Three Types of Good Life

I read an interesting article today - Psychologists say a good life doesn’t have to be happy, or even meaningful.

It mentioned three types of a good life. The two common "good life" are 1) hedonic - the socially recognized life where people have a good job and a good family. 2) eudaimonic - doing things for greater goods, where people feel meaningful and connected by making the world a better place.

The third one is called psychologically rich With a pretty refreshing definition: interesting experiences in which novelty and/or complexity are accompanied by profound changes in perspective.

Examples including study abroad, having a difficult new career path, or hardship, as those tend to be transformative experiences.

Novelty and complexity alone are not enough, it needs to be profound as well. Novelty but not profound reminded me of my life in NYC. It has all the entertainment you can find on Earth. A dank restaurant or bar on every corner of the street serving creative dishes and cocktails; you can find the best instructors and communities for any kind of niche sports; endless new shows with the newest technology happening every weekend. Then it gets old.

My most recent experience that resulted in profound changes in perspective was my time at Mars College. A co-living place in the desert with techy and artsy people. I learned so many different perspectives on human psychology, group dynamics, and in that chaotic and melting-pot-like environment. I also developed a deep and intimate connection with a person and as result know much more about myself and experienced a much wider range of emotions that I have never known that they exist.

Most importantly, I start to realize what I am really passionate about after the 3 months at Mars College interacting and experiencing different forms of art and technology. The job I was doing back then became unbearable. I made another decision that brings me a profound change in perspective - quitting my job and trying to get into the world of web3.

The Hardship and the Difficult New Career Path

I'm low-key scared that I'm unemployed while doing my passion project, but also at the same time felt a little bit excited. I made about a third of my after-tax income in my prior company and start to have a much more specific and granular perception of money. I came to realize that doing meaningless work that pays well actually affects a person's sensitivity to the value of things. The money I receive is so abstract that it didn't really make sense to me how much a hundred-dollar bill actually means to other people. I could easily spend a couple of hundreds of dollars on a meal just to make myself feel a little bit better after exhausting work. But now I have a much more concrete concept about money. $10 fancy ice cream can break down into 3 delicious home-cooking meals. $200 is equivalent to a third of the rent in Florida. With $2500 expense per month, one can live fairly well in any of the big cities in the U.S.. $10,000 dollars of an NFT is worth a whole immigration attorney fee than just an NFT pass to a hype digital club.

I became ultra conscious when I look at those mundane but essential things in our life such as the food in the grocery shop, realizing so much of my money was spent in vain in the past. I start to appreciate the existence of a shelter, delicious home-cooked food, unlimited water, fast wifi, and AC that runs on electricity. I still trying to be generous about buying gifts for the people I cared about, but much more conscious about the items that can actually connect people and make people feel happy than just playing the money game.

The difficult new career path toward web3 or a clearer correlation between the work I do and the impact I have on the world is also mind-expanding. I'm no longer a vessel that contains certain skills a company needs, I'm an alive human being that actively and creatively uses technology to build a product I envisioned. That's a big reversal of the master-servant relationship.

The Motivation of My Life

Looking back on my life, I was lucky enough to have a mentor (I called him shīfu in Chinese) who is always able to inspire me with new perspectives when I was puzzled by life events. The second biggest source of inspiration is various books (mostly about humanity, psychology, or anthropology), where I can always find an explanation for what has happened to me. I always get super excited when I can apply the knowledge from the book to myself and other people's behavior and emotions. When I was in those realization moments, I can be excited for days and forget about "trying to find meaning in my life".

After getting back from Mars College, I have been living a rather peaceful life with my partner. Even though we had some fights, we also learned a lot from those fights and what causes them. Some of the fights came from the difference in our motivation mechanism. I was a more present-oriented person and he is more future-oriented. In other words, I am easily contented and able to enjoy happiness moment by moment whereas he needs to constantly push himself to find the next appealing challenge to stay excited. That doesn't mean, however, that I don't crave novel and profound experiences.

At the beginning of the month, my partner traveled to Portugal and worked with a bunch of interesting people on a project but I have to stay in the U.S. due to various hard limits. I must say that I really wanted to be there as well. The new natural environments, new places to walk to with cool architecture, and the new cultural perspective very different from the U.S., the famous Waking Life music festival, the delicious and novel foreign cuisine. It would be a big pleasure to enjoy all of these with my partner.

Even though this type of short-term separation can bring some new insights and emotions about our relationship in a different context, unnecessary suffering would still be something that I trying to avoid.

As much as that famous quote "things that don't kill you make you stronger" where it trying to worship the inevitable difficulties in life, I disagree with justifying suffering as an important part of the growth of a person. Note that random suffering is different from the discomfort raised from voluntary challenges. For example, to be extremely good at skiing, one has to pay a big price through training, but most of the time, the positive feedback loop is greater than the temporary pain they have to went through. The suffering I mentioned here is mostly the uncontrollable suffering caused by society. For example, lost all the money earned throughout life to a lawsuit due to an unfair judicial system. Not able to meet the loved ones in person again because of political issues (e.g. refugees). Or constantly in fear of not being treated fairly in society (e.g. gender/racial inequality). Those are still sufferings that didn't kill you and there are countless more uncontrollable sufferings and misfortunes that actually killed so many people and leave their loved ones in forever pain. I would never want them to be justified.

Back to the motivation part, being with my partner is such a nourishing experience, and it has so much energy that it automatically motivates me to move on with my life. But I also know that this is not the whole puzzle for us. “A significant reason neither a happy life nor a meaningful life captures the full range of human motivation is that both happy and meaningful lives can be monotonous and repetitive." We are both seeking psychological richness in one way or another. We are both not content with having a traditional corporate job, and we both like to do things that look more interesting to us than if it has a meaningful impact on this world. It doesn't mean that other forms of the good life are not important because for "someone whose life is good, it tends to be good in many ways, not just in one way". The peace of mind when I don't have to worry about ending up on the street, or the good feeling after helping other people are both essential parts of a good life.

However, the foundation of my motivation always starts from loving and nourishing relationships, no matter if it's from friendship, parents, or a loving partner. Only then will I have the capacity to develop other dimensions of my life.

What's the foundation of your motivation?

What are your weights on each type of a good life?