 2: you make a difference in your communities, which has no
Speaker 2: bad consequences at all, just that the study sometimes find
Speaker 2: that the people who say their life is meaningful, they
Speaker 2: tend also to say that they endorsed right wing authoritarianism,
Speaker 2: not just a political conservatives. That type of right wing
Speaker 2: authoritarianism comes with a very small in group whom you
Speaker 2: take care very carefully, but sometimes show huge antagonism against
Speaker 2: the outgroup members. So when I say there is a
Speaker 2: meaning trap, one is that it seems so grand that
Speaker 2: it seems impossible to achieve. But the second one is
Speaker 2: actually we tend to go too narrow and focus on
Speaker 2: the wellbeing of the close others, but we often neglect
Speaker 2: outgroup members, so that could be potentially dangerous.
Speaker 1: So there's some danger in seeking out happiness. There's some
Speaker 1: danger in seeking out a life of meaning if you
Speaker 1: kind of get it wrong. One of the studies you
Speaker 1: point to, which I think is fun, is sort of
Speaker 1: asking subjects about the psychologically much life.
Speaker 2: So early on, when we just studied psychological richness research,
Speaker 2: we really wanted to see like what might be psychological
Speaker 2: rich event. So to a group of students, I ask, okay,
Speaker 2: what did you do over the weekend? What makes you happy?
Speaker 2: And then say things like, yeah, I went to my
Speaker 2: favorite restaurant. Yeah. Sure, going to a favorite restaurant, you
Speaker 2: know exactly what to order. That's the predictable, reliable joy
Speaker 2: and happiness. So I asked, then what was the meaningful event?
Speaker 2: And a lot of people said, oh, I went to
Speaker 2: church and he felt meaningful. And some said I helped
Speaker 2: out my friends who was just struggling writing a paper,
Speaker 2: which makes sense because making other people happy is an
Speaker 2: important part of the meaningful. So I asked, then, what
Speaker 2: was the events where you felt psychologically rich. What I
Speaker 2: mean by psychological rich here is that in my not
Speaker 2: have been happy event or meaningful event per se, but
Speaker 2: something different, something unusual, something novel. One person, Rachel said,
Speaker 2: there was this guy typing something half naked, and I've
Speaker 2: never seen a guy typing in public area, like shirtless.
Speaker 2: And the strange thing was it wasn't hard. He wasn't
Speaker 2: well built, so he wasn't showing off his upper body
Speaker 2: or anything, and that was kind of interesting. She said, Okay,
Speaker 2: so there was a novelty, but I thought that's not
Speaker 2: really rich. And then another person said, oh, I went
Speaker 2: to professional wrestling much, and she was so surprised that
Speaker 2: there are so many kids. And then later she learned
Speaker 2: the WWE does a lot of anti bulling campaign and
Speaker 2: for them these sort of ridiculous looking pro wrestler is
Speaker 2: actually genuinely their role model hero. And then she went
Speaker 2: through this up and down, you know, emotions and came
Speaker 2: back with a totally different view of professional wrestling. They
Speaker 2: thought that was sort of the working class thing to do,
Speaker 2: and they went and then they were really moved, and
Speaker 2: then there still a typical view of the pro wrestlers
Speaker 2: completely got shattered. So I thought Okay, this is not
Speaker 2: just a novel experience but pretty complex, a lot of
Speaker 2: different emotions, and also came back with a different perspective.
Speaker 2: So I think in order for some event to be
Speaker 2: psychologically rich, it has to be not just interesting, but
Speaker 2: it has to come with some kind of change and
Speaker 2: perspective change in particular. So the shressless guy is not
Speaker 2: really rich because it didn't change the way you view
Speaker 2: the world at all, whereas the latter case is really
Speaker 2: just wow, I didn't expect this, and I need to
Speaker 2: change my view about this.
Speaker 1: You kind of give me a definition of this sort
Speaker 1: of third way of experiencing life.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. We define psychologically rich life as a life
Speaker 2: filled with diverse, interesting experiences, and that often comes with
Speaker 2: the change in perspective. So I often contrast with the
Speaker 2: materially rich life. Lots of cash, a lot of assets,
Speaker 2: a lot of things. That's the material richness. What about
Speaker 2: the psychological richness. It is all about accumulation of interesting
Speaker 2: experiences or stories that you can tell. So in your
Speaker 2: psycho bank, you have lots of interesting experiences and stories
Speaker 2: to tell to others, whereas if this person doesn't have
Speaker 2: that many interesting stories to tell, then even if their
Speaker 2: bank account is huge, maybe psychologically speaking, they're impublished.
Speaker 1: So how common is living a psychologically rich life? Fire call?
Speaker 1: You study this in a pretty clever way?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean that was the questions. And if nobody
Speaker 2: these psychological rich life, what are we studying? So we
Speaker 2: were a little bit worried. So in one study we
Speaker 2: just decided to look at the New York Times obituariest Essentially,
Speaker 2: I love reading obitualies and obitually I think it's a
Speaker 2: really great summary of how somebody lived their lives. You know,
Speaker 2: New York Times always have three or four obitualies every day.
Speaker 2: So I hired three research assistants and their assignment was
Speaker 2: read New York Times obitually every day and then rate
Speaker 2: each person's life in terms of happiness, meaning and psychological richness.
Speaker 2: And they don't know what I'm trying to look at,
Speaker 2: I mean, blind to hypothesis. So in the end we
Speaker 2: figured out roughly there were thirty two percent essentially all
Speaker 2: the people who raided as somebody who led the happy life,
Speaker 2: another thirty two led meaningful life, and then the fifteen
Speaker 2: of them led psychological rich life. Some people that happy
Speaker 2: and the meaningful life, some people that happy and the
Speaker 2: psychological rich, and two of them got it all. They
Speaker 2: were raided as happy, meaningful, and the psychological rich life.
Speaker 2: So we did this in Charlesville local newspaper Daily Progress.
Speaker 2: The number of people who were raided to have let
Speaker 2: the rich life went down to about five percent, which
Speaker 2: could be due to like New York Times people are
Speaker 2: sort of very famous people, prominent people. They had more
Speaker 2: dramatic life than the ordinly Central Virginians maybe, But another
Speaker 2: possibility was that New York Times obitual is a lot
Speaker 2: more detailed, whereas the local one is very factual and small,
Speaker 2: So it could be just the information. So we need
Speaker 2: the third study in Singapore, and in Singapore something like
Speaker 2: thirty five percent of them were rated as leading psychological
Speaker 2: ridge life. But I'm pretty confident that non trivial number
Speaker 2: of people do lead cyclo sciar ridge life.
Speaker 1: If you're not currently among that non trivial number of
Speaker 1: people but want to live more richly, she Gay will
Speaker 1: guide you with his top tips right after the break
Speaker 1: Psychologists she Gay Owishi has argued that there's something many
Speaker 1: of us have missed in our quest to live a
Speaker 1: happier life. We need to find a bit more psychological richness.
Speaker 1: But what if you listened to the first part of
Speaker 1: this episode and thought, hey, my life isn't nearly as
Speaker 1: rich as it could be. What should you do about it?
Speaker 2: Personally, I think the best way is to find mind,
Speaker 2: the open friend, the friend who will bring you to
Speaker 2: new experiences. So I mention, if your friend is Samantha
Speaker 2: from Sex and the City, then you don't have to
Speaker 2: have an openness to experience. She would just drug you
Speaker 2: to interesting experiences. And if you're an agreeable person, then
Speaker 2: whenever your friends say, hey, Laurie, do you want to
Speaker 2: try these new restaurants? Do you want to go to hike?
Speaker 2: And you just say okay, and then you just try.
Speaker 2: You might not do it yourself, but you know, if
Speaker 2: somebody else says do it, you do it. But if
Speaker 2: you don't have friends like that, then I mean there
Speaker 2: are other options. For instance, I think the biggest one
Speaker 2: is be like. Playfulness is I think the huge part
Speaker 2: of leading a psychological ridge life. Actually, as an adult, I
Speaker 2: think it's quite hard to be playful. Playfulness you have
Speaker 2: to take a vacation from your obligations and responsibility of
Speaker 2: daily life, from social and economic reality. And that's when
Speaker 2: you can be playful and be the rich life.
Speaker 1: We also argue that playfulness can help us too in
Speaker 1: ways we don't expect. For example, you've argued that playfulness
Speaker 1: can help protect us from burnout. What are some studies
Speaker 1: that tell us.
Speaker 2: That, yeah, I mean, there is this amazing meta analysis
Speaker 2: about athletic performance among these super elite athletes. So we
Speaker 2: are talking about Olympic level athletes, and you know, some
Speaker 2: people start out pretty early and specialize in one sport,
Speaker 2: whereas other people play multiple sports before specializing. And the
Speaker 2: really interesting finding from there is that if you look
Speaker 2: at the junior level competitions, then the performance is really
Speaker 2: predicted by how early somebody specialized. But when you look
Speaker 2: at the final Olympic level competition performance, then it's people
Speaker 2: who play multiple sports and specialize later in life they
Speaker 2: do better. And this playfulness is that world class athlete
Speaker 2: who play some pickup games and some other sports for fun,
Speaker 2: I mean, those other people who tend not to burn
Speaker 2: out and tend to do better. And the crazy thing
Speaker 2: is that there is a replication in the scientific achievement
Speaker 2: as well. So highest German scientific award is Leibnitz Awards.
Speaker 2: And some of them went on to win Nobel Prize.
Speaker 2: So German researcher looked at the difference between eventual Nobel
Speaker 2: Prize winners versus Livelitz winners, and this is absolutely my
Speaker 2: favorite finding that Likelitz winners became full professor much earlier
Speaker 2: than the Nobel Prize winner, the Nobel Prize winners actually
Speaker 2: study multiple things before and so it took them much
Speaker 2: longer to get the full professorship, but eventually they made
Speaker 2: a major discovery. So I did a playfulness even in
Speaker 2: the professional arena is really important because you don't want
Speaker 2: to be two specialized too early. Keep your curiosity wide
Speaker 2: open because when you just specialize, what you're doing is okay,
Speaker 2: this information is irrelevant for me, so don't pay attention.
Speaker 2: Whereas if you are open, then you're just oh, that's
Speaker 2: kind of interesting, and sometimes you help.
Speaker 1: So that's kind of embracing playfulness. Your second tip, I
Speaker 1: think is very related is that we need to embrace
Speaker 1: serendipity and spontaneous Yeah. What do you mean by serendipity there?
Speaker 2: Yeah, So serendipity and the spontaneity I think is the
Speaker 2: springboard of interesting experiences and if you think about, like,
Speaker 2: all the interesting experiences you had, probably those are not
Speaker 2: the things you planned six months in advance. In graduate school,
Speaker 2: for instance, we don't have that many required courses, so
Speaker 2: we had a lot of time. So I would just
Speaker 2: stop by my lave made office. Let's go have coffee,
Speaker 2: and we talk something random and interesting and there is
Speaker 2: some discovery of certain things, so very interesting. And when
Speaker 2: I got a job at the University of Minnesota, I
Speaker 2: really wanted to do the same thing. So I knocked
Speaker 2: on the door Bob Krueger, fellow assistant professor, and I said, hey, Bob,
Speaker 2: do you have time for coffee, And then looked through
Speaker 2: his schedule and said, no, what about in two weeks
Speaker 2: we can all have this cup of coffee spontaneously. And
Speaker 2: that's what it means to be a professor. Bob became
Speaker 2: like so successful. He's very productive. I think he wrote
Speaker 2: already three hundred articles, so you see how that works.
Speaker 2: But at the same time, in terms of this spontaneous
Speaker 2: random conversations or experiences, when you just schedule and plan everything,
Speaker 2: you really are depriving from these random things to happen,
Speaker 2: random encountering, random conversation, random reading. So over scheduled life
Speaker 2: that we all live right now is really no great
Speaker 2: for psychological richness.
Speaker 1: This is something I work a lot about in my
Speaker 1: elite college students that I work with, because they want
Speaker 1: to overschedule everything. You know, it's from early in high school.
Speaker 1: They have already planned what job they want. Some students
Speaker 1: are like, well, I definitely want to get married by
Speaker 1: the time I'm twenty seven. Like they want to have
Speaker 1: everything planned out, and I really worry that they might
Speaker 1: be leaving some important aspects of their well being kind
Speaker 1: of uncared for. They haven't given themselves the space to
Speaker 1: try new things out exactly.
Speaker 2: That's the space and that I think that's the pressure.
Speaker 2: They feel like they have to succeed. They have to perform,
Speaker 2: and they have to perform at the highest level all
Speaker 2: the time. And it's like academic athletes almost like just practice, practice,
Speaker 2: practice every day, and I think that is really not healthy.
Speaker 2: You should really have plenty of time for play. College
Speaker 2: is the best time to be spontaneous. Once you go
Speaker 2: out of college, your friends don't live around the corner.
Speaker 2: Everybody is too busy to just have spontaneous meeting in outing.
Speaker 1: But you've argued that we really even as adults need
Speaker 1: to find more time to be able to define that.
Speaker 1: Any advice for how to build that serendividio, well, I think.
Speaker 2: You have to be a little bit pushy. Just text
Speaker 2: somebody and just accept a lot of rejections. You know
Speaker 2: they you do it, Okay, Next, it is really hard
Speaker 2: when everybody is so overbooked, but we should we should
Speaker 2: try to be spontaneous.
Speaker 1: So tip number three that you've talked a lot about
Speaker 1: is something that we've mentioned before on the Happiness Lab.
Speaker 1: If we want to live a psychologically rich life, we
Speaker 1: need to find more talk about how all plays into
Speaker 1: psychological richness.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think all is really this sense of your
Speaker 2: small and the world is so large and just sort
Speaker 2: of transcending kind of sense and then emerging between you
Speaker 2: and the nature or the arts, and a lot of
Speaker 2: esthetic experiences that we have when we go to a museum,
Speaker 2: when we go watch movies, read literatures and poems. It's
Speaker 2: not always all, but there is these esthetic experiences that
Speaker 2: is very different from our everyday life. So if you
Speaker 2: read Coslo Shigurus The Remains of the Day, then you
Speaker 2: transported into this world of British Lord Lord Darlington in
Speaker 2: Darlington Hall with butlers and the twenty some stuff members
Speaker 2: and you know, in the nineteen thirties and those kinds
Speaker 2: of immersions and the mental transportation I think is really
Speaker 2: really important because look at our lives, right, we are
Speaker 2: privileged to travel anywhere we want. But every day we
Speaker 2: get up, eat breakfast, usually just meet the same people,
Speaker 2: respond emails, et cetera, et cetera. So every day what
Speaker 2: we can experience firsthand is pretty limited. Whereas in a
Speaker 2: matter of one hour, if you read these novels or
Speaker 2: watch movie two hours or whatever, you can really experience
Speaker 2: somebody else's life and go through really dramatic emotional experiences icariously.
Speaker 2: So for the matter of a few hours, you often
Speaker 2: go through somebody's entire life. And the guy who owns
Speaker 2: this bookstore in Morocco said he read four thousand books,
Speaker 2: so he says he lived four thousand lives. And that's
Speaker 2: exactly how I feel about these esthetic experiences that really
Speaker 2: expand your horizons and allow you to go through and
Speaker 2: experience something that you can never maybe very hard to
Speaker 2: experience in person.
Speaker 1: And so that's kind of finding more all through aesthetic
Speaker 1: experiences in other people's lives. But your tip Moore before
Speaker 1: argues that we should also explore more ourselves, that we
Speaker 1: should be seeking out new experiences and doing more atypical things. Sure,
Speaker 1: any ideas for how to fit that in in a
Speaker 1: busy life.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So I think that if you have commute, then
Speaker 2: I think the change in your commute is really interesting way.
Speaker 2: I mean, if you're driving, just drive through different town,
Speaker 2: different neighborhood. If you're taking train, get off in between
Speaker 2: and explore. So I think there are a lot of
Speaker 2: things you can do to do new things, even if
Speaker 2: you're pifty packed in you know, schedules and I you know,
Speaker 2: try to enjoy, for instance, getting lost in a new town.
Speaker 2: You know, it's a little bit scary, but you know,
Speaker 2: I always tell myself, well, okay, eventually this will be
Speaker 2: a psychological rich experience. Of course, when you get lost,
Speaker 2: you worry, i'mous and soul forth. But most of the
Speaker 2: time you will work out. And those are things sort
Speaker 2: of like you let yourself go, go with a flow.
Speaker 2: Those attitudes and mindset helps a lot in terms of
Speaker 2: deviating from your routines and the schedules. And of course
Speaker 2: we cannot deviate all the time, but when there is
Speaker 2: a chance to be able to deviate. Just let yourself
Speaker 2: go and deviate. That's what I want anybody to do
Speaker 2: if possible.
Speaker 1: It's also a nice reminder of your final tip, which
Speaker 1: is that we can experience more psychological richness by turning
Speaker 1: adversity into a psychological rich experience, into a fun story.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Explain why our stories are more under our control, you.
Speaker 2: Know, because I grew up in Japan, and Japan, of
Speaker 2: course has a lot of natural disasters earthquake, tsunami and
Speaker 2: things like that. I studied happiness and wellbeing of these
Speaker 2: earthquake survivors, and my sabbatical in twenty thirteen, I spent
Speaker 2: one year in Kobe, Japan. That's where there was a
Speaker 2: huge earthquake in nineteen ninety five. Over six thousand people died.
Speaker 2: That was just devastating. And the sad finding was that
Speaker 2: in twenty eleven, even sixteen years after the earthquake, those
Speaker 2: Kobe residents who lost their house, we're still repoorting significantly
Speaker 2: lower level of life satisfaction. They report more physical symptoms,
Speaker 2: you know, pain than those Kobe residents who did not
Speaker 2: lose their house. So I thought that was really sad
Speaker 2: because we thought, you know, time heals everything, but this case,
Speaker 2: time did not heal everything. But then we looked at
Speaker 2: the value orientations of these earthquake survivor and we realized
Speaker 2: that the people who went through earthquake, they really become
Speaker 2: more pro social, autruistic. They don't care about their own
Speaker 2: accomplishment as much as other Japanese who did not experience earthquake.
Speaker 2: So definitely there's change. After all, when you are in earthquake,
Speaker 2: you really see a lot of things that you never
Speaker 2: imagined before. Neighbors who are not particularly friendly will come
Speaker 2: out and try to save you and save your dog,
Speaker 2: and you see a lot of different side of people.
Speaker 2: So those people survivors all talk about like sort of
Speaker 2: that regained sense of confidence in humanity even and I
Speaker 2: think that's the contributing fact to psychological richness. Even if
Speaker 2: the earthquake doesn't add to life satisfaction, obviously, that detract
Speaker 2: from life satisfactions and meaning is also very hard to
Speaker 2: gain from earthquake because this is a random act of
Speaker 2: the modern nature. So people often struggle to find the
Speaker 2: meaning after earthquake. But people have used this earthquake as
Speaker 2: a springboard for change and growth and learning and I
Speaker 2: think there are a lot of signs that some adversity
Speaker 2: could be a source for psychological rich life.
Speaker 1: Any suggestions for changing maybe some of our less than
Speaker 1: earthquake level adversity into psychologicality.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so we ask college students just just think about
Speaker 2: all last year and what kind of traumatic event negative
Speaker 2: event happened, and did you learn anything from this traumatic event? Interestingly,
Speaker 2: this was random assignment, they later reported them. Yeah, actually
Speaker 2: trauma made them change the way they view the world
Speaker 2: and they view themselves. And the more perspective change they recorded,
Speaker 2: the higher level of psychloscovichiness they reported as well. And interestingly,
Speaker 2: the more perspective change they reported less happy day you can.
Speaker 2: So the perspective change is not great for happiness, but
Speaker 2: that tend to add psychoscurvichess. So it doesn't have to
Speaker 2: be a huge trauma in earthquake tsunami type situation. But
Speaker 2: even you know everyday failures and negative events, if you
Speaker 2: can construe something positive or something that you learned from
Speaker 2: the events, that could add the texture to your life
Speaker 2: and enrich your life.
Speaker 1: And it does seem like that texture isn't always psychologically positive.
Speaker 1: You've talked about even things like exploring and getting lost,
Speaker 1: or having an experience that maybe challenges you and maybe
Speaker 1: changes some of your assumptions. Right, it sounds like the
Speaker 1: big message of a psychologically rich life is like it
Speaker 1: might be a little hard than you expect, the rewards
Speaker 1: might be bigger than you expect.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, definitely. This is not something easy always and
Speaker 2: not always positive obviously. But I think the power of
Speaker 2: psychological rich life or that mindset to try to maximize richness,
Speaker 2: is that you're not afraid of negative emotions and negative events.
Speaker 2: Stuff happens, try to accept those, try to learn from it,
Speaker 2: and as long as you have that attitude, you don't
Speaker 2: get into these ruminations and depressions. And it is when
Speaker 2: you really try to be perfect and try to be
Speaker 2: super successful and always happy, that these little bumps really
Speaker 2: hurts you. So I am really trying to say that
Speaker 2: richness is not for everybody, for sure, But when you
Speaker 2: have richness mindset, I think you're less afraid of failures
Speaker 2: and negative events and so forth, and I think you
Speaker 2: become a little more adventurous and actually experience something that
Speaker 2: you wouldn't holp you would ever experience, and you know
Speaker 2: that really could change you and the course of your life.
Speaker 2: So I think uncertainty and unpredictability are part of life
Speaker 2: and we should embrace it. And to the extend that
Speaker 2: you embrace it, you're maximizing the possibility of adding the
Speaker 2: richness to your life.
Speaker 1: I think sometimes when people look at the possibility of
Speaker 1: making their life more exciting, exploring more getting curious, Honestly,
Speaker 1: some of the people I know feel trapped, right They
Speaker 1: feel incredibly busy. There's this whole host of obligations. It
Speaker 1: feels like they're kind of really comfortable in their life.
Speaker 1: It might feel scary to break out of it. Any
Speaker 1: advice for folks who might be having an experience like
Speaker 1: that or it feels really hard to go after some
Speaker 1: of these things that might make their life psychologically really.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I totally like get that, because by
Speaker 2: nature I really like familiarity too. But I think the
Speaker 2: one way if you are afraid of doing like completely
Speaker 2: brand new things, and I think one thing I can
Speaker 2: suggest is really stick with what you like. If you
Speaker 2: love beatles, you can keep listening to beatles, but try
Speaker 2: to find something new about the same song you are
Speaker 2: listening for all these years. And the same thing with
Speaker 2: the literature. If you love Missus Dorway, you can read
Speaker 2: like three times four times and you find always something new.
Speaker 2: So if you're afraid of trying something new, actually just
Speaker 2: going back to your favorite movie or favorite song and
Speaker 2: favorite bands and things like that, you can actually find
Speaker 2: in something new from the familiar. My favorite story here
Speaker 2: is I have been married with my wife for a
Speaker 2: long time. I've known for like twenty years, and around
Speaker 2: twenty ten I said we should buy some painting and
Speaker 2: then she goes, Okay, I can paint, and it's like
Speaker 2: what I didn't know that you can paint? And then boys,
Speaker 2: she can paint. She's just like pain, pain, pain. Now
Speaker 2: it's just full of her painting. So sometimes you just
Speaker 2: find something new from very familiar person. If you just
Speaker 2: have an opportunity to ask some new questions or chance
Speaker 2: to talk about some topic that you never talked about
Speaker 2: with the same old friends, you can actually enrich your
Speaker 2: life by digging deeper with your familiar objects some person
Speaker 2: as well. If you are afraid of sort of going all.
Speaker 1: The way out for more big and small steps towards
Speaker 1: leading a psychologically rich life, you should really check out
Speaker 1: Shegay's new book Life in three dimensions how curiosity, exploration,
Speaker 1: and experience make a fuller, better life. But let's recap
Speaker 1: the how to tips we've heard so far. Tip number one,
Speaker 1: find ways to be more playful. Take a little break
Speaker 1: from your responsibilities and try to cultivate a childlike curiosity
Speaker 1: and sense of fun. Tip number two, be more open
Speaker 1: to the random. It's comforting to schedule everything in life,
Speaker 1: but try to find more moments of serendipity. It could
Speaker 1: be as simple as stopping by the chat with a coworker.
Speaker 1: The third tip is to experience psychological richness by proxy.
Speaker 1: You can visit a faraway place, witness a natural wonder,
Speaker 1: or hear about some amazing people just by reading a book,
Speaker 1: looking at a painting, or watching a movie. Tip number
Speaker 1: four is to explore we can easily get in the
Speaker 1: habit of doing the same things day in, day out,
Speaker 1: so throw some variety into the mix, even if that's
Speaker 1: turning left out your front door instead of right. And
Speaker 1: Chigey's final tip is to see the richness in adversity.
Speaker 1: Putting yourself out there has its risks. There will be
Speaker 1: disappointments and setbacks, but those challenges ultimately add to our
Speaker 1: life story and help us grow. That's it for a
Speaker 1: psychologically rich life. But our how To season isn't over yet.
Speaker 1: Our next installment tackles what changes you should make to
Speaker 1: motivate and elevate the people around you. In short, we'll
Speaker 1: be exploring how to become an inspiring person. That's all.
Speaker 1: Next time on the Happiness Lab with me Doctor Laurie
Speaker 1: Santos