Eudaimonia: Actually Building a Life Worth Living

December 02, 2025

Okay, so if happiness isn’t the next achievement or perfect Instagram moment, what is it? Enter Aristotle, who’s honestly the GOAT when it comes to this stuff. He had this word—eudaimonia—that gets translated as “happiness” but really means something closer to “flourishing” or “living well.”

Think of it this way: happiness isn’t a destination or even a feeling. It’s more like… being a plant that’s getting the right amount of water, sunlight, and nutrients. You’re not “happy” in the sense of grinning 24/7. You’re thriving. You’re becoming the fullest version of what you’re capable of being. That’s eudaimonia.

And here’s the kicker: Aristotle said this isn’t about feeling good in the moment. It’s about looking back on your life and seeing a coherent whole—a life lived with purpose, character, and meaning. You can’t judge whether someone’s life was happy from a single day or even a single year. You have to look at the whole arc. As he said, “one swallow does not make a summer.”

“Happiness is not a destination, it is a way of life. It is not something to be achieved, but something to be experienced in the living itself.” — Aristotle (384-322 BCE)

The Three Components of Flourishing

So how do you actually achieve this? Aristotle breaks it down into three key components:

Arete (Excellence/Virtue): This isn’t about being a perfect angel. It’s about developing your character—being someone who shows up for their friends, who does the right thing even when it’s inconvenient, who treats people with respect, who pursues their work with integrity. It’s about being someone you’d actually respect if you met them.
Phronesis (Practical Wisdom): This is like having good judgment. It’s knowing when to speak up and when to stay quiet, when to work hard and when to rest, when to compromise and when to stand firm. You don’t learn this from books—you learn it from living, from making mistakes, from paying attention to what actually works in the messy reality of life.
Energeia (Meaningful Activity): This is about actually doing something with your life that matters. Not necessarily changing the world, but engaging fully with projects and relationships that have real stakes. It’s the opposite of just going through the motions or numbing out with distractions.

The Golden Mean (Or: Why Extremes Always Burn You Out)

Aristotle also had this concept called the “Doctrine of the Mean” that’s going to save you from so much college drama. Basically: virtue is the middle ground between extremes. Let me give you some real examples:

Courage isn’t being reckless (jumping into every dangerous situation to prove something) or cowardly (avoiding all risk and challenge). It’s facing things that scare you when it matters, while being smart about it.
Confidence isn’t arrogance (“I’m better than everyone”) or self-deprecation (“I’m terrible at everything”). It’s honest acknowledgment of your strengths and weaknesses.

Social life isn’t being a party animal who never studies or being a hermit who never leaves the library. It’s finding balance that actually serves your life goals, that still need to find.

You’re going to swing to extremes. That’s normal. But pay attention to how those extremes make you feel over time, and start gravitating toward the middle. That’s where sustainable happiness lives.

Stoicism: How Not to Fall Apart When Life Gets Real

Okay, real talk: college isn’t all late-night deep conversations and self-discovery. Sometimes it’s brutal. You’re going to fail a class you studied hard for. Someone you love is going to hurt you. Your mental health is going to tank during finals week. You’ll apply for twenty internships and get rejected by all of them. Your parents might split up. A friend might die. This is when the Stoics become your best friends.

The Stoics—guys like Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, and Seneca—lived through some serious shit. Marcus Aurelius ruled an empire while dealing with plague and war. Epictetus was literally a slave before becoming a teacher. They figured out how to maintain inner peace in circumstances that would destroy most people.

“Happiness and freedom begin with a clear understanding of one principle: Some things are within our control, and some things are not.” — Epictetus (50-135 CE)

This quote is going to be tattooed on your brain by the time you’re done with college. Epictetus’s insight is stupidly simple but incredibly hard to practice: you need to focus 100% of your energy on what you can control, and let go of everything else.

What you CAN control: How hard you study. How you treat people. What you do with your free time. Whether you show up for your friends. How you respond when someone hurts you. Your effort. Your attitude. Your integrity.
What you CAN’T control: Whether the professor likes your essay. Whether you get the job. What people think of you. Who your crush likes. The economy. Your roommate’s habits. Other people’s opinions. Natural disasters. Whether you get sick. The past. Most of the future.

Here’s the brutal truth: you’re wasting probably 80% of your mental energy worrying about things you cannot control. That anxiety about whether you’ll get into grad school? Can’t control the admissions committee. That spiral about what people thought of your presentation? Can’t control their opinions. The Stoics would tell you to redirect all that energy toward what you CAN control: making your application as strong as possible, improving your presentation skills for next time.

And here’s the really radical part: the Stoics practiced amor fati—love of fate. Not because they were masochists, but because they understood that suffering doesn’t come from events themselves. It comes from the gap between what happens and what we think should happen. When you stop fighting reality and start working with it, you reclaim your power.

“You have power over your mind—not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.” — Marcus Aurelius (121-180 CE)

Marcus Aurelius—literally the emperor of Rome—wrote this in his private journal while dealing with wars, betrayals, and a collapsing empire. If he could find peace in that chaos, you can find it in yours. The man was journaling about inner peace between battles. That’s the energy we need.

And Seneca? This guy was rich, powerful, an advisor to emperors—and he kept reminding himself that none of it mattered for his actual happiness. He called wealth and success “preferred indifferents”—nice to have, sure, but completely irrelevant to inner peace. And he proved it: when he was ordered to commit suicide by a tyrant, he faced it with the same calm dignity he’d had at the height of his power.

The lesson: By all means, pursue your goals. Work hard. Build a career. But don’t make your happiness dependent on outcomes you can’t control. Success is great, but it’s not where happiness lives. Happiness lives in how you show up, regardless of the results.

The View from Above (Or: How to Stop Catastrophizing)

When you’re spiraling at 2 a.m. about failing that midterm or embarrassing yourself at a party, try this Marcus Aurelius exercise called “the view from above.” Zoom out. Way out. Imagine yourself from space, seeing Earth as a tiny blue marble. Now zoom out further—to the solar system, the galaxy, the universe. Now zoom in on time: in 100 years, everyone who knows about your embarrassing moment will be dead. In 1,000 years, no one will remember your college existed.

This isn’t meant to make you feel insignificant. It’s meant to free you from the tyranny of petty concerns that feel like the end of the world but actually… aren’t. That C+ on your paper? Not actually the catastrophe it feels like. That social awkwardness? Not worth the three weeks you’ll spend replaying it in your head. The view from above gives you perspective and, with that perspective, peace.