Permission to Flourish: Well-Being for High Performers with Shigehiro Oishi

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In this special live episode, Dr. Elizabeth Harry hosts Dr. Shigehiro Oishi of the University of Chicago for a compelling, audience-engaged conversation recorded at U-M’s Rackham Building.

Drawing on cutting-edge research, Oishi challenges conventional notions of happiness, examining the tension between achievement and meaning. With practical insights for high performers, this energizing discussion invites listeners to rethink success and intentionally cultivate a more expansive, sustainable path to well-being.

Also included is a special live question & answer session with audience members.

Guest:

Shigehiro Oishi, Ph.D., M.Ed.

Transcript

Jeremy Fallis:

Hello everybody. This is Jeremy Fallis from the Department of Communication at Michigan Medicine. This episode of Well-Being at Michigan Medicine is from a recently recorded live event and is structured differently than past episodes. You'll hear the normal interview between Dr. Elizabeth Harry and our guest, Shigehiro Oishi, but then there is a short question and answer portion at the end. We re-recorded the audience's questions so you at home could hear them better. Thanks for listening and enjoy this week's episode of Well-Being at Michigan Medicine.

Dr. Elizabeth Harry:

Welcome and thank you all for coming. We're very excited for you all to be here and thank you for the introduction. So we are going to turn this into a podcast. It'll be part of Well-Being at Michigan Medicine podcast, and it's our opportunity to share sort of best practices, both for folks at Michigan Medicine, at the University of Michigan and abroad. So we're very excited. Our goal tonight is really simple. It's to leave with a clear, more usable way to think about what makes life good, especially if you work in a high demand profession or you are a high achiever. We were talking earlier about maybe a little bit neurotic and how we want to think about wellbeing for those of us that might fit into that phenotype. So thank you so much for joining me. I'm really excited.

Dr. Shigehiro Oishi:

Thank you for having me.

Dr. Elizabeth Harry:

Yeah, it's a great conversation. So we've got a room full of people, I'm assuming, who care deeply about wellbeing, both personally and professionally. And so we're going to start with an easy question, but maybe hard to answer. So in one sentence, what are we missing when we reduce the sense of wellbeing to just happiness, being happy?

Dr. Shigehiro Oishi:

So I think before I can answer the question, I would just briefly define what I mean by happiness. So of course happiness can be used to refer to momentary mood of happiness, but in the context of good life, of course, happiness is really about whether somebody feels content, satisfied with the overall life, where it's going, how the life turned out. So what I mean by happiness here is sort of the very global overall life satisfaction, contentment. Okay. So what's missing in wellbeing if you reduce that to happiness? In one sentence, I think it's very difficult, but I'll try. Maybe in one word, smallness.

Dr. Elizabeth Harry:

What do you mean?

Dr. Shigehiro Oishi:

What I mean by smallness is that when you look at the literature, what makes people happy? It is actually really small things in life, like having a cup of coffee with your favorite friend, taking a walk every morning and things of that nature. And on the one hand, that is very comfortable, very pleasant, but that might has some danger or limitation if you just totally live all your life in this contained, small world. You don't venture out, you might not experience the things you could have experienced. So let me be clear. I think happiness is great. I mean, being happy is great. If you can feel truly content with where you are, I think you did the great job. But at the same time, if you asked what's missing, I think that's what's missing. Adventure, curiosity, personal growth, expansion.

Dr. Elizabeth Harry:

And so you talked about this comfort and even comfort in the small moments. So if we were to string together sort of moments of comfort and that was the totality of the life, would that be sufficient for sort of happiness?

Dr. Shigehiro Oishi:

I think one could say that very content with your life. If you had a series of very pleasant, comfortable life. So yes, answer is yes, I think.

Dr. Elizabeth Harry:

And what is the opposite piece of that that you noticed was missing when you started interviewing folks about their life?

Dr. Shigehiro Oishi:

Yeah. I think that being comfortable is great, but at the same time, if you're just so self-contained, then perhaps you might lack some kind of curiosity. And of course, at the end of life, what do you aspire to? At the end of life, do you want to say, "Oh, I had a comfortable life." Or do you want to be wise, for instance? So famous, well, he's psychiatrist, but very well known in psychology, Erik Erikson has sort of the very famous theory of life stage development. And of course, he's famous for addressing identity crisis, but then once you get over identity crisis, you know who you are. Next stage as a young adult, you want to have intimacy. And if you don't have intimacy, you have loneliness.

But then once you achieve intimacy, you want to achieve generativity, that you are making difference in the world, you're doing something to the next generation. If you don't have that, you have sense of self-absorption, maybe narcissism even. And then the final stage, once you have generativity, what do you have? In the end, he argues you have integrity or wisdom. And if you don't have that, you have at the end of life, despair. So if you led the life of comfort, then maybe you could not quite get to the wisdom because after all, who is wise? Well, you go to a wise person when you have some deep, difficult, personal problems. I will go ask Shinobu when I have some question to ask. And he has a lot of interesting, diverse experiences and he struggles some here and there. Therefore, he can have very practical knowledge and wisdom. So I think that one major potential limitation of trying to live life of happiness entire life is this. Just perhaps you're not going to reach the wisdom.

Dr. Elizabeth Harry:

And you're really outlining the need for some friction.

Dr. Shigehiro Oishi:

Sure. Definitely conflict, suffering, and pains. I mean, you went to med school, so you're familiar with the discomfort.

Dr. Elizabeth Harry:

Yeah, it was hard.

Dr. Shigehiro Oishi:

And my niece is third year in med school. So I see her struggling, but actually she says she's happy because she recognized that current struggle is for the better future for her. So even for happiness, I think sometimes discomfort is okay as long as you see that as a necessary step.

Dr. Elizabeth Harry:

Yeah. It's so interesting because there's this tension and you named it in a lot of your work of sort of the stay versus go story.

Dr. Shigehiro Oishi:

Sure.

Dr. Elizabeth Harry:

And that so many of our moments in our lives are stay versus go. The relationship, the job, do I do this risky educational thing that's hard? And so I'd love for you to tell us a little bit about that story for you and how did it spark this question that you've spent your career answering?

Dr. Shigehiro Oishi:

Yeah. So this stay or go story is essentially my chapter one of my book. And I talk about my father who is now 92 years old. He was a farmer, just like his father and his grandfather and great-grandfather. So essentially I'm from just farmer's family and he was the first son of the family. So he decided to take over farm, married a woman who lived in the next village and then had three children. And he had two daughters and one son, and one son is me. So I was supposed to take over the farm.

Dr. Elizabeth Harry:

That was the plan.

Dr. Shigehiro Oishi:

That was a plan, but I show apparently no interest whatsoever in nature of farming. So anyway, it was astonishing when I turned sort of like 50, maybe 45 or 50 years old and looking back my life and looking at my father's life. And my father actually became very content, very happy as he get older. So I wonder, I left my hometown essentially 18 days after graduation to go to Tokyo where I knew nobody, none of my high school friend was going to this school. And then my actual senior year, I did the study abroad and then that changed everything. I was going to work for Ministry of Education at the time, but I met this woman and I fell in love, so I wanted to come back to US and I came back for graduate school. So first in New York City and then Urbana-Champaign, I got a job in Minneapolis, moved to Charlottesville, Virginia, got the offer from New York. So moved to New York, decided to go back to Charlottesville and Chicago. Just talking about my moves makes me exhausted and it's really tiring.

So it's a completely different kinds of lifestyle. So as I was pondering about the good life, which one is closer to good life, just to stay, follow sort of the well traveled path, the life of stabilities and traditions? And in my father's case, a little bit of sacrifice. He could have made a lot more money if he moved to a new city, but he didn't want to do that for his wife and children. So on the other hand, selfishly, I moved my family from city to city to sort of maximize my sort of utility and personal gain. And objectively speaking, perhaps this professional career is way more lucrative and prestigious, but deep down, am I happy? Well, at some point I wasn't that happy. That's why I moved here and there too.

So yeah, I think the stay or go is a deep, deep question. And the reason why The Clash write a famous song, << Should I stay or should I go now >> That's the classic and explore-exploit trade off is a very fundamental questions in biology, evolutionary psychology, animals and the humans. So I think that's really fundamental and there is a way to reach sort of good life, choosing the life of stability, but I think there is a way to achieve the good life through mobilities and change as well.

Dr. Elizabeth Harry:

And that mobility and change creates some of that friction that we were talking about.

Dr. Shigehiro Oishi:

Definitely.

Dr. Elizabeth Harry:

It creates maybe-

Dr. Shigehiro Oishi:

It's a trade off. So a lot of conflicts and tensions.

Dr. Elizabeth Harry:

And you call that friction or that sort of genre, psychological richness.

Dr. Shigehiro Oishi:

Yeah. I started to essentially call this life of change explorations as psychological richness because unlike life of stability, what it's gaining is the unusual, new kinds of experiences and stories. And then when you experience those things, you often learn something new. So you are constantly changing the way you see the world and so forth. And I think it is eventually very, very valuable. As I said, if you want to have wisdom, you really have to be able to take multiple perspectives. And if you don't have really diverse experiences, it is very, very difficult to take multiple perspectives. So I wanted to sort of say that yes, moving is very difficult. Sometimes it erode your social network, friendship, which really reduce your happiness and sometimes it's easier to see your contribution if you stay in one community as well. So the meaning is difficult to achieve too. But I wanted to say for a variety of reasons, people choose the life of explorations and there is something positive about that as well.

Dr. Elizabeth Harry:

Well, I just think it's so applicable to academics. I mean, raise your hand in the audience if you've moved. Yeah, so I would say that's like 98%. Yeah, and it does. There's this trade off. So for our listeners, it's like 98% of the room I'm saying raise their hand saying that they'd moved. It's a common thing in academics for this kind of quest of curiosity and trying to-

Dr. Shigehiro Oishi:

Better education, perhaps better job.

Dr. Elizabeth Harry:

Yeah. But to your point, there are trade-offs and one of them that you mentioned is belonging. And so how do you manage that trade off?

Dr. Shigehiro Oishi:

Well, I think it is very, very difficult too. You just have to sort of take as is, I think, because what I envy about my sisters who stayed also is that they still hung out with their elementary school friends, high school friends, and I'm really envious. But at the same time, instead of that, I have new kinds of experiences, new kinds of social networks and friendships. So I think it is very difficult to have both. Well, it's possible. I mean, for Americans, it's possible thing for Japanese living in the United States, very difficult. Although when I go back, I still hang out.

Dr. Elizabeth Harry:

You still see them. We moved two years ago here not knowing anyone. And what I tell my kids is, now there's just more people. We still love and care for all the people that we had before and now we have more community, which is wonderful. So you talk about the wisdom that this creates.

Dr. Shigehiro Oishi:

Sure.

Dr. Elizabeth Harry:

And so I'm curious what you've changed your mind about over your career. So something that maybe you believed early in your career about wellbeing that you have since changed your mind about.

Dr. Shigehiro Oishi:

Sure. So I studied my PhD back in 1995 working with Ed Diener, who is Dr. Happiness. And I also read Aristotle's Ethics around that time. And Ethics is essentially book one is the object of life. So what is the ultimate goal of goals? We pursue so many different things. Some people pursue money, some people pursue health, status and respect, courage, honors, and things like that. But essentially what Aristotle did is really interesting. Why are you pursuing money? And then the money is not for the sake of the money. Money is so that you can do something. Health is the same way. Courage, respect, and so forth are all essentially instrumental to get something else. So what is the ultimate goal of goal? And he said, it's happiness, because happiness is something you pursue for the sake of itself. It's not for something else.

So intrinsic goal, ultimate goal. And when I read that, I thought, wow, so happiness is the absolute ultimate goal. And then of course, Ed Diener and I, we were doing all the research about happiness and life satisfaction. So I deeply believed that. But when I got that faculty position at the University of Minnesota in 2000, my first graduate student, Mike Steger came, first meeting, "Shige, I want to do meaning in life." And I was like, "Why?" Happiness is already vague, abstract, so difficult to measure, meaning it's impossible. But then he really convinced that the meaning is really different from happiness. And I think he's right that happiness, you can have sort of sense of justifications and contentment about what you have, but in order for you to have meaning, you really have to see something tangible in a tangible way you're making a difference in the world. Maybe if you have children, then you see that through children's transformations.

If you're teaching, then students transformations and growth and something you can say, "What's the point of my existence?" "Oh, I am making some difference in this tangible way." And I think I realized that, "Oh, maybe that's something equally important as happiness." So that was a significant change there. And then 15 years, so around 2015, my 20th anniversary of studying happiness and then a 15 years anniversary of studying meaning, I realized that, well, something is still missing. And then I realized maybe psychological richness is another piece that is important to think about a good life. So I have changed my mind a lot in terms of what is good life.

And also, if you follow the literature on money and happiness, oh my gosh, that literature has changed completely from 1995. When I was in graduate school, common knowledge in the literature was that once you make money and go above the poverty line, extra money doesn't buy you any happiness. And I was so looking forward to getting a job because I was at the poverty line as a graduate student. Precisely, I was making $11,000 and then recently I converted to today's currency. It's like $23,000 a year. That's pretty rough. But then in 2006, Danny Kahneman published the science and that threshold is now $50,000, so in today's time, more or less $75,000. So I was like, okay, now I'm faculty member making a little bit over $50,000, of course, but now that's the threshold. 2010, Kahneman and Deaton came PNAS paper, now it's $100,000. And I was disturbed again, like, $100,000? That's very different from my graduate school days. And then 2021, Matt Killingsworth came out and essentially for life satisfaction, it's infinity. Goes up, up, up, up, up.

Dr. Elizabeth Harry:

And so if you're saying life satisfaction, would you put that in the happiness bucket?

Dr. Shigehiro Oishi:

Yeah. So he has measured the momentary mood of happiness and aggregation as well as life satisfactions. So my point here being that with more data, our knowledge about that, what predict happiness, how happiness is correlated with certain things change over time. And we did essentially collect data from 20 some country, from 1970s all the way. It's very interesting. Money/happiness correlation used to be like 0.1 to 0.15. In the US now, goes up to 0.25, close to 0.3.

Dr. Elizabeth Harry:

So how do you explain that? What are people using money as a gateway too? Because you mentioned it's a facilitator.

Dr. Shigehiro Oishi:

Yeah, yeah. So many things explain, but one thing we showed is that as income inequality grew, the power or role of income on happiness also grew. This is true in the United States, it is true in many of the European countries. Interesting case here, diversion, but is Latin America. From around early 2000, income inequity hasn't grown that much there. Some cases even gone down and money/happiness correlation has gone down. So back in 1990s, we were saying money/happiness correlation is much, much stronger in developing country than developed country. Now you do cross national analysis. It is in the United States and European country, the money happiness correlation is stronger. So all our knowledge about money and happiness, for instance, really changed dramatically depending on the time, history and the other things. Essentially, if you look at the happiness of the top 20% of Americans versus bottom 20% of Americans, essentially rich Americans' happiness hasn't changed that much from 1970s. What changed is really the bottom 20% of happiness. In the '70s, they were fairly happy. Now, not so much.

Dr. Elizabeth Harry:

And that top demographic didn't change presumably because of a hedonic adaptation. And could you speak to what that is?

Dr. Shigehiro Oishi:

It could be hedonic adaptations, but probably on average, a lot of which people in the '70s and '80s had a lot of work hours, 60 hours, 80 hours, lawyer, medical doctors, and that kind of thing. The demographic have changed a little bit, some trust fund kids, a lot of investment, retired person. So it used to be that rich people are also time poor. So there was a reverse sort of correlation between the time and money. Now, rich people have more time and poor people have to work two jobs, three jobs and different shift and so forth, unpredictability. So, many factors. So the gap, essentially, happiness gap between rich and poor gap, bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger in the United States and European countries.

Dr. Elizabeth Harry:

That's so fascinating. Okay. I might come back to that, but before I do, I want to make sure that we're all sort of on the same page. So we have talked about three categories. So happiness, meaning and psychological richness. So can you give us sort of a definition of each of these?

Dr. Shigehiro Oishi:

Yep. So happiness, I already mentioned that it's pretty much satisfactions and contentment. The meaning is essentially having a point of your existence. If you feel like you're making difference in the world, then probably you feel meaning in your existence and in your life. So doing something right, doing something for somebody else. Happiness is sort of feeling good about how things are going. In terms of psychological richness is something that richness in terms of a lot of interesting experiences, stories you curated and accumulated over time. So life has been interesting, even if it's difficult or sometimes painful.

Dr. Elizabeth Harry:

And do you advise sort of a balance of all three, or how do you recommend people think about these three domains?

Dr. Shigehiro Oishi:

Yeah. I think that it is really individual choice, what people want to maximize. Some people really genuinely want to maximize happiness, and that's fine, as long as they know some potential trap. And then the meaning too, if you want to dedicate yourself, make a difference in the world, that's a wonderful life. So that's fine, but there are some limitations. And then if those two are not option, then maybe psychological richness is for you and explorations and so forth. So there is a trait, of course, lack of stability, uncertainties, some challenge, danger, risks, but that might be worth it. So I think ultimately you just have to be honest to yourself. What kind of life do you want? Full of adventure or really at the end of the day you want to say, "I made a difference in the world." Or you want to really enjoy your life and comfortable. I think that's fine.

Dr. Elizabeth Harry:

And so this meaning one I find very interesting, can we make meaning and purpose interchangeable?

Dr. Shigehiro Oishi:

So I think that purpose is distinct from meaning. So meaning is this very subjective, very personal sense that you're making difference in the world. And the purpose helps, but the purpose is ultimately just a larger lifelong goal or direction. So purposeful life is that you have a sense of directions where you're going, and this is my big mission of my life. So very future oriented. In terms of meaningful life, you have to digest what you have done and what kind of difference you made. So of course, purpose help us get there, but in order for you to feel your life is meaningful, you have to see the result. That's why sometimes meaning in life is fragile. So I have a friend of mine who was the DEI officer. 10 years ago, she was feeling great, making a great improvement and difference in the world, but new administration came and essentially her efforts sort of disappeared.

All of a sudden, she couldn't feel like a meaning in her life because her efforts were sort of wasted. And sometimes parents who stake their meaning in their children, once they go to college or become independent, sometimes they feel like they lost their meaning. Retirement is the same way. You might have had tremendous amount of meaning in life through your job and career, but then once you're done, all of a sudden you feel you're lost. So there is a fragility in meaning and in a purpose, something, I mean, it's a goal and mission. So oftentimes people use it interchangeably and indeed, most meaning researchers think of purpose as one of the three key component, significance, purpose and sense of coherence, but the purpose researcher really want to use it very separate, more motivational concept. And I think the purpose is a very goal motivational concept.

Dr. Elizabeth Harry:

And so what do you see people confusing or mistaking for meaning, particularly if we're thinking about sort of high achieving either people in academics or other sort of high stakes industries?

Dr. Shigehiro Oishi:

Well, so meaning is really like you're looking at the very abstract art and trying to interpret what is going on. Your life is very complicated. So what you're doing is really intentionally putting meaning to the bits and pieces of your life. So there are lots of deception, a lot of self-centered frameworks that goes in. And sometimes, objectively speaking, unbelievable person who is making huge difference in the world don't feel subjectively that what they do has any significance. So in that sense, it's very subjective. And then it's sometimes very, very fragile. So Tolstoy, after publishing War and Peace and having loving wife and children and unbelievable property that was growing without his attention, unbelievable recognitions and respect he get, still he say, "I couldn't find any meaning, attach any meaning to any of my actions." So it is difficult.

Dr. Elizabeth Harry:

I'm curious how much of this is people confusing their identity, who they are, with what they do. Do you see some of that in this fragility that you're talking about with this sense of meaning?

Dr. Shigehiro Oishi:

So identity is an important part, especially if your identity in terms of meaning is parent, then the role disappear, then you tend to lose. Job too, you're CEO or vice president and then you're respected, you're making a difference, making an impact, that role is gone. So that identity, having other kinds of identity, and if you're making difference in other areas, that role continues and so forth, then that's easier. But the family or being parents, for instance, and the job, I think it is identity and the fragile because that identity doesn't last forever.

Dr. Elizabeth Harry:

Equally fragile.

Dr. Shigehiro Oishi:

Yeah.

Dr. Elizabeth Harry:

Yeah. Which could maybe lead to psychological richness. Let's talk about that for a little bit.

Dr. Shigehiro Oishi:

Sure.

Dr. Elizabeth Harry:

What are two to three sort of vivid examples of psychological richness or experiences that can truly shift people's perspectives?

Dr. Shigehiro Oishi:

Yeah. So I think anyone who did the study abroad, especially in the different language, I think that's a really psychologically rich experience because you're putting yourself in a very difficult situation and oftentimes you're humiliated. I still remember doing the study abroad and my roommate was Mike Giandria and I pick up the phone. Always they ask, "Is Mike there?" And then when he's not there, I say, "Can I ask who is calling?" And I can never understand who that is. So I always ask, "Oh, could you spell out your name?" And one day it was same routine, and then this person goes, "H-I-S-F-A-T-H-E-R." "Oh, H-I-S-F-A-T-H-E-R. Thank you so much." And then I realized that was Mike's father. And of course I knew his father, but in my Japanese year, his father was not "His Father". So I thought I studied Japanese for so many, not Japanese, English for so many years, and I still couldn't even understand his father.

So I was really depressed, honestly. So there are a lot of struggles like that. It happens when you do the study abroad, but I think that really, honestly, that really changed the way I view about other immigrants in the United States. As an international student, I never identified myself as an even immigrant at the time. But after these kinds of humiliating experiences, I all of a sudden realized that, "Oh, maybe they also go through that kind of experiences." So I think these are really the experiences, unless you put yourself in a brand new, very unfamiliar situation, you can never gain. And I think that is really psychologically rich.

Dr. Elizabeth Harry:

So where is the line between psychological richness and overstimulation?

Dr. Shigehiro Oishi:

Great question. So overstimulation is like going to Metropolitan Museum. So I went to Metropolitan Museum in New York City when I was 18, and I paid a fee, which was expensive. So I thought, "Okay, I have to look at everything." But essentially after 30 minutes, just looking at the Egyptian gallery, the first one, I had to just stop and sit and close my eyes because too much I cannot process. So essentially overstimulation is not psychologically rich because we cannot process. So unless new information, new stimulation is digestible and actually you can understand and help you see what you know differently, then it's not psychologically rich.

Dr. Elizabeth Harry:

So they often say, in life, you can sort of be good at one of a quadrant of things. Either your family's doing well or your fitness is doing well or your career is doing well or your social circle, but you can't have it all. Do you feel like it's the same with this model that there's happiness, there's meaning, and there's psychological richness? If you're really maximizing one, do you have to sacrifice one of the others?

Dr. Shigehiro Oishi:

Yeah. I like that for Benner's model of this thing, that you cannot have four things burning at the same time. I think at any given moment, I think there's a trade-off. If you want to maximize happiness, probably just go and talk, have a drink with your best friend is the best option. Or meaningfulness, then you want to help somebody or do something like that. And then the richness, then you want to talk to somebody new or do something else. So there is definitely trade-off at any given moment, but we have a long life. So during sometimes you can work on happiness, sometimes you can work on meaning, sometimes you can work for a richness. And I think there are some developmental shift. At some period, it's nice to explore. At some point you want to focus. Sometimes you need a comfort and rest. So to me, in the long term, you could have all three, but at any given moment, there is a trade-off.

Dr. Elizabeth Harry:

So I love this idea of the kind of over the arc of a life. And one of the things I love about your work is that you've talked about even over the arc of human history, the definition of happiness and what a good life means hasn't been stable and isn't stable across cultures. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Dr. Shigehiro Oishi:

Yeah. This is like one of my favorite paper about the concept of happiness across time and the culture. So what we did is to do the dictionary definition study of happiness in 30 countries. So essentially ask in your language like Turkish, Finnish, Japanese and Chinese and so forth, what are the words for happiness? And could you just look it up in the most authoritative dictionary in your own language and then just translate. And what was interesting was that 24 out of 30 countries, the primary definition of happiness included good luck and fortune. And if you know the Greek word for happiness is eudaimonia. "Eu", E-U is good and "daimon", so spirit, good spirits on your side. So original Greek word for happiness is also good luck and fortune, which is sort of out of your personal control. Six countries which did not have good luck and fortune definition, of course, include US.

So we looked at the Webster Unabridged Dictionary from 1800 and then interestingly, early on in the history, the primary definition of happiness was good luck and fortune. And I sent my RA to look up every edition of the Webster Unabridged Dictionary in the library. So she did. And then there was one change, big change in 1961, "Good luck and fortune, (archaic)", so no longer in use. So we then looked at the State of Union address, which we have since 1790. So we looked at every time president mentioned the word happy or happiness, what do they mean? Early on, every time they use happier happiness, it's really collective, happy condition of our country, happy condition of our beloved countries and so forth, good luck and fortunate condition. But then that drop disappeared in 1920.

The rest of them, essentially, seniors happy with their Medicare can use that. Personal satisfaction. So it changed over time. So it is very interesting that in contemporary definition of happiness often is the satisfaction of one's desires and goals, whereas classic definition is good luck and fortune. And what it does is that right now, if you are not happy, and if you take the personal satisfaction of desire and goal as a definition, then you have to blame yourself. "Well, I'm not doing well. I have to do something different." Whereas if you had the good luck and fortune definition of happiness, and then you're just unlucky, so it's not your fault. So it's a little bit easier to take your failures or not being happy. That's why if we ask pressure, how much do you feel pressure to feel happy? Americans, Brazilians, Germans and so forth say yes. Whereas Japanese, they don't feel that much pressure to feel happy.

Dr. Elizabeth Harry:

Because it's out of their hands.

Dr. Shigehiro Oishi:

Because their concept of happiness often has this good luck and fortune ingredient still.

Dr. Elizabeth Harry:

So it's not an uncommon story. It's fortunately not too common, but it's not an uncommon story that I'll speak to a physician, for example, who said, "I was good at all my classes, I got all straight A's and somebody else's definition, maybe my parents or maybe society's definition of happiness or a good life is that I go on to be a physician though. I could be a doctor or lawyer is often told to me."

Dr. Shigehiro Oishi:

Sure, sure.

Dr. Elizabeth Harry:

"And so I followed that path and now I've spent all this money and I have all this debt and I've spent all these hours and I don't feel that that path is right for me. That's not the path I would've chosen." How could somebody tell if maybe they're chasing a definition of happiness that they didn't choose or that was someone else's handed to them?

Dr. Shigehiro Oishi:

Yeah. I think there is a very, very prototypical American response to what is happiness, which is success. Oftentimes they equate personal success or career success to happiness. At least they think, "Oh, if I become a lawyer or if I become successful doctor, then I'll be happy." But what we know is that's not always the case. And what's missing here is that the happiness is not just the amount of success, but amount of success relative to your ambitions. If you're super ambitious, then denominator is huge. So the ratio will become less than one probably. Whereas if you had very modest ambition, then whatever you do is greater than ambition, then it's more than one. So that's great. So I think this is the happiness trap, and also sort of the misguided pursuit of happiness, that success will bring you happiness. But what it does actually is more of the interpersonal success that brings you more happiness, not the personal or career success.

Dr. Elizabeth Harry:

It's interesting that you say this. Some of our data sets over the years have shown burnout rates being the lowest in our neurosurgeons, which I wouldn't have guessed if you would've asked me. And I actually, I went and I asked the chair of neurosurgery at one of the universities I was at, "Why is this the case?" And he sort of spoke to your ambition, but used the word expectations. And he basically said, "Well, we know what we're signing up for and our expectations are on the floor. So if we get any time off or any time with our family, we feel like it's a win because of this very low expectation." Which really reframed how I thought about what we're striving for.

So let's think about healthcare for a minute. And we have people that are doing this deeply meaningful work and they came to do this because they really, I've read lots of admission essays for medical school and residency and it's always some version of, "I love people and I love science and I want to help people." And so they're doing this really meaningful work, but they feel depleted, maybe they feel flat. Through your lens, what's happening when life becomes really high performing, but sort of narrow?

Dr. Shigehiro Oishi:

Yeah. I think the healthcare professions really emphasize this self-sacrifice. They come to this profession because they really love helping, but I think this is the tension between personal happiness and other people's happiness. And then the meaning comes from this making other people happier, making other people's life better. But when you tilt your effort too much to one direction, then you lose personal happiness because you are exhausted. But also, I think in the today's medicine, unlike medicine 50 years ago, where you treat some patient and you see patient recover, then that's very rewarding, you see the final product. But now you meet patient 15 minutes, treat, next patient, 15 minutes, next patient. You don't see what happened to that person. And really, we are human. So when students thank you, then all of a sudden, "Oh, I did something." Otherwise, you just give a lecture and then bye, so you don't feel meaning.

But when somebody, "Oh, Professor Oishi, I took your Intro to Social Psych and that really was amazing." Then, "Oh wow, I did something." And I think in today's health professionals, you don't have enough time with patients, therefore you're not getting thanked enough. Therefore, a lot of people feel like, "I'm doing this much sacrificing my family and everything, but I feel like this became thankless job." And sometimes professor, we feel that way too, but that's the important piece I feel like that's missing and really hurts. It really prevent us from feeling like, "Okay, we're making difference in the world."

Dr. Elizabeth Harry:

I love that you're highlighting the relational aspect too, that we're humans and we need that connection. And one thing we were talking about before this conversation was that we used to really focus on teams, teams that knew each other, knew each other really well. And now we do more what's called teaming, where people come together for a moment, they come together to care for a particular patient in a particular moment and then might disperse again. And so you don't have as much time to build those relationships. And so how does that piece of that relational building fit into the model?

Dr. Shigehiro Oishi:

Yeah. I think when the team is so transient, I think you even lose interest in getting to know because unless you expect the future repeated interactions, why would you care to get to know this person? So I think by structure, you are just depriving from people opportunity to engage with each other, get to know each other at a little bit deeper level. And if you had a little bit different kinds of system, then at least yes, doing this is difficult, but you're getting to know bonding with your colleagues. And if you don't even have that, then of course you feel very isolated and very difficult to get this reconfirmation that, "Oh, you're doing great job." And mutual support is missing there. So I think it is very difficult to go on like that.

Dr. Elizabeth Harry:

Yeah. So let's briefly talk about the wellbeing, mental health overlap, because I think it's important to talk about where these overlap and where there might be limits. So your work is about wellbeing, but people here and listening and statistically, we have people in the room that would have been familiar with depression, anxiety, trauma, burnout. How do you think about the overlap between wellbeing and mental health and where are the limits of a framework like this?

Dr. Shigehiro Oishi:

So I think mental health overlap quite a bit with the word wellbeing, being well, but we used to say mental illness or depression, anxiety, trauma, and so forth is essentially ill being. And wellbeing is not just the absence of depression, absence of burnout, absence of anxiety. The wellbeing needs the positive side added. So happiness or sense of meaning or richness or something like that. So wellbeing was always net positive end, whereas mental health professional, I think eliminating the pains and difficulties was the main focus, which is of course extremely important, but that's not the end goal. And maybe you need to put people in the positive side as well. So I think that's the overlap and also some of the distinct feature.

Dr. Elizabeth Harry:

And so when you're talking about happiness and choosing the positive, how would you frame that to someone who's experiencing mental health challenges without them sort of just hearing, just be more positive?

Dr. Shigehiro Oishi:

Yeah. So I think happiness is definitely different from just simple positivity or Pollyanna. Pollyanna essentially is seeing everything in a positive way. The happy people do see the danger and avoid the danger and so forth. So it is different. So it's not just being positive all the time.

Dr. Elizabeth Harry:

And so if we were to give people kind of a two week plan to look out for creating psychological richness, if they can't do big travel, they can't really change their schedules, what are a couple of options for like a five minute version, something they could do in five minutes and maybe something they could do in 15 minutes to come up with psychological richness in their day to day?

Dr. Shigehiro Oishi:

Five minutes.

Dr. Elizabeth Harry:

Five minutes. That's all we have. We have 15 minute visits. We just talked about that.

Dr. Shigehiro Oishi:

Yeah. Five minutes. I think you want to go out of your office if there is something to look at, something you look at and try to find something new. If you had a little more, just walk outside and take a route that you haven't taken before. I think you'll notice something new and you get surprised. So that's five minutes.

Dr. Elizabeth Harry:

Yeah, yes.

Dr. Shigehiro Oishi:

What's the next one?

Dr. Elizabeth Harry:

15.

Dr. Shigehiro Oishi:

15 minutes. 15 minutes. What can you do in 15 minutes? I think you can talk to somebody and learn something new.

Dr. Elizabeth Harry:

And maybe someone that doesn't think like you, if possible.

Dr. Shigehiro Oishi:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The person you haven't talked to and ask some interesting questions, favorite book, favorite film.

Dr. Elizabeth Harry:

Okay. What's something a team could do?

Dr. Shigehiro Oishi:

I think team, like when I do the, essentially just a seminar type of teaching, and if students already know each other, then what I always do is just tell everybody that something other people haven't known about you.

Dr. Elizabeth Harry:

That they would have no idea about you.

Dr. Shigehiro Oishi:

No idea about you. And then that really always just crack me up.

Dr. Elizabeth Harry:

Because of the questions or the things they share?

Dr. Shigehiro Oishi:

Yeah. "I have donkey." What? I mean, lots of interesting things they have that they haven't talked about before. So those are the kinds of things. Actually from your close friends, even your spouse, if you ask something, sometime you discover unbelievable things. I didn't know about my wife like 15, 20 years in the relationship when I said, "Oh, I want to put some painting on my living room." Because we were always minimalist, we didn't put anything. And then she says, "Oh, I can paint." And I'm like, "What? I've never seen you paint."

Dr. Elizabeth Harry:

How did I not know that?

Dr. Shigehiro Oishi:

"How did I not know that?" And then she just painting and painting. And sometimes you learn something new from the old as well. So you just have to ask right questions or right moment.

Dr. Elizabeth Harry:

And so what's a question, a reflection or a question that we can ask ourselves that would help us identify if a dimension is missing or if our life has gotten a little too narrow in terms of these dimensions?

Dr. Shigehiro Oishi:

Yeah. I think you can just frankly ask yourself, how happy are you? How was the week? How much enjoyment did you have? And then if you can say yes, then that's sort of checked. How meaningful was the week? Check. How interesting was psychological rich was it? Check or not check. And I think you can sort of evaluate what might be missing.

Dr. Elizabeth Harry:

Amazing. So we promised we would save time for questions, so we can do that now. So are we going to try the QR code or just having people...

Jeremy Fallis:

It seems like people want happiness and more meaning in life, but is it true of psychological richness as well? Is a greater amount of psychological richness better?

Dr. Shigehiro Oishi:

We haven't empirically tested that question. So in terms of happiness, there is essentially sort of the optimal level. If you want to make a lot of money, then you don't want to be too happy. So we have longitudinal study showing at age 18, essentially that maximumly happy people did not make a lot of money. Moderately happy people made more money. Also, education, the highest education, where they went, it's not the happiest people, but the moderately happy people went farthest. But in terms of relationship, the stable relationship, the happier you are, more stable you are. So positive illusions in relationships and so forth.

So there are different sort of optimal level depending on the area. Of course, Michael Jordan was never fully happy. That's why he practice, practice, practice. So for the performance and achievement domain, you don't want to be completely happy, but in terms of relationship, that is good to be completely happy. And the meaning we don't know either, but the richness, probably there is certain point where it's not as-

Audience:

Optimal level of stimulation.

Dr. Shigehiro Oishi:

Optimal level, yeah, stimulation, of course, and richness itself. I think after that, probably the functional value of having more richness is not that great.

Jeremy Fallis:

One thing I found most interesting and new was meaning is context dependent. Meaning is enabled by some feedback from the environment. So I did something, generally assessed that this is great work. Or if I say I do something for my student and they send me some note that says, "I was very grateful, blah, blah, blah." That creates meaning. That creates an interesting future problem where you are facing, say, for example, retirement or changing jobs or moving, or even you may get a very lucrative offer from another university. You may even consider moving to a different part of the country or even the world. How can we prepare ourselves?

Dr. Shigehiro Oishi:

Yeah. So I think if you want to have a little more stable meaning in life, then you shouldn't put everything in one basket. And then you have to know that certain kinds of meaning has certain limited endpoint. So I think that the devotion to your family or something like that might be a little bit more permanent than the job, for instance, our one relationship as opposed to multiple relationships, but it is very, very difficult to have a meaning when you are constantly moving or in transition.

Jeremy Fallis:

What are some ways that the person who doesn't have the privilege to pursue a diverse range of experiences in life can still leverage a psychologically rich life?

Dr. Shigehiro Oishi:

Very good questions. So of course, study abroad is very expensive. Traveling is very expensive. So how can you build a psychologically rich life without spending that much money? So I hope many of you know the movie Good Will Hunting. Am I too old? Maybe I'm too old. So the main character, Will Hunt, is a janitor, and then he has great line. Essentially, why would you pay $150,000 for higher educations when all it cost is $1.50 in overdue in public library? So if you don't have afford higher education, of course you can learn a lot of stuff in public library. When I spent my first sabbatical in 2007, spring of 2007 in Buenos Aires, that was right after IMF crisis, there are lots of homeless people and unemployment. Every morning I worked in this corner coffee shop. Monday, Wednesday, Friday, this father-son pair comes with rickshaw and then it's a trash day.

So they come and go through trash and then it is really amazing, always the kid find something and, "[foreign language] I found something, Papa." And then they put, and then go on. So essentially there are lots of discovery of unexpected object in terms of scavenger hunting. So I mean, of course, I'm not encouraging you to go out there and do that, but my point is that even if you're in a very difficult conditions, the world is really amazing. I mean, there are so many things you can discover. So essentially, I think there are ways to enrich your life without spending any money. If you're commuting by train, just on the way back, just get off in the one station before and explore the new neighborhood. You find something really interesting. If you're driving, just get off the one exit earlier and see different parts of the town, you might see something different. So you can do a lot of things without spending money, but money and time definitely can be very helpful, for sure, for sure.

Jeremy Fallis:

I need practical advice. You said, "What is it like to check whether my life is happy enough or meaningful enough or rich enough maybe for every day?" Don't tell me I have to do every hour, but maybe at the end of the day I can check. Does that really work?

Dr. Shigehiro Oishi:

Yeah. If you are concerned, if you want to see whether something is missing, but I'm anti-to-do list person. And then in terms of scheduling too, just make sure to have some free time every day because to-do list is really productivity orientations and you're caught up with the, "I just have to do just things to do." So I wouldn't recommend to actually do, "Am I happy? My life meaningful?" All the time, those monitoring is not necessarily healthy. Yeah, that could totally backfire. So my suggestion is occasionally maybe you want to stop and reflect upon your life. And I was doing that during my midlife crisis when I was 45. So you can do that once in a while, but not necessarily every day. And I think the monitoring too much is actually anti-wellbeing.

Jeremy Fallis:

One little advice I need, I go to a classical music concert at Hill Auditorium to enhance the richness of my life. And I go to my lab to get some meaning from my graduate students. I go to wonderful restaurants in downtown to get some sense of happiness. Now, this kind of segmentation, is that really a good plan or is it more important to ensure that there's some minimum overlap of some ways so that in principle I can enrich my life by being very curious about what I'm studying? So in that case, I can integrate my richness requirement, my meaningfulness requirement. Even you can add this to some happiness too. So I can imagine that neither is really perfect, but is there any practical suggestions or some research even into some efforts to combine?

Dr. Shigehiro Oishi:

Essentially that having a very close friend or spouse is really, really helpful, not just in terms of the happiness meaning, but the richness too. When you go to classical music concert, and if you do that with your friend or your spouse, then what's rich about it is after you come back, you can always talk about it. And week later, "Oh, remember that Chopan? That was really amazing." And those conversations are the one that help you accumulate essentially in the memory. And psychological richness really need this story and memory and your students or your friends and somebody with whom you can talk about your experiences and somebody who listen and ask this question, those are really, really helpful. And those are the things that also cross over to happiness and the meaning as well. So I would say as anything in life, when you do it with somebody else, that sticks with you much more extended period of time and essentially, it's perhaps more efficient to also buy happiness meaning, not just richness.

Jeremy Fallis:

I have one question from a student. So today you have discussed research inspired by philosophy, economics, history, and so on. How do you think about inspiration from other disciplines to generate new ideas in psychology? So this is a research question. Is it uniquely applicable to the study of happiness and wellbeing, or is it more general? And how do you suggest graduate students go about integrating other disciplines?

Dr. Shigehiro Oishi:

I think it's really the struggle because the time is finite. Everybody has 24 hours, we have to sleep, so we cannot be reading everything. But at the same time, we are not going to be efficient and productive 24 hours a day. So what I like to do is, of course, there are things that I have to read, that I have to do, but in my spare time, I really like reading novels and some other disciplines book. And some of my friends, the faculty friends often tell me, "I feel guilty reading novel because I should be reading more journal articles or learning some skills." And to me, that's really the compartmentalization. I don't feel like I'm wasting time at all when I read New York Times or novels and Adam Smith and Karl Marx and things of that nature. And I always think, "Oh, I might find something interesting and I might be able to come up with some new research ideas."

So I think we want to have a little more playful or relaxed attitude about reading in general or spending time in general. And that's the wonderful thing about research. Anything could be a source of inspiration. Any conversation could be a source of inspirations. That's why I think I like it. And actually it was Dick Nisbett who wrote in the American psychologist that you shouldn't be reading just JPSP, just read some literatures and so forth. That's where you should be finding inspiration from. And I really love that. So I justify, Nisbett said that, so I can just read novel.

Jeremy Fallis:

So a few things which are not discussed, but probably related to happiness or richness or maybe meaningfulness, one is the role of gratitude, and the other one is the role of religion.

Dr. Shigehiro Oishi:

Gratitude, being grateful for what you have is really important for happiness. There's a huge correlation there and also huge correlation with meaning in life. And religiosity and religion, many religions really emphasize importance of gratitude. So therefore, those three things or four things are sort of interrelated. In terms of richness, I think it is good to have gratitude, but at the same time, some sense of gratitude, "Oh, I should be grateful for what I have." Is sort of justification of what you do and what you have. So sometimes I think too much gratitude might be just restraining you from going different directions.

Empirically though, we found that the religious people were happier, higher meaning in life, and psychologically richer as well, which was surprising to me. But then we looked at the time used survey data and it was very interesting. On Sunday, non-religious people, what are they doing? They're at home watching TV or doing video games. Religious people are going out there meeting people and socializing. So I think that's the part of the richness as well, that if your religion or attitude of gratitude and so forth push you to go out there and explore the world, then that should also contribute to psychological richness, not just happiness and meaning.

Jeremy Fallis:

What strategies have you seen people use to maintain or rediscover their sense of purpose when many of the challenges they face such as bureaucratic pressures or institutional policies are largely outside their control?

Dr. Shigehiro Oishi:

I think that's where having the sense that a lot of things we can do, we can accomplish is not just a function of how much effort we put or how much talent we have, but a lot to do with the opportunities, timing and luck. So I think for people like that, I just want to emphasize that there are lots of luck factor. There's something you can do, something you cannot do. And I hope this person is kinder to themselves and just focus on what they have accomplished and also think counterfactually, if I stop here, the world is a better place. Or if I keep going, the world is better place. As long as if you're not bound out, if you still have energy, then I think that's a good counterfactual to think about.

Jeremy Fallis:

High performers are driven by meaning and psychological richness. Employers and the institutions leverage their drive for their bottom line. How can we create guardrails to counteract this for high performers to mitigate the risk of burnout and attrition?

Dr. Shigehiro Oishi:

Yeah. So that's where I think that scheduling is really important. And I hope organizations also recognize the importance of how the people, the workers can manage their time. And of course there's a minimum amount of time they have to work, but if they can give some free time or sort of the team socializing time together, like every morning, wouldn't it be nice if we can start the work together, do some stretch or dance together and then go on or something like that? I mean, there's so many things we can actually do to alleviate some of the pressure. I mean, we are so serious. We are so focused on how to accomplish things. So we just need to remember five years old ourselves and try to approach our job as a five years old and try to incorporate playfulness as much as possible. Then talking to your colleagues and students become a little bit more enjoyable perhaps as well.

Dr. Elizabeth Harry:

Yeah. We'll kind of close, but it strikes me too that the way you're sort of describing it is holding it like an egg. You don't want to hold it too tight because you'll crush it. And we do, we put so much pressure on happiness or meaning or even psychological richness I could see being something that people then hold really tightly and this idea of holding it lightly so we don't crush it.

Dr. Shigehiro Oishi:

So there was the Washington Post article about psychological richness and the commentaries are really interesting. A lot of people say positive things. One cynical guy say, "Oh, I was failing in happiness. I was failing in meaning. Now you're saying I'm failing in psychological richness too. Thank you." So I don't want to put as a third dimension as a third dimension to fail rather I want it then to feel like, okay, at least one of the three they can achieve, but of course you can interpret this in that way as well. So I don't want to put the pressure. Really, this is whatever, this is your life. So you have to choose what kind of life you want to design, what do you want to maximize? And there are a variety of ways to go about it. And that's really the whole point of my book.

Dr. Elizabeth Harry:

Well, Shige, thank you so much. I love how your framework gives people permission to define a good life more honestly and authentically without pretending that one dimension sort of fits everyone or every season. Thank you all for being here and for all the work that you do. This conversation will be released on the Well-Being at Michigan Medicine Podcast. So if you want to share it with a friend or a colleague who might have enjoyed it, you'll have the link once it goes live and you can share that. And so one last thing, if listeners remember only one idea from tonight, what do you want it to be?

Dr. Shigehiro Oishi:

There are multiple paths to a good life and good luck.

Dr. Elizabeth Harry:

I love that. That's beautiful. Thanks again and thank you everyone. Take care.

Dr. Shigehiro Oishi:

Thank you so much.