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May 27 - June 7, 2025
psychological research shows that trying to make others happy will make you happy, while trying to make yourself happy sometimes fails to do so. Indeed, psychologists have found that prosocial spending, writing gratitude letters, and having a satisficer (i.e., happy with good enough) mindset all promote happiness.
In the short term, people regret action, like saying or doing something stupid. In the long run, however, people regret inaction, like not saying “I love you” or not going back to school.
A psychologically rich life is a life filled with diverse, unusual, interesting experiences that change your perspective; a life with twists and turns; a dramatic, eventful life instead of a simple and straightforward one; a life with multiplicity and complexity; a life with lots of stops, detours, and turning points; a life that feels like a long, winding hike rather than many laps of the same racing circuit.
you can accumulate experiences and become psychologically rich.
A psychologically rich life is not for everyone.
Happiness is the frequency, not the intensity, of positive events. Relatedly, studies show that happiness is the product of close relationships rather than personal accomplishments. That is, happiness is not personal success, but interpersonal success.
individuals who do not engage in upward social comparison are happier than those who are obsessed with social comparison.
if you’re already happy with your life, you’re doing great. But take a moment to reflect on your satisficer mindset. Perhaps there could be more to life than coziness and small joys, at least once in a while. Happiness is not the only way to lead a good life,
The first element of the meaning trap is that the type of accomplishment associated with a meaningful life is so grand that aiming for it will set us up for a failure.
There is another way to achieve a good life. It may not be stable or comfortable, but it is exhilarating. It may not be filled with contentment, but it is dramatic. It has ups and downs, twists and turns, and by the end of the ride it offers a life with fewer regrets; a life of adventure, playfulness, spontaneity, serendipity, and learning; a life of going with the flow, trotting the path less traveled—in other words, a life rich in experiences. This third way to a good life is the psychologically rich life, and it is a way to transcend the happiness and meaning traps.
Narcissus wishes he had had more interesting life experiences. His life is happy and meaningful but utterly missing experiential richness. By contrast, Goldmund’s life is hard, but spontaneous, creative, and unpredictable: a psychologically rich life.
Overall, the two focus group sessions revealed that psychologically rich experiences involve not only novelty but also intensity, complexity, and a change in perspective.
A happy day comes from noticing something heartwarming, having a good laugh with friends,
A meaningless day is a day wasted, an utterly pointless day. Like listening to a lecture on material you already know well, a meaningless day does not add much to your life.
meaningful day is the opposite. There is a point to that day. You’ve accomplished something. Maybe you wrote a letter, for instance. You helped someone. You did laundry or exercised. You got something done, and the day was not totally wasted. Even if you didn’t get much done, maybe you got some much-needed rest to prepare you for another day of hard work.
A meaningful day is not just a day with explicit gains. It is also a day you appreciate because “one day, I know, it will be otherwise.”
A psychologically rich day is a day when you experience something unfamiliar, feel a wide range of emotions, and gain a new perspective on life.
a psychologically rich day was one in which they felt more emotions—both positive and negative—than on a typical day.
Novelty: there’s something different from the same old, same old. Diversity: a wide range of attention and emotion is deployed. Challenge: life is more difficult and complex than usual. Memorable: life is vivid. Above all, you learn something new. You gain some new perspective.
Simplifying one’s life so as to have reliably positive experiences, or contentment, is key to happiness. Dedicating one’s life to others with compassion is key to meaning. Experiencing the unusual, challenging oneself, and learning new things—though frustrating and unpleasant at times—are key to psychological richness.
why do extraverts explore the social world more? One factor is their confidence and self-assurance. When you are confident, meeting a new person is not threatening. What is there to lose? You are not worried about being negatively evaluated by this person or making a bad impression. Instead, you are thinking about the benefits: getting to know someone new, learning something new, sharing interesting stories.
(you can take a Big Five personality test on my website!).
when you are playful, you are “on vacation from social and economic reality.”
go somewhere between fantasy and actuality once in a while. Free yourself from duties and responsibilities. Play basketball and imitate Steph Curry. Watch a movie and pretend to be like Roger Ebert. Watch the evening news and impersonate the president. Sing along with Beyoncé.
playfulness is a blend of openness to experience and extraversion, and a relative lack of conscientiousness and neuroticism. It is “an openness to being a fool, which is a combination of not worrying about competence, not being self-important, not taking norms as sacred and finding ambiguity and double edges a source of wisdom and delight.”
As an antidote to too much seriousness, we need playfulness and spontaneity. Hobby over duty. Entertainment over commitment. Relaxation over dedication. Try to be playful at work or at home at least once a day. Try to make your partner, friend, or coworker laugh. Take a detour on your way home. Jump in a puddle. Go for a swim. Get wet; get dirty. Be like a little kid once in a while.
What might be the unintended psychological consequences of our obsession with efficiency?
The Wealth of Nations was a surprisingly fascinating read.
To foster psychological richness in our lives, we must lean into the unfamiliar, the risky, and the challenging.
Before hiring someone else to do a job, ask yourself: Could I do it myself? Would I have an interesting story to tell if I did? Is efficiency everything? Escape the productivity trap once in a while. Think of a slower way to do the same thing—bake your own bread; hand-grind your own coffee beans…do it yourself, and add some spice to your life.
The Remains of the Day
the psychologically rich need to remember and cherish their experiences. The memory is crucial.
Sports are particularly powerful sources of drama, mainly because the outcome is not scripted. You never really know what will happen.
The 1995 playoffs were moving, dramatic, and a whole lot psychologically richer than watching a number one seed win the championship. An underdog victory like this expands your view of what is possible.
Thanks to art, instead of seeing one world only, our own, we see that world multiply itself and we have at our disposal as many worlds as there are original artists, worlds more different one from the other than those which revolve in infinite space, worlds which, centuries after the extinction of the fire from which their light first emanated, whether it is called Rembrandt or Vermeer, send us still each one its special radiance.”
When we are absorbed in a complex narrative world or the unscripted world of sports, we are transported and transformed.
And the purpose of life, after all, is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience. You can do that only if you have curiosity, an unquenchable spirit of adventure.
For most people, the more exploration they do, the better choices they make.
the “take a dozen” heuristic, regardless of the problem set, does a pretty good job of finding a top 10 percent option. This means when you next look for a new romantic partner or a new apartment, you had better consider at least a dozen before making a decision.
stress and anxiety amplify our tendency to like a familiar object.
We need to overcome this familiarity bias in order to explore the new and unknown.
our story is in our control. You can see your struggles from a different perspective, and the new interpretation of those struggles becomes a foundational step toward self-understanding and further transformation. Edit your story, drop the old version of yourself, and come to believe in the new version of your narrative.
Novelty is effective for long-term romantic couples, as is shared reflection.
