How do we live a good life?
Gahhhhhhhhh. Why don’t we ever deal with easy questions on this blog, huh? Who decides this stuff? (Don’t answer that.)
Look, alright, nobody, and I mean NOBODY, knows what they’re doing. I spent the first few decades of my life thinking everybody else received a Secret Pamphlet and that this pamphlet explained how to file taxes and when to leave a party and how to love someone without ruining it.
I didn’t get the pamphlet. I assumed it was just me. Nope. We’re all out here freestyling. Yeesh.
Still gotta answer the question though: How do we live a good life? Yeah, I’m gonna need some assistance…
Naturally, the person I decided to go to for help is a Greek guy who’s been dead for 2300 years.
Most people only encounter him on a syllabus or as the answer to a Jeopardy question. But Aristotle wasn’t just some dude sitting around while everybody else invented democracy and regrettable military campaigns.
Born in 384 BCE in Stagira, he studied under Plato and later instructed Alexander the Great (which makes him history’s most overqualified tutor and also, given how Alexander turned out, a cautionary tale about the limits of education). He wrote about everything. Ethics, politics, rhetoric, art, even the nature of reality. Everything.
Now I’m not saying he knew everything. Aristotle thought the brain was a radiator for cooling the blood, a little meat air conditioner in your skull, and he believed thinking happened in your heart. So nobody’s perfect. But he had some great ideas about a question we’re all still catastrophically bad at answering: what does it mean to live well?
Aristotle didn’t speak the language of modern self-care, which is often less about becoming good than becoming soothed. He spoke the older language of flourishing, excellence, habit, virtue, and character. Stuff so serious it makes me want to put on pants.
Aristotle’s critical insight? You become better by repeatedly doing better things.
Well, if Radiator-Brain figured out how to live a good life back when “medicine” was mostly vibes and leeches, then I have officially, formally, run clean out of excuses.
Alright, I’m putting on pants. Let’s get to it…
You Are What You Repeatedly Do
Aristotle says, “We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.”
We usually want the quick fix. We want one revelation, one quote, one new morning routine. We expect the old self to fall away in a single cinematic fireball.
Aristotle isn’t into that theatrical nonsense. He recommends repetition. Repeated practice. Action changes us more reliably than self-concept changes us. Want to be more disciplined? Then act disciplined. And then do it again until it’s a habit. This is how character forms.
“I can’t change. This is who I am.”
Translation: “This is the habit I’ve practiced so long that it feels like identity.” You’re not “bad at hard conversations” the way you’re five feet ten or allergic to shellfish. You’re bad at them because you avoid them.
If you’ve spent years practicing avoidance, avoidance feels authentic. But if you spend years trying to be disciplined, discipline will eventually feel authentic. Speaking in complete sentences once felt unnatural, though admittedly some people on social media appear to have regressed.
More important: you can’t opt out of this process. You’re always practicing something. Tell the truth when it hurts and you practice honesty. Show up tired and you practice reliability. The question to keep asking: what is this next action teaching me to be?
(To learn how to easily build good habits, click here.)
Doing the right thing can be hard because we all have bad habits. But it’s okay because we’re resisting them, right?
Wrong…
If You’re Still Fighting Temptation, You Haven’t Arrived
You think the impressive person is the one who wants the donut really bad but doesn’t eat it.
Aristotle says: nope. That’s the waiting room. The end goal is when your judgment and your appetite stop behaving like two divorced parents ruining Christmas. The virtuous person enjoys behaving well.
And this is the part where everyone starts getting suspicious.
“Enjoy virtue? Huh? Sounds fake.”
Aristotle’s not saying you’ll stop thinking donuts are tasty. He wasn’t insane. But the donut can lose its magic. Other things can become more important.
Does the middle-aged parent want to stay out late and have fun like a twenty-something? Sure. But getting up early to take the kids to school is more important.
And psychology lands surprisingly close to Aristotle. Folks with strong self-control succeed not by gritting their teeth but by building solid habits and steering clear of temptations in the first place.
If resisting temptation is your only strategy, temptation stays at the center of the story. You’re still organized around it, even when you’re refusing it. Aristotle offers a third option: change your desires so the donut gets demoted. Learn to take more pleasure in better things that outrank it.
Willpower can get you past the donut once. The larger project is making the donut matter less.
(To learn how to break bad habits for good, click here.)
And once we learn to appreciate good things, we can finally relax and feel happy all the time.
HAHAHAHAHA. No. No way. Aristotle has a completely different vision of what happiness is. And it explains why so many of our attempts to feel better fail…
Happiness Is An Activity, Not A Mood
Many people think “If I am happy, then my life is right.”
Aristotle says you have it backwards. Live well first.
You ask, “Am I happy?” And, of course, the answer’s usually no. It’s like trying to check whether you are asleep. “Am I asleep yet?” No, genius, you’re awake. The second you ask whether you’re happy, you’re not living: you’re watching yourself live.
Instead, ask whether you’re exercising your capacities well. Yeah, I know. “Exercise your capacities well” sounds like what a samurai master would growl at an apprentice.
The question “Am I happy?” turns you into a helpless blob that consumes feelings. “Am I exercising my capacities well?” makes you active. It asks what the heck you’re doing with your life.
Building your life around maintaining a mood is a game you’re always gonna lose. Research shows seeking happiness makes you less happy. So instead of our modern vision of happiness, Aristotle recommends “eudaimonia” which is more akin to “flourishing” than a passing mood.
Eudaimonia is something you have to actively do. A life in which your powers are engaged toward worthwhile ends.
We’ve been force-fed the idea that a good life should feel good all the time. That’s so anti-true. A life can feel pleasant and still be wasted. And many of the best parts of life don’t feel at all pleasant in the moment. Raising a child, learning a new skill, and working to accomplish a meaningful goal can all be incredibly frustrating.
And yet later you will call them the most fulfilling things you ever did.
(To learn more about how to make your life flourish, click here.)
So how do we avoid the bad things in life? Aristotle recommends we first get a little closer to them…
Study Manipulation Even If You Hate Manipulators
Many people think you shouldn’t study manipulation because manipulation is bad. This is a beautiful idea, and like many beautiful ideas, it’s best kept in a locked drawer where it can’t harm anybody. Aristotle thinks we must all learn about rhetoric. Why?
Because the world is not a Quaker meeting run by Disney sidekicks. If manipulation exists, and oh-yeah-my-friend-it-very-much-does, then refusing to understand it doesn’t make you morally superior. It makes you edible. Might look like virtue from the inside but it looks like prey behavior from across the room.
I know, you’d prefer a world where manipulators are obvious, lies smell bad, and truth glows faintly blue in the dark. Bad faith should arrive carrying a folder labeled EVIL PLAN, preferably with bullet points. It rarely does.
The trouble begins when people confuse understanding something with endorsing it. This is the intellectual equivalent of refusing to learn what poison looks like because poisoning people is wrong. “No, thank you, I won’t study arsenic. I prefer to remain innocent.” Gotcha. Enjoy the coffee.
“But I refuse to engage with manipulative tactics.”
The tactics, unfortunately, do not refuse to engage with you.
“I just think people should be honest.”
And I think my laundry should fold itself. But here we are, surrounded by the wrinkled evidence of reality’s indifference.
Left to itself, truth isn’t always persuasive. Anyone who’s ever tried to explain something to a determined idiot knows this. A lie can say: “THEY’RE COMING FOR YOU!” Truth says: “There are numerous economic and cultural variables, none of which can be reduced to a single negative actor, though specific groups may experience relative losses due to particular policy conditions.” Guess which one gets applause from the guy watching it on TV?
If you don’t understand manipulation, you’re gonna keep bringing a fact-check to a feeling-fight and wondering why nobody seems to hear what you’re saying.
And then, when truth loses, you stand around looking injured, saying, “But people should have known better!” Yup. They should.
And they might have if your entire strategy wasn’t based on ignorance.
(To learn the 7 secrets to persuasion, click here.)
So learn about manipulation and avoid manipulators. But don’t go full misanthropy and avoid people…
Humans Cannot Flourish Alone
Aristotle said, “Man is by nature a political animal.”
He doesn’t mean you need Congress. He’s saying you need people. Specific people. (Humanity, in the aggregate, is easy to love because humanity doesn’t need a ride to the airport.)
You’re not some lone wolf. We come into being through other people, learn language from other people, and, if we’re lucky, learn not to chew with our mouths open from someone who cared enough to humiliate us early. Nobody’s self-made. More like aggressively forgetful.
You need people to thrive. You need people to be happy. And yes, the science agrees. I’ve mentioned this study many times. It’s been run for nearly 90 years and is known formally as “the Harvard Study of Adult Development” and informally as “The Grand Longitudinal Discovery That Your Grandmom Was Right.”
After decades of interviews, medical records, and the slow-motion observation of human beings disappointing themselves in scientifically measurable ways, the study arrived at a conclusion: good relationships are numero uno when it comes to health and happiness. The people who did best at life were the ones with warm, reliable relationships.
Aristotle says real connection requires time, trust, and repeated evidence. He gives this image: you can’t really know somebody until you’ve eaten a bushel of salt together. I’m unfamiliar with bushel conversion metrics but I’ll assume that’s a lot of salt.
The point is that you eat it slowly. Over years.
So answer the text. Go to the dinner. Stop calling every inconvenience toxic. The deep stuff takes a lot of time. Eat that salt.
(To learn how to improve all your relationships, check out my book here.)
Okay, we’ve learned a lot. Let’s round it all up and then we’ll take the first (and most important) step toward the Aristotelian good life…
Sum Up
Here’s how to live a good life…
- You Are What You Repeatedly Do: Character is a practice, not a personality trait. Every action is a rep.
- If You’re Still Fighting Temptation, You Haven’t Arrived: You can’t build a good life out of stop signs. Instead of resisting temptation, learn to love better things.
- Happiness Is an Activity, Not a Mood: Ask, “Am I making proper use of myself?”
- Study Manipulation Even If You Hate Manipulators: Nobody thinks oncologists are evil because they study cancer. And they wouldn’t be able to fight cancer if they didn’t understand it.
- Humans Cannot Flourish Alone: Modern culture asks, “What can this relationship do for me?” An Aristotelian asks, “What kind of person does this relationship help me become?”
Ever wonder why there are so many “live a better life” essays, why you keep reading them, and why nothing happens?
It’s not a coincidence.
Here’s what happened in your skull while you were reading. You felt that little zzzt of insight. Warm and satisfying, like pulling on pants straight out of the dryer. The problem is that understanding feels like progress. We mistake identifying the issue for solving it, as if a doctor could cure appendicitis by pointing at the appendix and shouting, “There’s the little bastard!”
If you surround yourself with enough wisdom, it doesn’t necessarily become infused into your bloodstream. That’s carbon monoxide. You’re thinking of carbon monoxide.
Aristotle’s whole argument is that you are what you repeatedly do. Not what you repeatedly agree would be an excellent idea.
This is bad news if you hoped reading this post would magically transform you. But it’s excellent news if you’ve ever felt worried because you weren’t born disciplined or confident.
All that matters is what you do next. So: tomorrow morning, do one small thing that the person you want to become would do.
Help someone who can’t repay you. Start the thing you’ve been postponing forever. Text back the friend who’s going through something, and then actually listen. Admit you were wrong before evidence kicks in your door. Whatever Better-You would do.
Every time you act like the person you want to become, you make it slightly easier to act like that person again.
And that’s how character usually enters our lives: not through the front door wearing a superhero cape, but through the garage carrying a grocery bag and asking whether we’re actually going to help.
You’ve read to the end of the post. Your mind is preparing to file the experience of reading these ideas as “progress” and release you back into the world unchanged.
But the good life is not an idea.
It’s a job to be done.
Roll up your sleeves, my friend.
