Feeling Stuck? Dull? Flat? Here's a Better Path to the "Good Life." | Shigehiro Oishi

An often overlooked secret, from a U. Chicago happiness expert. Shigehiro Oishi https://psychology.uchicago.edu/directory/shigehiro-oishi is the Marshall Field IV Professor of Psychology at the University of Chicago. He is one of the foremost authorities on happiness, meaning, and culture. His newest book is Life in Three Dimensions: How Curiosity, Exploration, and Experience Make a Fuller, Better Life https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/740022/life-in-three-dimensions-by-shigehiro-oishi-phd/. In this episode we talk about: How our obsession with productivity is flattening and dulling our lives The definitions of both happiness and meaning—both of which have, until now, been considered the main paths to a good life The potential downsides of pursuing happiness and meaning Shige introduces his third path to a good life—psychological richness Skills for developing psychological richness Tools for becoming more playful The difficult balance between detachment and healthy ambition How to reframe adverse experiences Re-storying tools for reframing the "hard shit" in our lives And much more Join Dan's online community here http://www.danharris.com/ Follow Dan on social: Instagram https://bit.ly/3tGigG5, TikTok https://bit.ly/3FOA84J Subscribe to our YouTube Channel https://bit.ly/3FybRzD Tickets are now on sale for a special live taping of the 10% Happier Podcast with guest Pete Holmes! Join us on November 18th in NYC for this benefit show, with all proceeds supporting the New York Insight Meditation Center. Grab your tickets here https://www.nyimc.org/event/great-cosmic-joke/! Tickets are now available for an intimate live event with Dan on November 23rd as part of the Troutbeck Luminary Series. Join the conversation, participate in a guided meditation, and ask your questions during the Q&A. Click here https://troutbeck.com/culture/luminaries-series-conversation-meditation-with-dan-harris-2025/ to buy your ticket! To advertise on the show, contact [email protected] or visit https://advertising.libsyn.com/10HappierwithDanHarris Thanks to our sponsor: AT&T: Staying connected matters. That's why AT&T has connectivity you can depend on, or they will proactively make it right. Visit att.com/guarantee http://att.com/guarantee for details.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:31Dan Harris?

  This is the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris.

• 0:46Dan Harris?

  Hello, my fellow suffering beings. How we doing today? Even if you're pretty convinced that you have a reasonably good life, there are still moments, for all of us, where we feel stuck, flat, dull, bored, whatever, you get the picture. And sometimes those moments turn into protracted periods of time. If you're in the middle of one of those ruts, by the way, I'm sorry. But here's the good news. My guest today is filled with practical strategies for spicing up your life. And not only that, he has practical suggestions for turning all of the inevitable adversity we all face into a source of strength. Shiga Hero Oishi is the Marshall Field, the fourth professor of psychology at the University of Chicago.

• 1:30Dan Harris?

  His new book is called Life in Three Dimensions: How Curiosity, Exploration, and Experience Make a Fuller, Better Life. We talk about how our obsession with productivity is flattening and dulling our lives. Man, I relate to that. The definitions of both happiness and meaning, both of which have, until now, been considered the main paths to a good life. We cover the potential downsides of pursuing both happiness and meaning. These downsides are often referred to, respectively, as the happiness trap and the meaning trap. Then he introduces his third path to a good life: psychological richness. From there, we cover skills for developing psychological richness, including building your curiosity muscle, finding richness in the familiar,

• 2:14Dan Harris?

  and some tools for becoming more playful. And finally, we talk about the difficult balance between detachment and healthy ambition, adverse experiences, and we talk about some restoring tools for reframing. The hardship in your life. If you want to go deeper on this subject, this episode comes with a custom guided meditation called, How to See Your Life Through Fresh Eyes. It's from our Teacher of the Month, 7A Selassie. It's only for subscribers over at danharris.com. If you sign up, you'll also get invited to our weekly live meditation and Q and A sessions every Tuesday at 4 Eastern. 7A will be going live on October 28th. Next month, by the way, our Teacher of the Month will be Christiana Wolf, who's awesome. One other thing to mention, I've got a live in-person event

• 2:59Dan Harris?

  coming up on November 18th in New York City. It's a live taping of this podcast with the great and hilarious comedian, Pete Holmes. It's a benefit. All the proceeds go to the New York Insight Meditation Center. There's a link in the show notes if you want to grab some tickets. Okay, we'll get started with Shiga Hero Oishi right after this.

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• 4:23Dan Harris?

  Shigehiro Oishi, welcome to the show.

• 4:26Speaker 04

  Thank you for having me.

• 4:28Dan Harris?

  It's a pleasure to have you here. All right, let's start at the high level here. As I understand it, your argument, or at least part of your argument, is that historically, we've thought about the good life in one of two ways, either happiness or meaning. And you're proposing a third way. Before we get to that third way, let's talk about happiness and meaning and what those terms mean in this context.

• 4:54Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 4:55Dan Harris?

  When you and those in your field talk about happiness as a route to the good life, what does that mean exactly?

• 5:03Speaker 04

  Yeah, so when psychologists talk about happy life or happiness, we're not talking about sort of the momentary mood, you know, happy mood or cheerful mood per se, but rather, we're talking about whether the person who lives that life is happy about their lives, where the life is going. So more like a life satisfaction, whether this person feel they can be satisfied with their lives. If so, then we call it happy life. So happiness is really about, you know, feeling comfortable, secure, and content and satisfied with whatever they've accomplished or whatever going on in their lives.

• 5:49Speaker 04

  In terms of meaning, should we stop here?

• 5:52Dan Harris?

  Yeah, let's stay with happiness for a second.

• 5:53Speaker 04

  Sure, sure.

• 5:53Dan Harris?

  So there are apparently downsides to happiness, understood the way you just described it. It's sometimes called the happiness trap. What is that?

• 6:06Speaker 04

  Yeah, so happiness trap is that when you try to pursue happiness too much, perhaps you are really just like in a trap.

• 6:19Speaker 04

  Partially because, especially when you think about happiness as personal accomplishment or success. And actually, if you ask a lot of Americans, "What is happiness to you?", a lot of them say, "Success, victory, accomplishment, effort being rewarded", and things of that nature. Which makes sense, because we use the term "pursuit of happiness", so you're pursuing sort of like a personal success. But what becomes trapped is that probably easiest way to think about is William James'

• 6:57Speaker 04

  famous formula of self-esteem is function of amount of success divided by your personal ambitions. So there are two ways to increase your self-esteem, and you can substitute here like happiness. You can maximize your personal success and increase your happiness. Or actually, you can reduce your ambition and increase your overall happiness. Unfortunately, majority of Americans are only trying to maximize their success. Which is fine, which is fine. But what they don't know is when they succeed, their ambitions also grow.

• 7:39Speaker 04

  So denominator is growing as the success grow, then happiness doesn't go anywhere. That's where the so-called hedonic adaptation or hedonic treadmill comes into play. You're working so hard toward this goal, and you're sort of achieving it, but at the same time, your ambitions and expectations are growing, therefore, you don't feel like you're making any progress in terms of increasing happiness. So that's the one part of the trap. Another part is that when you try to maximize happiness, not try to feel sadness and anger and negative emotions, then whenever you feel unhappiness, you feel like you're failing,

• 8:23Speaker 04

  and you feel like you have to really get rid of these negative emotions. But of course, negative emotions are due to negative events. And a lot of negative events happen just randomly, right? Natural disaster, the train doesn't come, your spouse is angry because neighbor did something. You know, these things happen. And when you're just trying to just minimize negative emotion, then that's a setback. So that's another trap that when you're trying to maximize happiness, sometimes you focus on the personal success part and forget that what you might want to do is also manage the ambitions.

• 9:09Speaker 04

  When you think about the World Happiness Report and why Scandinavian countries are so high, they're not necessarily pursuing their personal success and being successful at that pursuit. Rather, they are successful at taming their ambitions and they're okay with that given success they have. So that's what I mean by a happiness trap.

• 9:32Dan Harris?

  So that taming of ambitions, is that what is meant by the term satisficer?

• 9:39Speaker 04

  Yeah, exactly. Satisficer as opposed to maximizer. So maximizer is a type of person who has to really get the best thing. So imagine you're applying for a job. Then the maximizer will apply to hundreds, five hundred jobs because they really want to get the best possible job. On the other hand, satisfizer are a type of people who are happy and satisfied with a good enough option. Like in a college application setting, sort of like early decisions. And you just settle for the sure gain as opposed to trying to maximize your possible gain.

• 10:20Speaker 04

  So definitely, the satisfizer are better at controlling their ambitions and desires and expectations. Whereas the maximizer is always trying so much and they're greedy. So yeah, they need a lot of success to have equal amount of happiness compared to satisficer.

• 10:42Dan Harris?

  But you write in your book that there are downsides to being a satisficer as well.

• 10:47Speaker 04

  That's right, that's right. So if you want to maximize your happiness, then obviously the better option is to be a satisficer. But imagine every single decisions you have, you just do the satisfizer. This is good enough for me. Everything is good enough for me. Then you're never gonna challenge yourself. You're never gonna go beyond your comfort zone. So as far as the outcome measure or ultimate goal being happiness, that's fine, but that actually limits, right, your potential. Are you fulfilling your potential? If you're satisfizer all the time, maybe not. And maybe there is a point to go beyond comfort zone and so forth.

• 11:31Speaker 04

  So that's the potential downside of the satisfizer.

• 11:35Dan Harris?

  Right. And the going beyond your comfort zone is what we will talk about when we talk about the third wave. But let me just stay with happiness for a second. Couple of questions here.

• 11:45Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 11:45Dan Harris?

  You mentioned the hedonic treadmill earlier. That's a concept that is very compelling to me as a product of American capitalism. And also, as somebody who's very interested in Buddhism, in the Dharma, you know, where, you know, one of the Buddha's fundamental diagnoses of the human condition is that it's never enough. If you're on this treadmill where as soon as you get a promotion or you get a sip of a latte or you get a date, you just want more. And we, you know, you could argue that we evolved for this because if, if we were satisfied with one meal, well, then we probably wouldn't get our DNA into the next generation because we die of starvation.

• 12:30Dan Harris?

  What's your take on how to balance this, given how deeply wired dissatisfaction and craving is in the human organism?

• 12:43Speaker 04

  Yeah. So, I mean, I grew up in a Buddhist household, so this is really close to home for me. That really just life is suffering, the Buddhist thought goes. And essentially, suffering comes from this attachment to the material things of fame or.

• 13:01Speaker 04

  All kinds of desires. So what you have to manage in the Buddhist framework is to detach yourself from those desires and ambitions and so forth. So that's the part I find it really helpful to be Buddhist and pay attention to your ambitions and tame your ambitions, thinking about the Buddhist principles. But again, just like Satisvaja, being the hundred percent Buddhist is perhaps not so great either, because sometimes you want to want, desire something that you don't have, or you want to achieve something as well. So it

• 13:41Speaker 04

  is a very difficult balancing act. But if you know what you want is to try to maximize happiness, then Buddhist approach, Scandinavian approach really works. On the other hand, if you want more than happiness, then maybe you want to keep the Buddhist Scandinavian approach once in a while, but sometimes don't go all the way.

• 14:06Dan Harris?

  Okay, you said two things there I want to follow up on. Let's set aside the wanting happiness and how we think about happiness, because I have a, I have a, some questions about that.

• 14:15Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 14:16Dan Harris?

  I just want to react to what you said about the Buddhist understanding of desire or wanting ambition. You grew up in a Buddhist household, I did not, so I don't want to presume to lecture you, an eminent professor of psychology and a, and a born Buddhist on Buddhism. But my understanding, which could be wrong, but my understanding, my lay understanding of the way the Buddha and subsequent Buddhists talk about desire or ambition is not that you should have none. Like the Buddha himself was extremely ambitious. He built this huge body of teachings, this large corpus of monks and nuns. He was, you know, cultivating relationships with kings and wealthy donors. And he was

• 15:00Dan Harris?

  a man in the world. And he was aware of two things, at least two things. One, in a world characterized by non-negotiable impermanence and entropy, it's best not to be attached to results. You can work as hard as you want, or two, you can work hard, let's say, but to recognize that in the end, you can't control the outcome most of the time. And then the second thing is, there's a difference between Craving, which is often rendered in the ancient Pali word of tanha, which means thirst, really, and a more healthy wholesome desire, which is often described as chanda, I think, which is like wanting something beautiful or helpful in the world. So I want to become a doctor.

• 15:44Dan Harris?

  I want to build a business that serves my customers, et cetera, et cetera. That's quite different from I want world domination or I want power over others, et cetera, et cetera. So the Buddhist understanding does not preclude, is what I'm trying to say, what many of us in the West would consider kind of a healthy ambition. Does that all make sense? Do you think I'm right as I blather here?

• 16:07Speaker 04

  Well, I mean Buddhist writings are not like a Bible. So there are many different sects preaching the different kinds of Buddhist approach. So at least the one that I grew up with was a little more stoic about desires and so forth. But you're absolutely right. Of course, being a good monk, for instance, you know, you want to be the best monk you can be. So it's not that they are not making effort or desiring to be a good monk or good Buddhist. Indeed, they have to follow so many things, you know, what to do, what not to do, being a monk, for instance. So, yeah.

• 16:51Speaker 04

  But the fundamental teaching is that when we think about the human concern, what bothers us? Then that really comes a lot to do with this excessive attachment to the feeling or things, especially material things or status symbol kind of thing. So the most, I think, the helpful in the happiness context, because when we ask laypeople, what do you think that will be a key to happiness? Or what makes you happy? Then, as you alluded to earlier, they say, big promotion, great job, and things of that nature.

• 17:32Speaker 04

  And that does give you a boost in happiness, but that's pretty short-lived. Within three months, we're just back to the before where we are. So those are the things that I think that the Buddhist teaching naturally teach you that you shouldn't just stake your whole self-worth on this one big promotion or being liked by this person of that nature.

• 17:59Dan Harris?

  From your point of view and your work and study, what does actually increase happiness as opposed to these sort of fleeting dopamine hits?

• 18:10Speaker 04

  Great question. So what makes people happy actually is not the intensity, but the frequency of positive emotion. Marriage, falling in love, promotion, buying a house, buying a car, intense happiness, but that doesn't last. Instead, what you want is a small joy, but that comes frequently. So having a cup of coffee with your best friend, having a brunch almost every weekend with your family members, taking a walk in the morning and saying hi to your neighbors. Those are the things that repeatable, sustainable way of boosting your happiness. That's why the interpersonal relationships, close relationships

• 18:54Speaker 04

  are almost always the biggest predictor of happiness. And that's why you can stay within your comfort zone and familiar others have close, frequent interactions with your loved one. And that's really the shortest way perhaps to boost your happiness. But when we think about happiness, we often think about the big thing and forget about the little.

• 19:21Dan Harris?

  I don't know how much my opinion matters here, but I completely agree. Just in my own N of one laboratory, my life, it really is about the frequency of positive interactions with other human beings and animals and nature, basically connection writ large, inclusive, I would say of connection to myself or to the mind or to reality through meditation. That's the IV drip that does it for me more than big events. Having said that, I just wonder, please feel free to disagree with me, give me a slap on the wrist or whatever it is professors do. I just wonder whether happiness and the way in which we've been discussing it.

• 20:02Dan Harris?

  In the rubric that you're establishing in your book, might be somewhat limited. I have, I've been forced to, just because I wrote a book and host a podcast called 10% Happier. I get asked now a lot, like, what do you mean by happiness? And for me, and this is where we may part ways, or you, maybe you will correct my thinking on this. I think of happiness as inclusive of all of the stuff we're going to talk about today. So I would put meaning, and we're going to get to psychological richness. I would put all of that in a proper, broad, capacious understanding of happiness. And I would also include negative emotions and resilience in the face of said emotions. Having the tools to work with those emotions.

• 20:47Dan Harris?

  I would lump all of that under happiness, instead of the, what seems to me to be a slightly narrow definition that psychologists are working with. Where am I right, where am I wrong here?

• 20:58Speaker 04

  So, I think if you include everything, then that is, that becomes actually very difficult to discern what is happiness, what is not. So, what you are saying seems to me that it's a little bit the higher level categories.

• 21:15Dan Harris?

  Yes.

• 21:16Speaker 04

  Some people use flourishing, I use like a good life, fulfillment, something like that. So, me personally, you can define however you like. I mean, this is very subjective thing. The number one thing about happiness and the well-being in general is that it is not objective. It is really how that person who lives that life feels. So, the fundamental departure from the philosophy to psychology, my advisor, Edina, wrote was, essentially, his paper was entitled Subjective Well-being. And he really wanted to emphasize that it is totally subjective.

• 21:58Speaker 04

  We know that the person like Tolstoy, who after writing, you know, War and Peace.

• 22:05Speaker 04

  He couldn't feel any meaning in his life. And from outside, it's just astonishing. How could he not feel happy about his life and his accomplishment? But that's where the subjectivity comes in. So I think it is fundamentally subjective well-being. And under subjective well-being, what you include is sort of up to you. But in terms of the measurement, when we measure, for instance, meaning in life. And the meaning in life oftentimes has three components. So the feeling that your life is significant, your life matters. And the second part is purpose, that your life is guided by the sense of purpose.

• 22:50Speaker 04

  And then the third part is the sense of coherence. Because we have so many different roles, but these different roles seems to fit all together. So actually, my former graduate student, Mike Stiger, came up with the Meaning in Life questionnaire. And when you measure the meaning in life, and you measure life satisfaction, and you measure something else, then essentially you see the correlation is not like perfect. If happiness was essentially meaning, richness, everything included, then there should be really, really, almost undistinguishable.

• 23:34Speaker 04

  The correlation should be really, really high. Those people who say, yes, I have a meaning in my life, almost automatically says, yes, my life is satisfying. In America, correlation is about point six. But if you look at across the world, then the correlation almost disappears. Indeed, a lot of people in Ethiopia, Niger, and so forth, they say their life is not that great, life satisfaction is really low. But their sense of meaning and purpose is incredible. National Survey Gallup data, over ninety-five percent of the population say, yes, my life is meaningful. Has an important purpose.

• 24:15Speaker 04

  So empirically speaking, we can just sort of separate the meaning, happiness and psychological richness. But it is also true that some people have all three. Some people don't have any of them. And some people tend to define their happiness from more excitement and things like that, which is a little bit closer to psych richness. Other people define their happiness in terms of meaning, like my personal contribution to the society, for instance. So there are a variety of people who define happiness in differently. And I think that's perfectly fine for you to have that very comprehensive view of the happiness. I think that's wonderful.

• 24:57Speaker 04

  Just empirically speaking, when you measure happiness, meaning in life and psychological richness, it is separable.

• 25:04Dan Harris?

  Hmm. Would it be correct to say that this is really just coming down to words and how we use them? And for you, the top line terminology is a good life. And I'm just putting happiness there instead of using it as one component of a good life. But we're actually saying the same thing using different words. Do you think that's correct?

• 25:30Speaker 04

  That's possible, but in academia, it is really like not permissible to use the word. So if it's happiness, then you have to really define it really clearly.

• 25:41Dan Harris?

  Yes.

• 25:41Speaker 04

  Right? At this point, it is a happiness is everything, then it's not really, you know, great definition. So I think that's the academic psychologists have some problem. But for personal experiences, I know Sonia Lieber-Maske, for instance, most famous happiness researcher, right? For her, psychological richness is a very important part of her own personal happiness. So that's perfectly understandable. For some other people, really, as I said, the meaning and faith is a very important part of happiness. So for them, the meaning and happiness are almost undistinguishable.

• 26:21Dan Harris?

  Yeah.

• 26:21Speaker 04

  So there are many version of that, but overall.

• 26:26Speaker 04

  I mean, integrity again. So three are separable, what you call up here, good life, flourishing, fulfillment, whatever. I think that's up to the debate. And still, you have to define what you mean by good life. To me, it is a life perceived as good and positive and desirable by the person who lives.

• 26:49Dan Harris?

  Right. And I think what I'm saying is that's my definition of happiness or something close to it.

• 26:55Speaker 04

  So happiness is the positive, desirable life.

• 26:59Dan Harris?

  Yes. Yes. Inclusive of all the hardship, but like also inclusive of do you have the tools to manage it?

• 27:07Speaker 04

  Uh huh. Probably the tools to manage it part is the most important part because if you just say negative emotion, then there are a lot of people who report negative emotion without happiness. So.

• 27:21Dan Harris?

  Yes. No, absolutely. The tools to manage is key. Can you muster resilience in the face of life's inevitable vexations? Anyway, I've brought you down a rabbit hole, Nai.

• 27:32Speaker 04

  None of us.

• 27:33Dan Harris?

  I thank you for your patience.

• 27:34Speaker 04

  That's what we do.

• 27:35Dan Harris?

  That's what you do, yes. Coming up, Shigeru Oishi talks about how to have a meaningful life and the pitfalls of pursuing one, restoring tools for reframing the hardship in your life, and much more.

• 28:00Speaker 05

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• 28:29Dan Harris?

  Just to reset, we're talking about the three aspects of a good life. Just to call back to the name of your book, Life in Three Dimensions. We've talked about happiness, one of the three dimensions, with all the caveats about how we're defining happiness in this context. Let's talk about meaning. How is meaning understood in this context?

• 28:52Speaker 04

  Yeah, so meaning is often defined as having the three components. In order to understand your life, you have to think essentially first that your life is coherent. Your life makes sense. All the things you do as a father, or as a neighbor, or as a boss, or a subordinate, those roles fit together. And also your life, in order for you to feel like your life has meaning, you really have to feel that your life is driven, guided by the particular purpose, and you have a sense of direction. And then finally, you have to have some tangible contribution to society

• 29:35Speaker 04

  to say that your life is significant, your life matters. And when you see people who end their lives, for instance, oftentimes they don't feel meaning in life. Their life does not matter. Their life is not adding up to anything substantive. So those are the things that makes somebody's life feel very meaningful. So significance, purpose, and sense of coherence.

• 30:04Dan Harris?

  Just as with happiness, there is also a meaning trap, some downsides to meaning. What fits in that bucket?

• 30:12Speaker 04

  I think that, just like happiness, when we think about happiness, we think about big things. And when we think about meaningful life, because the prototype of meaningful life is, you know, Dr. Luther King, Rosa Parks, Steve Jobs, those kinds of people with the big, big, big accomplishments. Somebody who changed the world, made a difference in the world. Perhaps we think about meaningful life to be something like big.

• 30:42Speaker 04

  But then, when we think about ourselves, can we do that kind of thing? Most of us feel like we're not equipped enough to have that kind of meaningful life. So that's one aspect of the trap. Another aspect of the trap, actually, though, is that when you ask Americans, "Do you feel like your life has a meaning?", ninety percent of them actually say yes. It is kind of shocking, but ninety percent people say yes. How do they do it? When you look at what makes people feel like their life is meaningful, it is quite small things they do, but repeatedly. For instance, volunteering every week for extended period of time.

• 31:27Speaker 04

  Of course, child rearing. When we think about the meaningful life, people often talk about, you know, children, raising family, so those takes years and years of dedication. So, in the end, what makes us feel like our life is meaningful is also the small things in life that we do. And we are making contribution in the society, however small way. But the negative side of that is that oftentimes, when we want to make a difference in the world, we want to focus, find some cause, right? We cannot donate to hundred charities, so we often focus on the few.

• 32:08Speaker 04

  And when we do that, we're drawing sort of the narrower, narrower in-group. And we care about these people, but perhaps we don't care about the people outside of my circle. And there is a little bit disturbing empirical findings showing that the right-wing authoritarians, the people who endorse extreme sense of conformity to authority, for instance, they report higher level of me in life compared to those who are completely against it. So, meaning trap is that sometimes perhaps you're making your life meaningful by creating sort of the enemies.

• 32:53Speaker 04

  That's the potential trap.

• 32:57Dan Harris?

  Plenty of evidence for that right now. No question about it. I was struck by something else you said in your last answer before you talked about the in-group, out-group, and enemies, et cetera, et cetera. You mentioned this as well when we were talking about happiness, that when it comes to both happiness and meaning, the average person might be tempted to swing for the fences and assume that they have to do big things in order to be happy or meaningful, but it's actually the small things that matter the most.

• 33:30Speaker 04

  Exactly. Essentially, the same kind of things, the close social relationships, being a good neighbor, those kinds of things are the things that makes us happy, but also make us feel like our life matters and we are making difference in the world. So actually, the taking care of the small things and small responsibilities every day consistently is really important for somebody to feel meaning in life. And routines are important. Samantha Heinsohn has a great paper on how those people who have routines tend to feel like their life is more structured, coherent, and feel sense of being.

• 34:16Dan Harris?

  Okay, so you've brought us to the third way that we keep talking about. Just to reset again to make sure everybody's with us, we've spent the first part of this conversation talking about the ways in which traditionally psychologists have talked about the good life, either through the root of happiness or through the root of meaning. You are now out with a book called Life in Three Dimensions, where you propose a third way, for which you've coined the term psychological richness. What is psychological richness?

• 34:47Speaker 04

  So psychologically rich life is a life filled with interesting, diverse, sort of perspective-changing experiences. So we all understand what material richness looks like, right? A lot of money, a lot of asset in your bank account or investment portfolio.

• 35:08Speaker 04

  We can substitute that dollar with essentially personal experiences or stories you have. So essentially, psychological richness is your richness in experiences and life stories. And some people have a lot of unique, interesting, perspective-changing experiences, while others don't have that many. What I mean by psychological richness is really richness of psychological experiences.

• 35:38Dan Harris?

  Couldn't you argue, and maybe this is the point, I would argue for myself, as somebody who spent many years as a journalist, and my whole life was built around psychological richness. Couldn't you argue that diversity of experience provides both happiness and meaning?

• 35:56Speaker 04

  Interesting. So when you ask people what kind of life events people had, and the more challenging and negative events people report having, the lower happiness people report, on average. Okay, so there are some people, perhaps despite all, they still feel really great about their lives. But on average, when you just look at the life satisfactions or happiness, even meaning in life, correlation is usually negative. So for instance, divorce, divorce of your parents, divorce of yourself, breakup of long-term relationships,

• 36:37Speaker 04

  those things usually reduce one's happiness. But we find that it has net positive effect on the psychological richness, perhaps not immediately afterward, but in the long term.

• 36:53Dan Harris?

  So maybe there was some obtuseness shot through my question because it would go to follow for somebody like me, who is a journalist, that even though I was covering very difficult events, they weren't difficult events in my own life. So I would cover a mass shooting or a war, but I was not a combatant or a victim. And so my life in that, it still is, but in that era in particular, was incredibly psychologically rich. But it wasn't like I was going through a series of personal calamities. So it was a kind of superficial version of richness in some ways.

• 37:29Speaker 04

  Uh huh, uh huh. So it is totally possible for us to accumulate experiences second-hand, right? I mean, Novels, great novels, when you read the great novels, you put yourself in that settings and you're just experiencing, you know, up and down of Anna Karenina, for instance, or whatever that book you're reading. And I think that actually does enrich your life because what you are experiencing there is so out of ordinary, extraordinary, that the type of experience you never have in your real life. So the journalist, I think, as an occupational group, have one of the highest level of psychological richness because

• 38:12Speaker 04

  they witness the things that ordinary people will never witness, you know, firsthand. And they write and report. So they're much more likely to deeply process and remember those kinds of events. And perhaps those kinds of events probably change the way they view the world, or person, or particular religions, or group culture. So I think it's, you know, it counts. Certainly, if you compare earthquake victims to the reporter who is reporting earthquake, the experience itself is very, very different. No question about that. But at the same time,

• 38:53Speaker 04

  we have huge brain, we can empathize, and we can really vitoriously experience a lot of things. So great films, great novel, great music, great arts. I think those are the things that like transport us to the extraordinary realm realm of experience and that definitely contribute to your psychological richness.

• 39:18Dan Harris?

  Is what you're arguing simply that we should consider psychological richness as a third path to a good life? Or are you being a little bit more prescriptive and arguing that psychological richness is something we should all pursue?

• 39:39Speaker 04

  Former. Essentially, the purpose of this book was that a lot of people are struggling to find meaning in their lives or finding true happiness. And they're trying really hard. There are lots of books that helps them, but they're struggling. And maybe what they're searching is not necessarily achievable or easily achievable in terms of happiness or meaning. And maybe for them, psychological richness might be actually the type of life they've been pursuing. So I was trying to sort of give one more way to pass to a good life, rather than this is the path to a good life.

• 40:23Speaker 04

  So that was my central goal of the book. But at the same time, I think the psychological richness mindset is helpful whenever you have some setback. Because when you're trying to maximize happiness and encounter setback, it is very, very difficult to overcome. On the other hand, if you have this psychological richness mindset, that what matters is whether you learn something new, whether you gain some insight into your life and so forth, then a lot of negative events are the great, essentially, opportunities for you to learn something, change your mind and so forth.

• 41:03Speaker 04

  So I find myself, like when I get lost while driving on the way to somewhere. I mean, I used to fight with my wife, like, why did you say turn right and left? But now with the psychological richness, we all say, oh, yeah, it will be fine, you'll be interesting stories. And we might, we might see something we hadn't planned. So I think this mindset is actually very, very helpful. And for me, helpful in terms of the happiness as well, for the sake of richness.

• 41:34Dan Harris?

  So at least in part, what you're saying is this is a...

• 41:40Dan Harris?

  Cognitive reframe available to all of us, given that we all will have hard shit in our lives.

• 41:47Speaker 04

  Sure, sure, right. In a way, it is a coping strategy, right? I mean, there are many, many coping strategies, religious coping strategy, distancing, positive reframing and so forth. But I think that if you have that mindset that like, yes, it is tough now, but we'll get out of this. This might become a very interesting story to share with our friends and so forth. That really, I think, helps to get through some of the difficult times inevitably all of us go through.

• 42:21Dan Harris?

  So actually, storying, like telling the story of your own life, you've mentioned it a couple of times, but it's something you dwell on in a big way in the book. And can you say a little bit more about how we can, you know, operationalize that in our own lives?

• 42:37Speaker 04

  Mm hmm. So we talked about so far, just having some experiences or reading or watching or, you know, some of the experiences we have. But in order for us to actually have psychological richness, just going back to the metaphor of you have to accumulate in the interesting experiences in the psychological memorabilia and portfolio, essentially. So how can we remember? I mean, I love movies, so I watch movie a lot, especially in summer when my son is around. We watch almost every day. But, you know, if you don't reflect, you just forget about that movie,

• 43:19Speaker 04

  great movie you watched. So what you need is really talk about the movie you watch next day and discuss what you like and so forth. And I don't write, but if you write a review, for instance, probably you're much more likely to accumulate and remember what you went through and in what way that changed the way you view the world. So in that sense, write and tell are very, very important. So we're just talking about like memorability, how to remember, curate our experiences and make sure it will stay in a psychological portfolio for a longer period of time. So you can think about one person who is sort of sensation seeker. Every weekend,

• 44:03Speaker 04

  they go around and do a wild thing. But if this person doesn't reflect upon their experiences, then they are not really accumulating psychological wealth at all. It is like a millionaires, but spend everything in the party. So what we want is experience some, some interesting things, but to make it a story. And by writing and telling, you're really, really just accumulating your experience. So writing and talking about it is really important.

• 44:39Dan Harris?

  So it seems like there are a couple of things here to highlight. The first is that we're all having experiences all the time. And to the extent that we want to, to retain the value of positive experiences or reframe the difficult experiences in ways that can make us stronger going forward. We need to make sure that we're actually remembering the stuff we've done and/or has happened to us. And in order to remember it, we need to cultivate the skills of reflecting inside, talking about it with others or writing it down. How am I doing?

• 45:21Speaker 04

  Perfect.

• 45:22Dan Harris?

  Okay.

• 45:22Speaker 04

  A plus.

• 45:24Dan Harris?

  Sorry, I wasn't trying to, to get a gold star, although I do love gold stars. But mostly what I'm trying to do is make sure I've got it so that the audience has it and can do this stuff in their own lives.

• 45:35Speaker 04

  Sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You said it. Perfect. Yeah.

• 45:38Dan Harris?

  Okay.

• 45:40Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 45:41Dan Harris?

  But let's just stay with, this is the other thing I wanted to get at. Let's just stay with the aspect of reframing hard stuff. We've all had difficult things happen in our lives. How can we learn to tell that story to ourselves and others in a way that it becomes a source of empowerment as opposed to abiding shame or something like that?

• 46:05Speaker 04

  Yeah, so I think that's where some skill comes into play. I think that some people are naturally good at essentially spotting the way they grew out of that particular experience or difficulties. Others might focus on just the misery they experienced, and they don't focus on what kind of change that came out of that particular difficult experience, for instance. I mean, if you're fired from the job, you might be just still complaining about, you know, your former boss. That's not gonna be helpful. On the other hand, thanks to this being fired, I started looking into these new things, and I would never have done that if I wasn't fired.

• 46:50Speaker 04

  So that was the turning point of my life, for instance. I mean, if you can see that way, then that particular being fired becomes essentially interesting stories for you to remember. But also, you know, I mean, you grew certainly, not by choice, but because of what happened. So those are the things I think it is important. But for some people, I think it comes very, very naturally. For others, unless they think about it, stop and think about it, those thoughts do not necessarily come. Therefore, I think the journaling, or just however painful it is, just talking with somebody actually is very, very helpful.

• 47:34Speaker 04

  Because those kinds of self-insights sometimes can oftentimes come from conversation with somebody.

• 47:40Dan Harris?

  Hmm. So this is the recipe for turning the inevitable adversity of life to our advantage, to develop the muscle memory to... And usually it takes time, because what is it that Alan Alda says in the Woody Allen movie Crimes and Misdemeanors? Comedy is tragedy plus time.

• 48:03Speaker 04

  That's a good one.

• 48:05Dan Harris?

  In this case, psychological richness is tragedy plus time, probably, or at least in some cases. But to develop the muscle memory to turn all of the things in our lives, all the humiliations and losses into stories that we can use to help ourselves and others. And by the way, the helping of others is a massive lever.

• 48:28Speaker 04

  Sure, sure.

• 48:30Dan Harris?

  For richness and meaning. And one way to develop this muscle memory is to journal, reflect, and discuss it with other people.

• 48:39Speaker 04

  Yeah, definitely.

• 48:44Dan Harris?

  Coming up, Shiga Hero Oishi talks about some skills for developing psychological richness, including building curiosity and openness to new experiences, finding richness in the familiar, and tools for becoming more playful. Keep it here.

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• 49:35Dan Harris?

  In the spirit of life in three dimensions, we've been talking about these three paths to a good life: happiness, meaning, psychological richness. In your view, are they mutually exclusive or overlapping?

• 49:47Speaker 04

  I think it's quite overlapping. But when you think about, for instance, freshmen, right? They just arrived in college. What kind of life do they want to have? And we asked this question to the freshmen. Most of the freshmen said, oh, I want to have psychological rich life because I want to explore the world, explore the campus, and meet a lot of people. But what is interesting is that by the third year... They changed their mind. They had enough explorations. So now they want to have a happy life, enjoyment and comfort. Fourth year, they want to have meaningful life. Because they know the end is near. That they want to have some kind of like, what did I do in college?

• 50:30Speaker 04

  I wanna have some kind of legacy for my college life and so forth. So depending on your life stage or where you are or what you want. Certainly, you might try to maximize richness in certain point of your life. Meaning in certain point of life and happiness in certain point of life. And when we analyzed obituaries of a New York Times articles. We had hundred one obituaries analyzed. Out of hundred one, two people were rated as having happy life. Meaningful life and psychologically rich life. So it is definitely possible to have all three.

• 51:12Speaker 04

  But at any given moment, probably you have to pick which one you want to maximize. Because if you want to maximize happiness or meaning, probably you're gonna go to something you really care about. Or something you are very familiar with. On the other hand, if you are trying to maximize psychological richness, you're trying to go beyond the familiarity and do something new. So moment to moment, perhaps there is some conflict. But we have different needs at different times of the day, different time period of our life. So I think in the end, we could have all three.

• 51:54Dan Harris?

  How do you weave these three threads in your own life?

• 52:00Speaker 04

  I would be honest to myself, what do I want? When I'm really tired, for instance. I say, oh, I just wanna have happiness. I wanna be comforted with something familiar, something I know is good. So I just, I just talk to my wife or kids or just do something I, I always do. On the other hand, sometimes I feel a little bit bored with doing the same thing again and then I try to do something else and try to maximize psychological richness. And probably I should be focusing on meaningful life a little more, but I don't consciously try to maximize that as much as happiness or psychological richness. But that's me. But ultimately, to me, it is really up to you.

• 52:45Speaker 04

  What do you want in your life? Do you want to have the comfort, sense of security and stability and happiness? Or you wanna make a difference in the world and wanna feel like your life is really meaningful? Or you wanna experience a lot of different things and learn a lot of different things? Then maybe you're going for psychological richness. And I think it depends on somebody's values, what they care, what they feel most important in their lives. And knowing that is the most important part, just self-knowledge of honestly, what do you want in your life?

• 53:23Speaker 04

  And I think that really, really helps to decide on, should I pursue happiness, meaning or richness? Or if you're greedy, you can go all three, but.

• 53:34Dan Harris?

  Well, I was just gonna say, I'm, I'm greedy, cause as I listen to you talk, I'm thinking, I want all three, though all three of them seem like components of what I would call happiness and you would call a good life.

• 53:45Speaker 04

  Sure, sure, sure. Yeah. And some, some of my colleagues said that, yeah, what you're talking about seems like a nutrient and different kinds of vitamins. It looks like in order for us to have a good life, we need a certain amount of happiness, certain amount of meaning and certain amount of psychological richness. And I think he's right, that I think happiness, meaning and the richness could be the essential nutrients, but the different kinds of nutrients for somebody to have good life or life of fulfillment.

• 54:19Dan Harris?

  So is what you're saying in essence, or at least in part, that this is a really helpful lens through which to view the world. Hey, there are these three aspects of a good life.

• 54:29Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 54:29Dan Harris?

  Moment to moment throughout the day, season to season throughout my life. I'm going to emphasize one of these three, but it's very helpful to have. I think the fancy words you academics use is like a heuristic.

• 54:43Speaker 04

  That's a good one. Yes, heuristics. Yeah, definitely.

• 54:47Dan Harris?

  All right. So let's talk about some of the skills, or I'm using this term skilled, maybe you'll have a quibble with that. Within, you know, so if we're interested in a life of psychological richness, there are some aspects of the human repertoire that we can emphasize or skills that we can develop. One of them is openness to experience. Can you say a little bit more about that?

• 55:10Speaker 04

  Yeah. So openness to experience is one of the big five personality traits. And openness to experience, as it says, is somebody who is open to new kinds of experiences, but also aesthetic experiences. So interestingly, openness to experiences is not really correlated that highly with happiness or meaning, but it is really, really strongly correlated with psychological richness. Meaning those people who are high in openness to experiences tend to report that their life is psychologically rich. And these are the people who like to go do study abroad or go to museums and things of that nature.

• 55:52Speaker 04

  So yeah, somebody who tried to do something new definitely has advantage in terms of psychological richness.

• 56:02Dan Harris?

  Another of the big five personality traits that is core to psychological richness is extraversion.

• 56:08Speaker 04

  Yeah, extraversion is also correlated with happiness and meaning. But essentially openness to experience might be somebody who is curious about idea or object. On the other hand, extraversion is correlated with a curiosity with other people. Right? Extroverts like to talk to strangers, talk to other people. Because they are curious about other people. So it is all about curiosity. That essentially give rise to psychological richness. Because without curiosity, you're not gonna go beyond your comfort zone and try to explore the world and try to learn something new.

• 56:51Speaker 04

  So extraversion is correlated with psychological richness in a sense that you are curious about other people and you learn a lot from other people through story sharing and conversations.

• 57:04Dan Harris?

  I'm not an expert in the difference between extraversion and introversion, but I know a lot of, most of the people on my team are introverts, which I think is interesting, because I'm like a mega extrovert. But the people on my team who are introverts, they're still curious. They just, you know, don't have as much of an appetite to talk to people as I do.

• 57:24Speaker 04

  Yeah, exactly. So number one corettes of personality corettes of psychological richness is openness to experiences. So introverts, I'm very introverted. So I don't like to talk to strangers at all. I usually don't like to do podcasts either. But essentially, what I have is openness to experience. I am curious about the ideas and informations and objects and cultures and things like that. So as long as introverts have that, you can definitely gain psychological richness. And also, another path actually is one of the big five, the agreeableness. When your wife or friend say, hey, do you wanna go to museum?

• 58:07Speaker 04

  Then agreeable people say, sure, why not? And that's one way to enhance your psychological richness, right? Disagreeable people say, no, I don't wanna do it. Then you're limiting your experiences. So agreeableness, even if you're not extroverted, if you are agreeable, if you're open to experiences, then you can still achieve psychological richness. So there are diverse ways to achieve psychological richness.

• 58:36Dan Harris?

  Well, speaking of diverse ways to achieve psychological richness, I can imagine people listening to this and thinking, well, I'm an introvert. We've kind of litigated that one, but others might think, I don't have the time or the finances to study abroad or travel abroad or have a diverse range of experiences. And in the book, you address that by saying that it is possible, very possible, to find richness in the familiar.

• 59:04Speaker 04

  Yes, so if you're not into sort of exploring the world, one thing you can do is actually going back to your favorite book or going back to favorite album or favorite film and re-reading or re-watching those. I think you can find a lot of new things that you didn't notice, you hadn't noticed first time around. And those are the experiences I think that is very, very enriching. And even in the same relationship, I mean, I had dated with my wife like 80 years before I got married. And essentially, I didn't know at all about her interest

• 59:48Speaker 04

  or ability to paint until 10 years after being married. And some things you don't find in your family or others, right? Unless you spend so much time. So I think if you're not interested in or you cannot afford to explore the world, I think you can explore the familiar and find a lot of new things. And you know, Good Will Hunting, Will Hand said this most beautifully, I think. Why would you spend $150,000 for higher education when you can spend just $150 for overdue book in public library? Even if you don't have, you know, resources,

• 1:00:31Speaker 04

  there are a lot of free and cheap resources out there. Library being, public library being the best one. You can rent. Movies free, book free. So, so I think you can do it, even if you don't have a huge resources. And often time, we are so ignorant about our own surroundings. So, once I wrote this book, I started changing my route to my lecture hall. And I encountered so many things that I hadn't noticed before. The beautiful chapel, beautiful bench and trees and things like that. So by changing your commute, daily commute, a little bit. Getting off one station before your usual station and exploring that town, for instance,

• 1:01:15Speaker 04

  you might find a lot of interesting things. So, I think psychological richness is for everybody. You don't have to be a millionaire to do it.

• 1:01:25Dan Harris?

  If curiosity is at the root of this, is that a skill that one can develop?

• 1:01:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think curiosity is a skill. And also curiosity is something that is constrained by certain circumstances. For instance, we study the division of labor, right? Work professions are so extremely, you know, specialized. And specialization actually really, really reduce your, uh, natural sense of curiosity. So if you think about the little children, right? They are really curious about everything. But we just guide them to pay attention, be curious to certain things and not ignore other things. And our job, a lot of time, the specialization happens at the cost of being a generalist.

• 1:02:16Speaker 04

  So, being a generalist actually is a great way to enhance your curiosity. And if your job is super specialized, then when you come home, you really have to take the hat off and become like kids. Then that's how to nurture, how to get back your natural curiosity. So, definitely, I think you can be more curious.

• 1:02:42Dan Harris?

  Another and related skill, I think, or you'll tell me if it's a skill, but it's certainly an aspect of richness and an aspect of the human repertoire more broadly, is playfulness. Can you just talk about why playfulness is so important in this regard?

• 1:02:59Speaker 04

  Yes, because we live in a very professional world where our schedule is fully packed almost every day. And, you know, we have so many responsibilities. So being playful, Eric Erickson defined as taking a vacation from our social and economic responsibilities. And I think we really forget that because we are trying to fulfill our economic and social responsibilities every day, the most responsible adults, right? So that means we are very serious. We try to get things done. Productivity is number one. Always people say,

• 1:03:37Speaker 04

  work, work, work, get things done. And that focus really take us away from spontaneities and playfulness. Right? When was the last time you just had a glass of wine with your friend without planning? Spontaneous outing? Or be just like five years old, totally playful? I think at least I forget to be playful unless I remind myself, oh, sometimes I can be playful and I should be playful. So having some schedule, like open, you know, slot in your daily schedule.

• 1:04:15Speaker 04

  And whenever you feel like taking a walk or, you know, knocking on the your colleague's door and have a conversation or have a cup of coffee, I think, you know, having that type of schedule is really helpful for you to just have one hour or 30 minutes where you can do whatever you want. If you want to read novel, you read novel, but you just be playful, be like child, be like a dog chasing tennis ball. I think that is really refreshing because we are all too narrowly focused on productivity and efficiency.

• 1:04:52Dan Harris?

  So our obsession with productivity is flattening and dulling our lives, reducing psychological richness. And at least one way to counteract that is to put time in your schedule that is dedicated to whatever the hell you want to do, to play essentially.

• 1:05:13Speaker 04

  Right, exactly. Whatever you feel like doing at that moment. So that really, I think, gives you some sense of spontaneity and playfulness back.

• 1:05:22Dan Harris?

  Any other thoughts about how we can up our playfulness quotient?

• 1:05:26Speaker 04

  Well, I think if you have kids or if you're, you know, playing with kids or playing with animals, I think is the easiest way to be playful yourself. I mean, when you're talking to your dog, right? You're naturally way more playful than when you're talking to your neighbors or your colleagues. So I think that that playfulness is a beginning. And just, just, you know, cherish that playfulness and childlike qualities in your life. Be silly, open to be full.

• 1:06:01Dan Harris?

  Yeah, I'm hearing three mechanisms in this conversation for increasing playfulness. One is schedule it. The other is take advantage of silly little moments with your pet or your friend or your kid. And the third is to be mindful when you're in those moments, because then you're teaching your nervous system how good it feels so that you'll be attuned to the opportunities going forward.

• 1:06:28Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, you should savor for, you know, those playful moments.

• 1:06:33Dan Harris?

  Another aspect you talk about in the book, and it's right in the subtitle of the book, is exploration. Well, that may be self evident, but what do you mean by exploration?

• 1:06:44Speaker 04

  So for instance, you're looking for apartment. And exploration meaning you are just checking out many, many, many different apartment before you settle.

• 1:06:56Speaker 04

  Explore exploit trade off. This is the academic term. Exploit strategy is just not looking at many apartments. And you just see the first apartment that is acceptable. And then, you know, I don't want to spend too much time. I'm just gonna go with it. So sort of satisfizer is the exploitation person. Explorer is the more the maximizing tendency person. So explore is just essentially looking for it for a longer period of time. More diverse area. So that requires a lot of energies as well.

• 1:07:34Dan Harris?

  Are you saying that exploration is always a good thing to do? Or that we need to use our judgment?

• 1:07:39Speaker 04

  No, no.

• 1:07:40Dan Harris?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:40Speaker 04

  Just that there is a famous task called secretary task. You're human, the personnel person who decide, manager who decide to hire secretary. You have hundred applications, right? You just look through the applications and you have to say yes or no. And how many applicants do you look at? Computer simulation essentially says that you have to look at least thirty seven. And then decide on whoever came next. Who exceeded the best of the first thirty seven will pick the best secretary. So statistically speaking, you have to explore thirty seven percent of the option.

• 1:08:25Speaker 04

  Really carefully before you settle. If you do this kind of experiments, most people explore only ten or fifteen. And then say this is enough. And actually, by not exploring enough, they are not making an optimal decision. So in so many arena, marriage, job, whatever, car, restaurant.

• 1:08:49Speaker 04

  We are cognitively speaking lazy and we rely on heuristics shortcut. So we tend to not explore enough. So my message is that exploration itself will help you make a better decision. Because our cognitive default tendency is not explore enough.

• 1:09:12Dan Harris?

  Well, so how do we override that tendency?

• 1:09:15Speaker 04

  So I have essentially just take a dozen heuristics. So at least whatever you do, just try to look at at least 12 options before you settle. And I think that's a that's a very good heuristics to get the essentially the best. Not the best option necessarily, but the top 10 options. That essentially sort of guaranteed that your decision is at least top 10% of the available choices.

• 1:09:47Dan Harris?

  Next time I want to buy some sneakers, I should look at 12 before I pick?

• 1:09:51Speaker 04

  That's the suggestions. So of course sneakers, how many sneakers out there? Thousand, 10,000, I have no idea. So if that given population is large, you might need to up a little. But that's general suggestion is that the dozen is good, dozen is good.

• 1:10:09Dan Harris?

  What about if I'm dating?

• 1:10:11Speaker 04

  Doesn't is good? I mean, doesn't like this is at least you seriously date and you know, meet and then just move on to the next and so forth. And actually Kepler did this, the famous astronomer. And essentially after they he interviewed 11 people very, very seriously. He thought, okay, the number one choice was this person, but this person got sick of waiting. So she said, no, I already moved on. So you know, exploration, of course, there's some risk of losing out the potential one. But in the end, his second marriage using this approach was very, very successful.

• 1:10:53Speaker 04

  So I would say, yeah, use it in the dating as well.

• 1:10:59Dan Harris?

  What have we missed? Are there points you were hoping to get across that we haven't talked about?

• 1:11:04Speaker 04

  No, I think I think we talked pretty much everything.

• 1:11:08Dan Harris?

  Yeah, well, it's been really fun. A source of richness for me to be a little cute. Before I let you go, can you just remind everybody of the name of your book? And anything else you've created that, you know, websites, social media handles that we should know about?

• 1:11:22Speaker 04

  No, I think so. So the title of the book is Life in Three Dimensions: How Curiosity, Explorations, and Experiences Make a Fuller, Better Life. My website is at University of Chicago website. So check out for other specific academic articles. Yeah.

• 1:11:41Dan Harris?

  Awesome. So I will put a link to your website in the show notes and also a link to your book. Shige, great pleasure to meet you. Thank you for making time.

• 1:11:49Speaker 04

  Sure. Pleasure. Thank you for having me.

• 1:11:57Dan Harris?

  Thanks again to Shige. Awesome to talk to him. Don't forget, there is a guided meditation that comes with this episode and is in fact designed to help you pound the wisdom of this episode into your neurons. It's called How to See Your Life with Fresh Eyes, and it comes with our Teacher of the Month, Sebene Selassie. Sign up over at danharris.com. You'll also get invited, if you sign up, when you sign up, to our weekly live meditation and Q and A sessions every Tuesday at 4 Eastern. The next one is tomorrow. Seb will be going live. Very excited for that. Also, don't forget, I've got an IRL live event on November 18th, a live taping of this podcast with Pete Holmes. There's a link in the show notes. Before I go, thank you very much to everybody who worked so hard on this show.

• 1:12:41Dan Harris?

  Our producers are Tara Anderson and Eleanor Vasili. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. Lauren Smith is our managing producer. Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer. DJ Cashmere is our executive producer. And Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote our theme.

• 1:13:13Speaker 06

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