Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Shige Oishi on How to Live a Psychologically Rich Life | EP 571
11 Feb 2025
What are the three dimensions of a fulfilling life?
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.
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.
So I just want to use one example that you can talk about, because you mentioned in the book, a lot of people, when they think of someone who's led a really deep, creative, meaningful life, think of Steve Jobs. How would you rate him from your own research and what you think is a rich life?
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,
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.
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.
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.
Well, thank you for going into that. And another thing that really caught my eye was when you looked at different personality structures, extra vision and openness really came out. And you found that openness to experience is strongly linked to leading a psychologically rich life, which obviously Steven Jobs explored throughout his life.
And he had key characteristics of curiosity, imagineness, imagination, willingness to explore intellectual and artistic pursuits. And your research has a fascinating reciprocal relationship Open, if I understand it, openness enhances the likelihood of engaging in psychologically enriching activities. Can you go into this a little bit more and why it's so important?
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