The Third Path to a Good Life: What Viktor Frankl and New Research Teach Us About Meaning Beyond Happiness
- Hannah
- Nov 10
- 5 min read
Why True Fulfillment Comes from Curiosity, Challenge, and Lived Experience
A good life is not built solely on happiness or even clear purpose. New research and the timeless wisdom of Viktor Frankl suggest a third path: a psychologically rich life. This path embraces complexity, growth, and meaning found through both joy and struggle. It is not about feeling good all the time, but about being fully alive to every season of life.
The Ground We’ll Cover
In this post, we’ll explore:
What new research reveals about the three paths to a good life: happiness, meaning, and psychological richness
How Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning echoes this modern understanding
Why the pursuit of happiness alone can feel hollow and unfulfilling
How the psychologically rich life deepens presence, faith, and personal growth
A reflective practice to help you find meaning in your own unfolding story
My Psychological Wealth
I would not call myself wealthy, at least not in the way the world defines it. For years, I was caught in the endless pursuit of “happiness.” I checked every box the world told me would lead there: the career, the house, the relationships, the investments. I even did the deep work, healing old wounds, breaking patterns, confronting the parts of myself I used to avoid. And still, the peace I chased always seemed just out of reach. I would get frustrated when I “backslid,” as if healing were a straight line instead of a spiral.
We spend so much of life chasing what we have been told defines a good life: happiness, success, and purpose. We plan, strive, and self-improve, hoping that peace will meet us on the other side of achievement.
Last weekend, my mom and I were antiquing, one of our favorite things to do, when we found a sign that read, “Evaluation for Disturbed Women, Ward B.” We laughed, as did a few women browsing nearby. It was one of those shared, knowing laughs that said, we have all been through something.
It struck me how much the world has changed. Mental health, once whispered about behind closed doors, is now recognized as valuable and human. But what if we went further? What if we began to define our lives not by comfort or accomplishment, but by the growth we have earned, the lessons we have lived, and the ways we have changed?
That is what new research, featured in the Washington Post’s “How to Live a Good Life,” invites us to consider. For decades, psychology has recognized two main paths to fulfillment: a happy life, defined by comfort and joy, and a meaningful life, rooted in purpose and service.
Now, researchers have added a third, a psychologically rich life, one shaped by curiosity, depth, and growth. A life that stretches us through both beauty and pain.
Holocaust survivor and author Eddie Jaku, in The Happiest Man on Earth, wrote that knowledge and learning kept him alive in the darkest places. He believed that growth, mental, emotional, and spiritual, was the quiet current beneath true happiness.
Perhaps psychological richness is what he was pointing to all along: a life expanded by what we learn, softened by what we endure, and deepened by what we choose to see.
A life that admits both beauty and pain and lets them coexist.
When the Pursuit of Happiness Starts to Feel Hollow
We live in a culture that tells us to choose happiness at all costs. Think positive, stay grateful, and keep moving.
But happiness is fleeting. It comes and goes like sunlight through leaves. When it fades, we often assume something is wrong with us. We search for the next goal, the next achievement, the next fix.
Perhaps the loss of happiness is not a failure. Perhaps it is an invitation to depth. The psychologically rich life asks not, “How can I be happier?” but, “How can I grow from what I am living through?”
Viktor Frankl and the Power of Meaning
Viktor Frankl, psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor, captured this truth long before modern research confirmed it. In Man’s Search for Meaning, he wrote:
“Those who have a ‘why’ to live can bear almost any ‘how.’”
Frankl taught that even in the darkest circumstances, we have the freedom to choose our attitude and find meaning in suffering. Meaning gives shape to pain. It turns chaos into coherence.
And meaning does not always look grand. Sometimes it is found in the smallest things: when you choose to walk away from a relationship where you were not valued, work less to build a firm foundation with family, or journal your pain instead of picking up the bottle. It is the little times where you do a bit better than the last - you see the smallest growth.
The Third Path: Psychological Richness
The Washington Post highlights the third dimension as essential for well-being. Psychological richness grows when we embrace variety, challenge, and change. It is not a rejection of happiness or meaning, but a reminder that a full life holds all three.
A rich life might look like:
Letting grief reveal what truly matters
Starting over when an old path no longer fits
Allowing curiosity to lead, even when it feels uncertain
The good life is not the easiest one; it is the most honest.
Why This Matters for the Soul
If you have ever whispered, “I thought I would be happier by now,” you are not alone.
The good life is not about constant positivity. It is about embracing and being open to what life is teaching you now. Recovery author, Melody Beattie calls it “the gift of the lesson”, that even painful or confusing experiences can become meaningful when viewed through the lens of growth and surrender; life teaches us through contrast, and healing comes not by avoiding hardship but by integrating its wisdom.
Frankl called it meaning. Modern psychology calls it psychological richness. All are saying the same thing: the good life is found not by avoiding pain, but by integrating it. That is where depth is born, faith takes root, and the soul begins to breathe again.
Count Your Psychological Wealth
Take a few quiet minutes to reflect:
What experiences, pleasant or painful, have shaped you most this year?
How have they changed what you value, or what a good life means to you?
You do not have to chase happiness to find a meaningful life. You only have to stay present, allowing every experience, even the hard ones, to grow you into someone more whole.
The good life is not somewhere out there waiting to be earned. It is the one you are living, when you slow down long enough to be here for it.
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💛 Hannah
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