Feel Like Something’s Missing? Try to Live an Interesting Life

As a teenager, I spent a summer abroad living with a French family as part of a foreign exchange program. None of my French family spoke English, and it wasn’t always easy to communicate or understand how things worked, including basic things like cooking and showering and even turning on a light switch. But it was also one of my most life-changing experiences, giving me a unique perspective on how my American culture and upbringing shaped me. And I absolutely loved it.

My experience was what researcher Shigehiro Oishi might call “psychologically rich,” because it was novel, interesting, and challenging; inspired complex emotions; and changed my perspective in profound ways. His new book, Life in Three Dimensions, explains how aiming for psychological richness can be central to “the good life”—and, perhaps, take us beyond the goals of finding happiness and meaning.

I spoke to Oishi about his book and what it has to offer everyday people who may otherwise feel their life is missing something. Here is an edited version of that conversation.

Jill Suttie: Can you describe how pursuing psychological richness might differ from pursuing happiness or meaning?

Shigehiro Oishi: When you look at the predictors of happiness and meaning in life, it’s quite striking that a lot of them are stable things—like a stable marriage, friendship, or job. Spending time with your friends, family, and colleagues—those who are familiar and close to you—is a key to happiness. [Happiness researcher] Ed Diener famously wrote that happiness is due to the frequency, not the intensity, of positive emotion. So when you spend time with your best friend, you’ll have a good time, and maximizing or repeating that will enhance your happiness.

In order to feel your life is meaningful, you have to pick one or two areas where you can really devote yourself and spend time doing the same thing again and again. For instance, volunteering every week. Mother Teresa’s life is meaningful, not because she volunteered one day, but because she devoted her entire life to volunteering. So, oftentimes the sense of meaningfulness comes from this long duration of effort put toward one cause.

On the other hand, psychological richness is quite different. It often comes from putting yourself in a new environment, going beyond your comfort zone. Psychological richness is really capturing change rather than stability, newness rather than familiarity. In that sense, I think that it’s quite distinct from happiness and meaning.

JS: Are there unique benefits to pursuing a psychologically rich life?

SO: Psychological richness is uniquely associated with curiosity. So, people who say their life is psychologically rich take more challenging courses in college. If the goal is to increase your knowledge and experiences, then having a psychological richness mindset will really push you to new horizons.

The benefit of psychological richness is that you probably gain some knowledge in the long run. And in the long run, perhaps you’ll become a wiser person, knowing how to solve practical, everyday problems and being able to take somebody else’s perspective and sympathize with them. Those are the things that give you wisdom, as opposed to dogmatically knowing what you should be doing.

JS: In your research, have you found that the pursuit of psychological richness is more or less common in people of particular demographics?

SO: Definitely. In my research, I ask people to pick just one life that sounds ideal—the happy, meaningful, or psychologically rich life. Among average Americans, 60% of the participants pick a happy life, maybe 27/28% will pick a meaningful life, and a small minority, maybe 13%, will pick a psychologically rich life.

But I gave a keynote talk at [the American Psychological Association], and a lot of them chose a psychologically rich life. So, [highly educated] psychologists think the psychologically rich life is the best, and they think they are leading an ideal life. For ordinary people, who often struggle or lack stability or predictability, they want a happy life. They want a sense of security and control.

People who are open to experience also tend to like a psychologically rich life. If you think about a segment of the population who are very open to experience, like artists, you’ll see people who are attracted to a psychologically rich life. On the other hand, for people who are not too open to new experiences, a meaningful or happy life would be more attractive.

We asked University of Virginia students what their ideal college life would be like, and the majority of freshmen say a psychologically rich life. For second-year students, the happy life is the most popular one. In the third year, there’s pretty much an even split. But among graduating seniors, the most popular one is a meaningful life. So, these things can change even within a person over time, depending on the specific life task or life stage they’re in.

JS: When someone who values psychological richness is in a long-term marriage, wouldn’t they find it difficult to enjoy life with the same partner over time?

SO: That’s right. Art[hur] Aron, one of the great close relationship researchers, had the self-expansion theory [that explained] why marital satisfaction declined over time. His theory was that at the beginning, you’re still trying to get to know each other. Then, as you get to know each other, you’re expanding yourself because you’re incorporating your partner’s new interests and knowledge.

But after the initial stage of this intense period of self-disclosure and new discovery about each other, if nothing happens, if you don’t learn anything new, then your marital satisfaction goes down. What he suggested, and empirically showed, was that when a couple does something new and learns new things about each other, sometimes a marital satisfaction decline could be prevented.

Art and [his wife] Elaine Aron did all kinds of crazy things together—walking tours in Japan and Serbia, rafting the Colorado River, painting each other, going to horse races. It’s possible, but it requires a lot of intentionality.

[One possible view] is that marriage is the worst thing in life, because it makes your life really boring and predictable; nothing changes. Another is that it’s a place for continual rejuvenation, where you can really grow as a person, and there’s a place for character development. Having children, if you have that opportunity, gives you some variety. As they go through elementary, middle school, you’re reliving your own school life, maybe gaining perspective. So, even within the institution of traditional marriage, you could have what I call a psychologically rich life.

JS: Some psychologically rich experiences mentioned in your book, like moving to a new place or living abroad, are unavailable to many people. They wouldn’t have the money or flexibility to do that. How can they make their lives psychologically richer where they’re at?

SO: It’s true that if you have time and resources, it’s much easier to find the opportunity to enhance psychological richness. But I think it’s possible to have increased psychological richness without spending any money. In the movie Goodwill Hunting, the Matt Damon character famously asked, Why spend $150,000 in higher education when all you need is $1.50 of late fees in a public library? And he’s right. If you want to expand your knowledge, you could just go to the library and learn new stuff.

Another example: Just changing the route of your commute, you can discover something new. I lecture in a building 10 minutes away from my office. If I try to get there the shortest way every lecture, I see the same building. If I change the way I get to the building, then I discover something new. There’s a beautiful, tiny chapel on the campus of the University of Chicago that I didn’t know about until I took a detour and wandered around.

There are a lot of ways to explore your neighborhood, even if you cannot afford to go to New York City or Paris. You can discover new things if you just pay attention and deviate from your habitual way of doing something.

JS: It seems like having conversations with people you don’t know or who think differently would also be a source of psychological richness.

SO: Definitely. Conversation with new people is great. But even if you go to a reunion and meet an old friend you haven’t talked to for 10, 20 years, sometimes you discover that they turned out completely different and had a lot of interesting experiences, and you learn so much.

Reconnecting with your old friend, talking to strangers, that’s a great way to increase richness. Or, if you’re liberal and often read the New York Times or watch CNN, you can try to watch Fox News sometimes. I’ve done that, and they’re talking about completely different things than what I usually hear.

JS: Is the ideal life one where people pursue a bit of everything—happiness, meaning, psychological richness?

SO: We did an analysis of 101 New York Times obituaries published in June 2016 and found that 32 of the people led a [primarily] happy life, 32 led a meaningful life, and 15 led a psychologically rich life. But two people got it all—happy, meaningful, and psychologically rich. So, it’s possible.

When I think about my advisor, Ed Diener, who unfortunately passed away in 2021, he was a very happy person, and he made a lot of difference in the world. He did so much charity work; he fostered two kids in their teenage years; he created the Noba book project to provide free textbooks. But he was also an explorer. His first sabbatical, he took his family to the Virgin Islands. [As a researcher,] he was the group guy and aggression guy, and then just switched his career completely to being the happiness guy.

There are people who actually have it all—a happy, meaningful, and psychologically rich life. I have a taxi driver example in my book—a teenage single mom who had quite a rough time. But she eventually married, and all four kids were very successful. Then one daughter had a medical condition and couldn’t become pregnant, so [the taxi driver] became a surrogate mother at age 51 and 53. Later, her ex-husband needed a kidney, so she donated hers. I said to her, “You must be some kind of angel,” and she said, “No, that was the right thing to do.”

She’s not a super wealthy person; but she’s incredible. She spent two months traveling around the world, driving to make extra money. Sometimes, it’s unbelievable people like Ed Diener who do this. But at the same time, there are everyday people who seem to lead in all three dimensions.

JS: Should people aim for the psychologically rich life if they’re already happy or find life meaningful?

SO: If someone thinks happiness is what they want, and if they already have happiness, why would I say, “Hey, you should add richness to your life?” If that’s what they want, I’m not going to touch it.

But, if you push some happy people and ask them, “Do you think your life is full? Do you think your life is complete?” and they say, “I think something is missing, maybe not quite complete,” then I will say, “Maybe psychological richness is the something missing.”

Happiness and meaning are clearly worthy goals. There’s no question about it. But, for some people, happiness could be out of reach, or emphasizing the pursuit of happiness makes their life more difficult. There’s so much pressure to be happy, and some failures and accidents really hurt your happiness.

Psychological richness is sometimes a good mindset to have, because when you have setbacks, you can always say, “It’s OK, this might be an interesting story five years in the future. It may be really rough right now, but I might learn something new.” [Valuing] psychological richness, for some people, gives you peace of mind.

Also, it can be good not to limit yourself just to your comfort zone to maximize your happiness. Sometimes going beyond that comfort is good. You never know what will happen. And whatever new experience you have could be great in the long run.