Being rich and being wealthy are two different things. Here are some key differences between the two:

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• Being rich means having a lot of possessions and material wealth, while being wealthy is more about having sustainable and lasting wealth.
  
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• Rich people may focus more on spending and maintaining a certain lifestyle, while wealthy people may prioritize accumulating assets that produce income or appreciate in value.
  
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• Being rich is often associated with having a high income and flashy possessions, while being wealthy is more about having financial independence and the ability to maintain a certain lifestyle without worrying about money.
  
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• A rich person is someone who earns more than half a million per year but doesn’t invest their money. A wealthy person, on the other hand, could have a relatively small salary yet have millions of dollars invested in real estate, stocks, and various assets.
  
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• Rich people use their money to increase their personal consumption, while wealthy people use their money to produce positive results in themselves and the people around them.

Key points

• The psychologically rich life differs from the existing hedonic-eudaimonic dichotomy in a number of ways.
• A psychologically rich life comprises novel, complex and interesting experiences that change our perspective.
• The stories that we accumulate and share with others are the currency of our psychological wealth.

Instructions for living a life.
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.
—Mary Oliver
Psychologist Shige Oishi had been studying happiness for 20 years, when one summer, he decided to pause and take stock of the wealth of accumulated research. Among his biggest insights was the role our connections with others played in the quality of our lives. The science was equally clear: although well-being had many renditions, the good life—the one common elusive aspiration that humans around the world shared—followed two main hedonic and eudaimonic pathways. Our relationships were implicated in both.
Yet even as Oishi examined his own auspicious circumstances, the story felt incomplete. There had to be more to a good life than obtaining happiness and meaning. Oishi’s inklings were confirmed by his students, the protagonists of Nietzsche and Hesse, and the stories of natural disaster survivors, whom Oishi calls the forgotten people of the well-being literature. The good life, it appeared, was still within reach, even when happiness and meaning weren’t.
To make the conceptual space of the well-lived life more inclusive, Oishi proposed the dimension of psychological richness. Characterized by a variety of novel, complex, and perspective-changing experiences (that weren’t necessarily happy or meaningful), the psychologically rich life could capture the kaleidoscopic nature of the human adventure in its majesty, malaise, and everything in between.

Three Flavors of a Good Life: Happy, Meaningful, Psychologically Rich

As a distinct, yet correlated dimension of a good life, the psychologically rich life differs from the existing hedonic-eudaimonic dichotomy in a number of ways. For example, if the emphasis of a happy life is on positive emotions and security, and the emphasis of a meaningful life is on purpose and coherence, then the hallmarks of a psychologically rich life are variety, interest, and perspective (Oishi & Westgate, 2021).
If a positive mindset facilitates a happy life, and moral principles facilitate a meaningful life, then curiosity and spontaneity will facilitate a psychologically rich life. If the outcome of a happy life is personal satisfaction and the outcome of a meaningful life is societal contribution, then the outcome of a psychologically rich life, according to Oishi, is wisdom.

About the Author

Marianna Pogosyan, Ph.D., is a lecturer in Cultural Psychology and a consultant specializing in cross-cultural transitions