Many people say they are looking for happiness. They spend a lot of time and resources searching for the secrets of well-being, like old-time miners prospecting for gold.
But for some sages through history, this is the wrong approach. Happiness isn’t something to be found; it’s something to attract.
Perhaps the most famous proponent of the second path was the Greek philosopher Aristotle. He defined happiness as eudaemonia, which means “good spirit.”
The philosopher meant that happiness was a divine state that would visit each of us as it pleased. Our only responsibility was to open the door to it. And we do so by living well.
To live well, we should practice specific virtues and make them into habits. As Aristotle wrote, “If it is better to be happy as a result of one’s own exertions than by the gift of fortune, it is reasonable to suppose that this is how happiness is won.”
1. Temperance
By this, the philosopher means self-control in the face of one’s appetites and base impulses. He would classify the hippie motto “If it feels good, do it!” as a recipe for misery.
Scholars writing in the Journal of Personality in 2017 found that as impulse control among people increased over the course of a day, positive affect initially fell.
As self-control kept rising, however, negative feelings decreased; happiness rose to its highest level when self-control was at its highest as well.
2. Magnificence
He was not asserting here that the path to happiness is to buy an ostentatious yacht; rather, magnificence means giving to projects that benefit a large number of people.
Today, we might call this “munificence” – to be as philanthropic as you reasonably can be. For this, the support is unambiguous: giving feels good.
3. Greatness of soul
A great-souled person, according to Aristotle, acts like his close predecessor, Socrates, who was a “being indifferent to good and bad fortune.”
This requires being high-minded – not that you can’t tell the difference between pleasant and unpleasant things, but that you are occupied by what is deeper and more meaningful in life than transitory pleasures and passing irritations.
Indeed, research comparing the pursuit of pleasure versus of meaning among adolescents shows that the latter leads to greater happiness.
4. Truthfulness about yourself
Aristotle put a great premium on honesty. He counseled against “pretense in the form of exaggeration” and boastfulness, but also against self-deprecation.
You might say he recommended that we seek something like secure humility, through which we recognize ourselves and can show others who we are without either puffery or self-denigration.
5. Forgiveness
Aristotle wrote about the virtue of consideration for others. To the contemporary ear, this sounds like politeness, or sensitivity to others’ feelings.
But the philosopher was recommending something much trickier: forgiveness and forbearance toward others’ faults.
The wisdom of this advice has a large modern literature to support it. Virtually every study of forgiveness shows that practicing it purposefully and letting go of grievances lowers depression and anxiety symptoms.
6. Modesty
Modesty is often thought in the modern world to resemble humility. But Aristotle defined it as refraining from shameful (if tempting) behavior – and applied this even to private conduct.
This conception of modesty makes it similar to temperance, except that instead of moderation in the face of base appetites, we should abstain completely from vices.
He added a caveat, however, modesty could be a virtue only if “a good man would be ashamed if he were to do so and so.” In other words, you have to believe a certain action is vicious in order to be virtuous in avoiding it.
Bearing this caveat in mind, this kind of modesty is indeed a happiness strategy: when people undertake what they consider moral acts, they gain in happiness and even more so in sense of purpose; when they commit immoral acts, they experience the opposite.