Dr. Shige Oishi
Appearances
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Shige Oishi on How to Live a Psychologically Rich Life | EP 571
This is just that those who are obsessed with happiness, sometimes I think that structure their lives to avoid negative emotions, try to stay within the comfort zones and so forth. So my work really came out of this concern that overly excessive pressure to feel happy probably is one of the source for the anxious generations and why people are so worried about their lives and futures.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Shige Oishi on How to Live a Psychologically Rich Life | EP 571
And one way is try to be optimistic and just get over the anxiety. But another way is try not to so emphasize the happiness, just accept that negative things happen in life. And then we can learn from it. And then just some new learning, new perspective you acquire, enrich your life in the end. So that's how I view my life and the work in the context of positive psychology.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Shige Oishi on How to Live a Psychologically Rich Life | EP 571
So I think the meaning in life is often defined as essentially the three things that person who lives that life has to feel that their life matters. So life is significant. And then also they have to feel that they have purpose in life, that their life is going somewhere. So they have sense of direction, not the aimlessness. And the third factor is the coherence. We all have so many social roles.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Shige Oishi on How to Live a Psychologically Rich Life | EP 571
I'm professor, husband, father, et cetera, et cetera. And these different roles are highly fragmented, but it's required for each role is different. So modern people, I mean, people in the 21st century often feel torn, right?
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Shige Oishi on How to Live a Psychologically Rich Life | EP 571
But the meaning in life, the people who find their life to be meaningful, find this coherence, these different pieces and roles fit together under one big umbrella, often religious belief or sense of mission, personal missions and so forth. Meaning in life has the significance. has this purpose and has the sense of coherence.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Shige Oishi on How to Live a Psychologically Rich Life | EP 571
So that's how not just me, but most people in the field, such as Mike Stigler define the meaning in life. And it's a little bit different from happiness in a sense that the happiness is focused on whether you personally feel that your life is going well. So it is really self-contained.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Shige Oishi on How to Live a Psychologically Rich Life | EP 571
Whereas in order for you to feel like your life matter, it just has to feel that it matters not just to you, but others. So I think the sense of contribution to the society is much, much bigger. You're the military person, right? Really tough life day to day. But you have a sense of mission. You're doing this for other people and next generations and all Americans and so forth.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Shige Oishi on How to Live a Psychologically Rich Life | EP 571
So that's the sense of meaning. Whereas happiness could be very self-contained. You do what you like. And then even if you feel like that doesn't necessarily contribute to anyone else, you could feel happy. So that's, I would say, is the main difference between happiness and meaning in life.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Shige Oishi on How to Live a Psychologically Rich Life | EP 571
Yeah, so the surprising thing is that when we talk about happiness and meaning in life, especially in terms of personal happiness or making somebody happy, then it looks like it's a two opposing force, the hedonic versus eudaimonic.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Shige Oishi on How to Live a Psychologically Rich Life | EP 571
But empirically speaking, when you ask people how satisfied they are with their lives and how meaningful they think their life are, these two things often correlate very highly.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Shige Oishi on How to Live a Psychologically Rich Life | EP 571
Daisuke Minakata, And many of the chorus or predictors of happiness and meaning in life are pretty similar so that's what was surprising to me that many of the stable factors stable social relationship is really just a big predictor of both. Daisuke Minakata, Happiness and the meaning in life and.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Shige Oishi on How to Live a Psychologically Rich Life | EP 571
My own, well, another finding that is a little bit counterintuitive is that if you ask political orientations of the people, some are more politically conservative, some are more political liberals. In general, at least in the United States, politically conservative people say they are happier and also find their lives to be meaningful compared to politically liberal people.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Shige Oishi on How to Live a Psychologically Rich Life | EP 571
So then there's a question, is there any path to good life through holding sort of political liberal view? So that's one of the places where I started to think about maybe there is a third way to a good life. You don't have to hold on to conservative values or stable factors, but maybe exploring something new could be a way to a good life.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Shige Oishi on How to Live a Psychologically Rich Life | EP 571
I think the self-determination theory is fundamentally motivational theories that how important it is for us to have this intrinsic motivations to pursue what we love. And those people who do things for intrinsic reasons and self-determination reasons, they do show that their life is more meaningful. They think that their life is more satisfying and so forth.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Shige Oishi on How to Live a Psychologically Rich Life | EP 571
So I think the self-determination theory is very similar, also just like Carol Riff's psychological well-being theories that capture both hedonic but also very much eudaemonic aspect of well-being. idea of psychological richness is not necessarily the motivation, focus on the motivation per se. You're doing this for the intrinsic reason versus extrinsic reasons.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Shige Oishi on How to Live a Psychologically Rich Life | EP 571
The mind is more of the life with the diverse experiences. If you do something that you don't usually do, then what happens? Does it lead to the happiness? Does it lead to the meaning? Does it lead to more psychological richness?
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Shige Oishi on How to Live a Psychologically Rich Life | EP 571
And it turned out the novelties and curiosity seems to be really tightly correlated with this new idea of psychological richness rather than the happiness or meaning per se. I mean, it is not, my view is, orthogonal, I would say, to the self-determination theory of Rich Ryan's and Ed Deasy's work. So, yeah.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Shige Oishi on How to Live a Psychologically Rich Life | EP 571
So what is interesting is that the relationship, quality of social relationship is really huge predictor of happiness and the meaning in life, as I said. But psychological richness is not super highly correlated with the quality of social relationship per se, just because you could read, lead very psychologically rich life by yourself. For instance, reading novels, watching movies.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Shige Oishi on How to Live a Psychologically Rich Life | EP 571
I mean, those things could be done alone and it could, actually enrich your life quite a bit. You learn something new, you learn some new perspective in life and so forth. So if people are having such a tough time connecting with others and suffering from loneliness,
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Shige Oishi on How to Live a Psychologically Rich Life | EP 571
one way to treat it is obviously to increase the social connection but if that's still not working then i think another way is really to think about like how can they connect in a different way connect with the different idea with the different authors imaginary world of the characters so
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Shige Oishi on How to Live a Psychologically Rich Life | EP 571
I would say psychological richness research tells us that maybe engagement with the literature, art, music, and things like that will definitely at least help for those who are struggling to connect with other people.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Shige Oishi on How to Live a Psychologically Rich Life | EP 571
Yeah, I think the New Year's resolution is a really tough one that you have to be changing who you are and trying to do something new. And it is uncomfortable. It is unpleasant. And then when you try to get out of your bed and try to go to gym, it's raining. You don't want to do this. And then once you don't do it, then you feel so bad.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Shige Oishi on How to Live a Psychologically Rich Life | EP 571
And particularly when you're so focused on the outcome that you have to do this, when you do this, you'll be happier and things like that. I think we are often too harsh on ourselves and discouraged by the initial little failure. I think if you're accepting these things, oh, it was a rainy day. I didn't go out, but tomorrow is a different day. I could do it tomorrow.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Shige Oishi on How to Live a Psychologically Rich Life | EP 571
And I think that the richness mindset essentially is that these things happen, stuff happens, bad things happens. Sometimes things don't go the way you envisioned, but that's okay. You learn something new and then maybe you can reset and restart. I think the New Year's resolution is a wonderful thing, but I think we're too harsh on ourselves and too...
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Shige Oishi on How to Live a Psychologically Rich Life | EP 571
fragile, like too easily discouraged by the initial failures. I think you should just think of this as a process. Sometimes you go two step forward, one step back, and then just do it as you can, and then see what kind of things you discover about yourself and how it goes rather than, okay, yes or no. Oh, I failed. Just forget about this.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Shige Oishi on How to Live a Psychologically Rich Life | EP 571
Yeah. I mean, it is interesting that when you think about happiness in particular, you have to maximize positive emotions and minimize negative emotions. And when you On the other hand, think of a day as an interesting day, psychologically rich day or week and so forth.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Shige Oishi on How to Live a Psychologically Rich Life | EP 571
What you find is that those days are the day where you find a lot of, felt a lot of joy and excitement and so forth, but also some struggles and angers and sadness as well. A lot of things happened on a psychologically rich day or psychologically rich week, whereas
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Shige Oishi on How to Live a Psychologically Rich Life | EP 571
happy day or happy week is not so much many different emotions or many different things, just everything turned out to be how you expected, how you anticipated, and everything went well. Yeah, psychological rich life is different in a sense that you could have a lot of sorrows and sadness and angers.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Shige Oishi on How to Live a Psychologically Rich Life | EP 571
But as long as you learn from it, so in our studies, those people who experience a lot of negative emotions, learn something new from it, and then they change their perspective in life. And that was crucial for psychological richness. Negative emotion is not just, oh, it's okay to feel angers and so forth. Yes, but it is good because that really makes you think about your life and the world.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Shige Oishi on How to Live a Psychologically Rich Life | EP 571
There's nothing wrong with the William James equation. I mean, it's really brilliant. But two ways to maximize the self esteem. One is maximize your success. Then your self esteem is higher. But the other approach is reduce your desires. If you want a lot, then the success has to be enormous in order to get equation like high outcome.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Shige Oishi on How to Live a Psychologically Rich Life | EP 571
And then you start to see differently about yourself and the world. And that's what's enriching about negative emotions and negative events. That's why I want people to embrace sometimes some of the potential negative consequences. We become too safe and try to stay in the comfort zone and sometimes to avoid the negative emotions. But sometimes it's okay.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Shige Oishi on How to Live a Psychologically Rich Life | EP 571
It's even better, I think, to try to go put yourself in uncomfortable situations, go beyond the comfort zone, and then you learn something new and you become wiser and your life is psychologically richer.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Shige Oishi on How to Live a Psychologically Rich Life | EP 571
I love Tom Gilovich's work, and I think it is really profound that in the short run, we really regret about something we did, something we said, stupid things we said. But in the long run, it is we regret something that we didn't do. I should have stayed in school. I should have taken that job and so forth. And that really, I think, influenced the way I think about good life.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Shige Oishi on How to Live a Psychologically Rich Life | EP 571
And that's why I felt some of the approach to happiness is missing because it's if it's the frequent, comfortable interactions with the people that makes you happy, then obviously when you have a chance to move to another company or another city or another country, you wouldn't do that, right? But that could really give rise to, in the end, a huge life regret. Why didn't I do that?
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Shige Oishi on How to Live a Psychologically Rich Life | EP 571
I should have taken that job. I should have taken the opportunities. To me, I think that the psychological richness mindset is to minimize this huge life regret of inaction. And yeah, many of the research I did, I think, emphasize that in the short run, we're so worried about making mistake and saying the wrong thing or doing wrong things. And we don't do it.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Shige Oishi on How to Live a Psychologically Rich Life | EP 571
But in the long run, we wish we have done it. And then when we examine the obituaries, the New York Times in June 2016, we had 100 over 100 obituaries. And these are very famous, well-accomplished individuals, but we find that some people let what we call like a boring life, like happy maybe, but not so interesting life.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Shige Oishi on How to Live a Psychologically Rich Life | EP 571
And some people led very tough life, maybe not so happy, but admirable, adventurous life. I think those are the people who led the life of no regret. And perhaps some of the people who led the happy life might have led at the end life of some regret.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Shige Oishi on How to Live a Psychologically Rich Life | EP 571
I think that Steve Jobs is an example of psychologically rich life, right? I mean, he dropped out of college, worked in the apple orchard. And when he was 19, he decided, OK, I want to go to India. So he goes to India in search of guru. In the end, he didn't find it. But later, he looks back and says he learned something really important, that the people in the Indian, the small villages,
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Shige Oishi on How to Live a Psychologically Rich Life | EP 571
know how to use their intuitions. And we Americans know how to use our rationalities, but we don't know how to use intuition. And I think he became wonderfully interesting person of using some intuition as well as the rationalities.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Shige Oishi on How to Live a Psychologically Rich Life | EP 571
And I mean, he founded the successful company, Apple, and then he was fired from the company he established and then started the Pixar and then just brought back and so forth. I think he had So many up and down, twist and turn. I mean, he obviously wasn't that happy. Many times he alienated many people. He yelled at many employees and so forth.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Shige Oishi on How to Live a Psychologically Rich Life | EP 571
I mean, he wasn't a happy person, but clearly he, I think, led a psychologically rich life and life of adventure, curiosity, learning. At the end, I mean, if you read the biography of Steve Jobs, he says that on the deathbed, I led a good life. I learned so much and I have no regret. I think he's a wonderful example of somebody who led a psychologically rich life.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Shige Oishi on How to Live a Psychologically Rich Life | EP 571
Yeah, when you think about who goes to study abroad, as I said, I think that people who are open to experiences, people like Steve Jobs are much more likely to do study abroad. But what was interesting from the personality research is that those people who do go study abroad, in the end become even more open to new experiences.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Shige Oishi on How to Live a Psychologically Rich Life | EP 571
So that there are this interesting reciprocal relationship between the personality and psychologically rich experiences. In the book, I talk about this old lady, Joy Ryan, until age 84. She has never seen the mountains or oceans or anything. She lived in a small town in Ohio. But then her nephew called, and they went to Smoky Mountain National Park, and she loved it.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Shige Oishi on How to Live a Psychologically Rich Life | EP 571
So then she went on to essentially go entire national parks. Having this initially a little bit of openness to experiences, but then actually experience something completely different, and then that will open you up even more. So I think this is the...
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Shige Oishi on How to Live a Psychologically Rich Life | EP 571
interesting reciprocal experiences that how personality is not just the determinant of the psychological richness, but it could be the outcome of the psychological rich experiences as well.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Shige Oishi on How to Live a Psychologically Rich Life | EP 571
Right. The natural disaster is a really excellent example of this. Nobody wants... be flooded nobody wants earthquake and so forth and the research on this natural disaster is really interesting that after experiencing this natural disaster people often report that they change the perspective in their lives and they realize that neighbors they've known for decades
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Shige Oishi on How to Live a Psychologically Rich Life | EP 571
a totally different person than they thought they were. Because most of the times, right, neighbors are nice and greeting and so forth. But at the time of emergency, a lot of time, they really come and help you and realize, witness a lot of humanities in those emergency, terrible disaster situations. And so we looked at Kobe area's Hanshin Awaji earthquake victims of 1995.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Shige Oishi on How to Live a Psychologically Rich Life | EP 571
all the way until 16 years later. And if you look at the happiness and life satisfaction, these people who lost their houses in 1995, even 16 years later, they're still less happy, less satisfied with their life. They report more physical symptoms, illnesses, than those Kobe residents who didn't lose their houses.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Shige Oishi on How to Live a Psychologically Rich Life | EP 571
So if you just look at the happiness or life satisfaction, then obviously the effect of negative natural disaster is really negative and long lasting. Time does not heal everything, unfortunately. But the silver lining of that is that they have I think more trust in humanities and more pro-social worldview after going through these natural disasters.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Shige Oishi on How to Live a Psychologically Rich Life | EP 571
But by reducing ambitions, even your success is a little, if the desire is small, then you could feel good about yourself.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Shige Oishi on How to Live a Psychologically Rich Life | EP 571
I am hoping that the concept like psychological richness will capture something positive about going through these difficult natural disasters, but as a community that comes together and there is something positive out of that.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Shige Oishi on How to Live a Psychologically Rich Life | EP 571
I mean, there's nothing wrong with the William James equation. I mean, it's brilliant. It's really brilliant. But two ways to maximize the self esteem, right? One is maximize your success, then self esteem is higher. But the other approach is reduce your desire. So that's the more the Buddhist approach to life, right? If you want a lot, then the success has to be enormous in order to get the
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Shige Oishi on How to Live a Psychologically Rich Life | EP 571
equation like high outcome but by reducing right the ambitions even your success is a little desire is small then you could feel good about yourself so the formula is brilliant and indeed when you look at the happiest country in the world you know finnish finland norway and denmark and asked Dane, what's the secret to happiness? And they often say that. Don't expect too much. Lower expectation.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Shige Oishi on How to Live a Psychologically Rich Life | EP 571
When do you know you have enough? And William James equation is brilliant in a sense that you can maximize the success or you can reduce the ambition and you can increase your self-esteem or in this case, happiness as well. But as I said... in my book that reducing the ambition part, yes, that works if you're trying to maximize happiness, but that could inadvertently
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Shige Oishi on How to Live a Psychologically Rich Life | EP 571
making you conservative as to whether should i go or should i stay kind of situation people get to tip into stay as an answer as opposed to go and i'm saying that once you get out of that equation And then there are something out there by making a lot of mistakes and not achieving things. Still, you can maximize something else. And that's something else to me is a psychological richness.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Shige Oishi on How to Live a Psychologically Rich Life | EP 571
So don't reduce the ambition. Ambition could be big, but you just have to try. Even if you're not successful, that's okay. It's not okay in terms of happiness, but if you don't care about happiness, then you're okay, because you might get greater degree of psychological richness.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Shige Oishi on How to Live a Psychologically Rich Life | EP 571
So job satisfaction is interesting that it is very highly correlated with the pay. So you can think about high paying job, right, as satisfying job. So computer scientist, data scientist, they're pretty happy. Surgeons happy. Lawyers actually are an exception. Financial sector people and so forth, they're all happy. But what is interesting is that pay scale also have the meaning in their job.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Shige Oishi on How to Live a Psychologically Rich Life | EP 571
And when you look at that, pay is not strongly correlated with the meaning. So, for instance, the computer scientists, data scientists, they tend to find their job to be meaningless for these insurance actually people. They make good money, so they are satisfied with their job, but they tend to think that their job is not so meaningful.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Shige Oishi on How to Live a Psychologically Rich Life | EP 571
On the other hand, the teachers, right, second English as a second language teacher, for instance, They don't find their job to be super satisfying. They are not getting paid that much. But if you ask meaning in their job, then they score quite high. And what is interesting to me is that artists or art director, museum curators, editors, they are not that happy with the job.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Shige Oishi on How to Live a Psychologically Rich Life | EP 571
And surprisingly, they don't find their job to be particularly meaningful. But I think these are the people, if there was a third dimension of job,
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Shige Oishi on How to Live a Psychologically Rich Life | EP 571
how interesting, psychologically rich, how much creativity you can bring to a job and so forth, then maybe these were the jobs that could score high on that third dimension, although in terms of meaning and happiness, art director, curators, writers, and editors are not that high.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Shige Oishi on How to Live a Psychologically Rich Life | EP 571
Yeah. Happiness is like going to the luxury resort where, you know, all inclusive. So you don't have to plan anything. You just pay and show up. And every day they'll give you a great food and entertainment and you're totally relaxed. You know, only positive emotion you feel. Right. So so that is in a way like happiness. Okay. On the other hand, psychological richness is like a backpacking trip.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Shige Oishi on How to Live a Psychologically Rich Life | EP 571
You have no plan. You are poor. You're staying in a youth hostel or something like that. Nothing predictable. You have to work on it. You have to plan. Really challenging. Maybe you miss out a lot of things. But in the end, which trip will be more memorable? more interesting.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Shige Oishi on How to Live a Psychologically Rich Life | EP 571
And essentially, psychological rich life, I think is more memorable life compared to all inclusive resort, vacation type life that try to maximize comfort, relaxations, and try to minimize the negative emotions and challenges.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Shige Oishi on How to Live a Psychologically Rich Life | EP 571
Wow. So that's the issue. Happiness is great, but sometimes it's boring. And for some people, boring is better than challenge and difficulties. And I totally get that. But I think what you get with the psychological richness is the unexpectedness, something completely new about yourself and the world and somebody else as well.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Shige Oishi on How to Live a Psychologically Rich Life | EP 571
I think actually you can find richness in the familiar environment of even your spouse of 40 years or 50 years. Sometimes when you put yourself in a new situation, you discover something new. I mean, my wife and I met in 1991. And it was around 2010, I think, for the first time I realized I don't have anything on the wall. So I said to her, I was like, oh, we should buy some paintings.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Shige Oishi on How to Live a Psychologically Rich Life | EP 571
And then she said, oh, I can paint. And I was like, what? I didn't know you can paint. And then she just started painting and painting. And I discovered a completely new part of herself. And I think these things could happen even if you live in a stable life. If you just encounter some completely new situations, you discover something new from the familiar individual.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Shige Oishi on How to Live a Psychologically Rich Life | EP 571
So I'm not saying you have to go out and do something new every day all the time. It is something sometimes that's the easiest way to discover something new. But a lot of time rereading your favorite book, second time, third time, you discover something new. Right. I mean, I'm reading Raymond Carver's Cathedral like third time today. And I was like, wow, I missed the first two times.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Shige Oishi on How to Live a Psychologically Rich Life | EP 571
And it's just amazing. bring me something new. And of course, with the life experiences, you can relate to different aspects of the stories as well. So I always think that psychological richness is not necessarily only achievable through direct exploration.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Shige Oishi on How to Live a Psychologically Rich Life | EP 571
You can do a lot of things by reading, watching, listening to the podcast, and talking to your old friends you haven't talked to for decades, for instance. You learn something new. So there are many opportunities out there. Even if you live a life like my father in a small village surrounded by the same people, you can still find something new.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Shige Oishi on How to Live a Psychologically Rich Life | EP 571
Thank you so much.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Shige Oishi on How to Live a Psychologically Rich Life | EP 571
I think we are faced with this question of should I stay or should I go? Job, relationship, but the little things like should I go to the same restaurants I like or should I try something new? Should I go to the museum today or stay home? And I say, if you tend to lean toward life of stability, Then when you have this question, should I go or should I stay? Just go. Just do it.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Shige Oishi on How to Live a Psychologically Rich Life | EP 571
It's always a good choice. Even if something terrible happens, we can always laugh about it. It's going to be an interesting story later on. My point is when we try to maximize happiness, we often think about, oh, what if something wrong happens, this and that, and try to avoid something, try to stay within our comfort zone. But once in a while, we should really try something new.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Shige Oishi on How to Live a Psychologically Rich Life | EP 571
And when you thought about, oh, should I do this? Just do it. I would say that's the number one easiest thing to do this year.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Shige Oishi on How to Live a Psychologically Rich Life | EP 571
Just do it.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Shige Oishi on How to Live a Psychologically Rich Life | EP 571
I think my University of Chicago homepage, Google Shigeo Ishii, UChicago, it's there. Okay.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Shige Oishi on How to Live a Psychologically Rich Life | EP 571
Frankly, when I started my research back in 1995, I really didn't think about my own life at all. It is only after 20, maybe 25 years of research that picture we get from the happiness research looked like my father's life rather than my own life. And that's when I had some midlife crisis or as a second thought about what happiness research really means and what we found.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Shige Oishi on How to Live a Psychologically Rich Life | EP 571
So it's really just recently just occurred to me that my father led a very cozy, pleasant, happy life. And I study happiness and try to be happy myself, but maybe many things I did were counterproductive to happiness and maybe my dad was doing better in that dimension.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Shige Oishi on How to Live a Psychologically Rich Life | EP 571
I think that's a really interesting point that in many ways, our life is way more globalized compared to 30, 40, 50 years ago. We're so connected to outside world. But if you look carefully about algorithms and social media, and we were putting into a small sort of niches where our background preferences coded in their own language, and
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Shige Oishi on How to Live a Psychologically Rich Life | EP 571
We have this illusion of we live in a global village, but in reality, we really don't live in a global village. We live with somebody who has similar view, similar political view, similar maybe music taste and so forth. So I think the media context is a very interesting one. It is magnified. I mean, physically speaking, right? My dad lives in a village of maybe 150 people, right?
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Shige Oishi on How to Live a Psychologically Rich Life | EP 571
So now we live in a huge, much larger scale village, but at the same time, it is not truly diverse, globalized kind of village, but you're just hanging out with close, like-minded people in the end. So that's how I feel about how that global village versus the real village life look like.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Shige Oishi on How to Live a Psychologically Rich Life | EP 571
So I think that your life, for instance, going to the military, living in different places. So those are the situations where you really put yourself in a strange situation, strange culture, and really allow you to be immersed with the new environment. And what I was saying in terms of global village in terms of media, social media and so forth, has the illusion of these real exposures.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Shige Oishi on How to Live a Psychologically Rich Life | EP 571
But in reality, maybe exposure is just like a little village that you're just still talking to the very people who share the same kind of backgrounds and viewpoint. I think it is really important to distinguish what we think is a real face-to-face, the real exposure to the culture and outside world versus sort of the illusion of the exposure to the outside world through media and so forth.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Shige Oishi on How to Live a Psychologically Rich Life | EP 571
I think that openness to experiences is a huge factors and huge predictor of psychological richness. And the people who, for instance, college students who study abroad, are very different than those people who are not willing to, and the mindset of openness, just exploration, see what what's out there, I think is the most important first step. And
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Shige Oishi on How to Live a Psychologically Rich Life | EP 571
when you put yourself in a completely different worldview and world, then finally you start, you know, beginning to see what the other side or other people view us and also life in general. So I think it is very increasingly difficult to see the other side because we have this illusion of we are seeing what's happening all over the world, but not really because we're not seeing
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Shige Oishi on How to Live a Psychologically Rich Life | EP 571
really putting ourselves online and seeing that the other side. So it is difficult. It is ugly sometimes. It's really challenging to do. So I truly admire those people who do.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Shige Oishi on How to Live a Psychologically Rich Life | EP 571
Mm-hmm.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Shige Oishi on How to Live a Psychologically Rich Life | EP 571
Yeah, I think what's most interesting is that people's sort of the concept of what makes people happy might make them happy, often incorrect. That when we think about happy life, we think about like big success in life, right? Big promotion, big wedding, right? birth of new babies, buy a new house, a new car, and things like that.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Shige Oishi on How to Live a Psychologically Rich Life | EP 571
But what Ed and others found is that those things, yes, it makes people happy, but not for long. Within six months, usually, the effect of those promotions, weddings, and so forth just disappears. And what really matters is just the little things like walk, walking a dog every day in the neighborhood and saying hi to your neighbors, having coffee with your best friend every week or having
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Shige Oishi on How to Live a Psychologically Rich Life | EP 571
romantic dinner once a month or so with your partner, these little things that is repeatable, is what makes people happy. Ed had the famous article entitled happiness is a frequency not intensity of positive events. And that's exactly I think that's the most profound findings from the happiness research.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Shige Oishi on How to Live a Psychologically Rich Life | EP 571
Yeah, I mean, Marty's idea, of course, you know, very valid and well accepted that the positive emotion is important. Optimism is clearly important. And I like his Parma model as well. But I think that when people try to maximize happiness, And when people think happiness is more of the personal success, career success, personal success, rather than the interpersonal success.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Shige Oishi on How to Live a Psychologically Rich Life | EP 571
And mistakenly think that the happiness is the big achievement, not just everyday little things you do with your friends and the family. then I think there are some negative consequences. This is nothing to do with what Mari did.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
There's nothing wrong with the William James equation. I mean, it's really brilliant. But two ways to maximize the self-esteem. One is maximize your success. then your self-esteem is higher. But the other approach is reduce your desires. If you want a lot, then the success has to be enormous in order to get equation like high outcome.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Eric Zimmer on Why Surrender Is the Secret to Your Best Life | EP 569
But by reducing ambitions, even your success is a little, if the desire is small, then you could feel good about yourself.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
The Mirage of Success: Why More Is Never Enough | EP 570
this conversation is going to make you rethink the way you live you won't want to miss it there's nothing wrong with the william james equation i mean it's really brilliant but two ways to maximize the self-esteem one is maximize your success then your Self-esteem is higher. But the other approach is reduce your desires.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
The Mirage of Success: Why More Is Never Enough | EP 570
If you want a lot, then the success has to be enormous in order to get equation like high outcome. But by reducing ambitions,