Life in Three Dimensions
How Curiosity, Exploration, and Experience Make a Fuller, Better Life
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4.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $5.99
Publisher Description
A NEXT BIG IDEA CLUB MUST-READ BOOK • From one of our foremost psychologists, a trailblazing book that turns the idea of a good life on its head and urges us to embrace the transformative power of variety and experience • The guidebook to the pyshologically rich life
“Dr. Oishi’s enthusiasm for a big and bold existence is infectious” —The Wall Street Journal
"Life in Three Dimensions will give you new insights into the many ways to live well, including advice on how to pick the one most likely to be right for you." —Jonathan Haidt, author of The Anxious Generation
Shigehiro Oishi's father has lived his entire life in a small mountain town in Japan. But as a young man Oishi felt compelled to follow a winding road that led him far from home. He became an award-winning psychology professor, seeking to know which path—to stay or to go, the familiar or the unknown, his father’s path or his own—is the better path to a good life. In Life in Three Dimensions, Oishi shares his journey of discovery and offers readers a groundbreaking new understanding of happiness.
What makes for a good life, he asks? Is it the simple, predictable pleasures we call happiness? Or can happiness lead to complacency and regret? Is the answer a deep sense of meaning and purpose? Or can a life of purpose invite narrow or misplaced loyalties? Both happiness and meaning as paths to a good life have decades of scientific research to support them. But in recent years, Oishi has uncovered a third dimension to a good life, psychological richness. A psychologically rich life prioritizes curiosity, exploration, and a variety of experiences. These can be as simple as taking a walk, as complex as moving to a new country. Key to a psychologically rich experience is a shift in perspective that helps us grow.
Life in Three Dimensions explores lives defined by psychological richness: those of prominent people like Steve Jobs, Oliver Sacks and Alison Gopnik; characters from literature and film; and ordinary people who--in college, at midlife, and beyond--embraced uncertainty and challenge to deepen and enrich their lives. In this wise and delightful book, Oishi shows how anyone at any age can build a fuller, more authentic life.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A fulfilling life means embracing uncertainty, unpredictability, and adversity, according to this energetic guide from psychologist Oishi (The Psychological Wealth of Nations). Critiquing the idea that life should be measured exclusively by happiness (which fluctuates according to things beyond a person's control) or meaning (which can promote an unhelpful single-mindedness), Oishi argues that accumulating positive and negative experiences builds "psychological richness," which adds depth to one's life by broadening their emotional and intellectual horizons. Readers can live such a life by embracing challenges, learning new things, and being spontaneous (examples of the latter range from taking a detour on the way home to having an unexpected encounter with a stranger). While the many case studies of people who've lived psychologically rich lives—among them Steve Jobs, economist Daniel Kahneman, and a taxi driver who donated a kidney to her ex husband—give the narrative a somewhat repetitive feel, Oishi lucidly explains his research and maintains an appealingly upbeat tone throughout. It's a worthwhile reminder to take the road less traveled.
