The big idea: What’s the real key to a fulfilling life?

For centuries, we’ve pursued happiness and meaning. But what does that leave out?

What if I told you that we could all be rich? Not in dollars or pounds, yen or rupees, but a completely different type of currency. A currency measured in experiences, adventures, lessons learned and stories told. As a social psychologist, I have dedicated my research career to a simple, but universal question: what makes for a good life, and how can we achieve it? For much of human history, we have been presented with two possibilities: pursuing a life of happiness, or a life of meaning. Each of these paths has its benefits and proponents, but decades of psychological research have also revealed their limits.

The current cultural conception of happiness, for example, can work against us finding fulfilment. Historically, happiness tended to be defined as the result of “good luck” and “fortune”. Today many expect it to come from individual effort and success. But this, in turn, makes unhappiness and negative emotions such as sadness or anger seem like personal failures.

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