Many clients come to coaching for help building richer and more vital lives. This process involves identifying the components they need for a life of meaning and purpose, energy and spirit.

The recipe for a vital life is different for each of us. Professor Lorraine Besser, author of The Art of the Interesting: What We Miss in Our Pursuit of the Good Life and How to Cultivate It and a moral philosopher at Middlebury College in Vermont, says that one important ingredient to a "good life" is psychological richness.

A psychologically rich life includes experiences that are novel, complex, and perspective-changing. These are encounters that stretch or expand us. These occurrences help us develop new skills, grow intellectually or emotionally, and see the world in new ways. Psychologically rich experiences involve variety and curiosity about the world around us.

In his studies of people who rank high on scales of life satisfaction, University of Chicago psychologist Shigehiro Oishi found that the most fulfilled people "live psychologically rich lives, full of novelty, challenges, and transformative experiences."

In my own life, travel, reading, and seizing opportunities to get to know people whose lives are different from my own has been a huge source of psychological richness.

Sometimes psychologically rich experiences involve stepping far outside my comfort zone. For example, drawing and watercolor painting are activities I pursue occasionally. Often they are sources of temporary frustration because I don't have an artist's eye nor an artist's ability to reproduce what I see in my mind's eye. I'll never be more than a casual artist, but every time I take the time to create an image, I feel like I see new layers in the world around me. And seeing those layers deepens my experience of life.

What about you? What are the psychologically rich experiences that add satisfaction to your life? Do you need to be making time for more of them?