Whose Version of a Good Life Are You Living?
There are so many ways to measure whether we’re doing well. A successful career. A full calendar. A home that looks a certain way. Children who are thriving. Healthy habits that somehow appear effortless. None of these things is necessarily bad. But it’s possible to spend a great deal of energy pursuing a picture of a good life without stopping to ask whether it’s your picture.
As a psychologist, I’m interested in how our ideas about living well take shape. We make choices as individuals, but we make them while surrounded by other people’s choices, expectations, and definitions of success.
That’s part of what I find so fascinating about social psychology. Other people help us learn what’s possible, what’s expected, and what seems worth pursuing. A friend’s choice might give us courage to try something new. A family tradition might give us a sense of belonging. But the same influences can make it hard to tell when an expectation still fits us and when we’re carrying it simply because it has always been there.
The comparisons we barely notice
Social comparison isn’t just something that happens when we scroll through social media. We do it in ordinary moments, often without realizing it. In a 2024 study that checked in with women in midlife throughout their days, comparisons sometimes left women feeling encouraged and sometimes discouraged. The difference depended, in part, on whether they saw another person’s experience as a possibility for themselves or as evidence that they were falling short. Comparison can give us ideas and inspiration. It can also turn someone else’s life into a measuring stick for our own.
For women, the measuring sticks can be especially numerous- and sometimes contradictory: Be ambitious, but available to everyone. Take care of yourself, but don’t spend too much time or money doing it. Be an involved mother, but maintain your own identity. Embrace aging, but keep looking young. Enjoy this stage of life, but make sure you’re preparing for the next one.
Even choices that seem personal can become comparisons. You might wonder why a friend appears energized by a busy social calendar when yours leaves you drained. You might feel behind because someone your age has reached a career milestone, bought a home, found a partner, or discovered a new purpose. Or you might look at another woman’s morning routine and decide you’re doing wellness “wrong” before your own day has even begun.
I’ve held many roles over the years- researcher, professor, Montessori teacher, parent educator, tennis coach, and now founder of Serenta. I’m also a mother of two grown daughters. Those experiences have given me more than one way to think about a meaningful life. They’ve also made me curious about how readily we can assume there is one correct path through adulthood.
What looks good and what feels meaningful
Research on motivation offers another way to think about this. A review of more than 100 studies found that goals involving personal growth, relationships, community, and health tended to go hand in hand with greater well-being. Goals involving status, wealth, or appearance weren’t automatically harmful; the concern was strongest when those became a person’s main measure of a good life. That doesn’t mean we should give up ambition. It gives us a reason to ask: Do I want this because it matters to me, or because I’ve learned it’s what success is supposed to look like?
A promotion might reflect work you love and want to keep doing. It might also be something you feel you should want because the people around you expect you to keep climbing. Hosting every family gathering might bring you joy- or it might be a role you’re afraid to set down. A fitness goal might help you feel strong and capable, or it might come from the belief that your body needs to meet someone else’s standard.
The action itself doesn’t tell us the whole story. What matters is whether it fits your values, needs, and circumstances.
Self-determination theory adds a related idea: our well-being is supported when we have a sense of choice, connection, and growing capability. A life can look impressive from the outside while leaving little room for what feels freely chosen on the inside.
Lately, I’ve been learning pottery. I’m a beginner, and that is part of its appeal. I don’t need pottery to become an accomplishment or prove anything about me. I can simply be interested, show up, and see what happens at the wheel. It’s a small example, but it reminds me that something can matter because I enjoy doing it- not because it belongs on a list of impressive things I’ve done.
A question worth asking
If you’re feeling pulled toward a change, you don’t have to dismiss every expectation you’ve ever held or reinvent your life overnight. You can begin by getting curious about one goal, habit, or obligation:
Where did my idea of “doing well” here come from?
Would I still want this if no one else could see it?
What does this choice make possible in my daily life?
Does it reflect what matters to me now?
You may discover that some of your goals really are yours. Others may have made sense at an earlier time but no longer fit. There’s no need to judge either discovery.
For me, living well is less about finding the perfect definition of a good life and more about remaining willing to examine the one I’m living. Other people can inspire us, teach us, and widen our view of what’s possible. We still get to ask which possibilities feel meaningful to us.