A good life can have many dimensions, and we may straddle different paths at different points in our lives. Photo / 123RF
Decades of research have pointed to two answers. Now, scientists are proposing a third.
What is a good life, and how can we create it?
Forty-plus years of research have pointed to two answers.
The first says that a good life is a happy life; one created by pursuing comfort, satisfaction and more joy than sadness.
The second says that a good life is a meaningful life; one grounded by purpose, connection and making the world better.
But recently, researchers have proposed a third answer: a good life is a psychologically rich life, marked by novel experiences, perspective-shifting insights and complexity, but also more discomfort and challenges than a happy life or a meaningful life.
“We wanted to capture more explorative, adventurous, creative types of good life,” like those of artists and poets, said Shigehiro Oishi, a psychologist at the University of Chicago who first conceptualised psychological richness.
Happiness, Oishi said, can be thought of as a batting average - it goes up and down with good and bad experiences. Psychological richness, on the other hand, is more akin to career highlights - how many interesting stories and experiences we have over our lifetime.
These can arise from travel, meeting interesting people, reading books or overcoming challenging circumstances.
A psychologically rich life is an interesting life that asks us to leave our comfort zones and be open to changing our minds, said Erin Westgate, a social psychologist at the University of Florida. It’s “cognitively and emotionally uncomfortable to realise that I thought the world was one way, and now I realise it’s another way. Or I thought I was one way, and now I realise I’m not,” she said.
Put another way, each path may sound different when summed up on one’s deathbed.
The last words of a person who lived a happy life might be, “It was fun!”
Someone who lived a meaningful one might say, “I made a difference!”
And for someone who lived a psychologically rich life? “What a journey!”
The concept of a psychologically rich life came through a midlife crisis.
Oishi had been researching happiness for 20 years when he asked himself: “Is my life happy? Is my life meaningful?” “Yes,” he thought. But when he asked himself, “Is this a complete life? Is this the full life?” he couldn’t say yes at that point.
Through their subsequent work, Oishi and his colleagues perceived that the well-being research literature had a gap. Happy and meaningful lives are both biased toward stability and routine. Sustained happiness relies on small, repeatable acts of everyday joy, and meaning in life relies on repeated efforts to make a difference in the world.
Psychological richness, on the other hand, captures a dimension of a good life for interesting and novel experiences that may not always feel entirely joyful or have a higher purpose.
“I think the theory of psychological richness is the most interesting, exciting new theory in well-being science,” said Sonja Lyubomirsky, a professor of psychology at the University of California at Riverside who was not involved in the research.
The three paths are not necessarily mutually exclusive - a good life can have many dimensions, and we may straddle different paths at different points in our lives.
In one study of obituaries, Oishi, Westgate and their colleagues found that happiness and meaning tend not to be correlated.
Psychologically rich lives, on the other hand, “are often meaningful lives, but they’re not usually super happy lives”, said Westgate, who co-wrote a 2025 review on psychological richness with Oishi. “It makes sense: any good story involves a challenge or involves a problem.”
Despite this, people believe a psychologically rich life is one worth living, Oishi and his colleagues discovered in one study. Most people want all three in an ideal life - to be happy, find meaning and have interesting experiences.
However, in life, “there are trade-offs. We usually do have to prioritise between them”, Westgate said.
When the study participants were forced to choose just one path, the majority favoured a happy life. But 6.7 to 16.8% of participants selected a psychologically rich life, indicating that there are people who value these types of experiences even at the expense of a happy or a meaningful one.
People who are more open to new experiences are more likely to seek out and have a psychologically rich life, research shows. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the same is true of curious people.
Psychological richness is associated with greater cognitive complexity. People leading psychologically rich lives tend to think more holistically and consider the big picture.
And it is more associated with certain health outcomes, such as confidence in coping and perceived social support, compared with happiness and meaning.
Interestingly, psychological richness is associated with more liberal political leanings, while politically conservative people tend to report being happier and find their lives more meaningful.
Since Oishi and his colleagues began their research, he said he’s received emails from people thanking him for giving them a “vocabulary” to describe the life they had been seeking.
Having a name for what you’re looking for is helpful: “It’s hard to reach for something if you don’t know what that something is,” Westgate said.
No one path is better than another, nor are they mutually exclusive, researchers said. Instead, they each offer a different flavour for what a good life could look like, each with its advantages and challenges.
Still, even those who prioritise the other paths, which rely more on repetition and routine, may benefit from psychological richness strategies to “help them refresh and feel rejuvenated about their pursuit of happiness and perhaps meaning”, said Oishi, who recently wrote a book, Life in Three Dimensions: How Curiosity, Exploration, and Experience Make a Fuller, Better Life.
“Really just letting the self go, just be open to be foolish about yourself,” Oishi said. “Don’t take yourself too seriously.”
Explore new neighbourhoods. Browse thrift shops or used bookstores. Take an improv comedy class.
Other people’s interests and suggestions can open up a whole world of possibilities.
“I think just trying to say yes to your friends’, family members’ suggestions, that alone actually makes your life a lot richer,” Oishi said.
“Challenges, surprises, spontaneity, I think can lead to lots of wonderful things,” Lyubomirsky said. “So take risks within reason and be more game for things.”
“I think people know what kind of things might make their lives richer”, such as taking up that guitar class or joining that pickleball league, Westgate said. However, we may be reluctant to do these things because we may “focus on all the things that are scary about doing something new or challenging” and minimise the potential benefits, she said.
It’s important to remember that our brains not only enjoy a challenge but that research shows discomfort is not necessarily a bad thing. “Discomfort is a sign that you’re growing,” Westgate said.
It is human to forget our adventures over time. But because a psychologically rich life is the accumulation of rich experiences, it is important to journal, photograph and share them with others to maintain your memories, Oishi said.
“As long as you are curating and storing your experiences in your psychological memorabilia, then you are enriching yourself every day,” he said.