Defined as ‘conducive to happiness’, Aristotle argues eudaimonia is the result of a life well lived. Maybe he’s right. However — happiness and eudaimonia are certainly not synonyms.
Happiness is just a side effect of a life lived in pursuit of eudaimonia. A far better definition is ‘fulfilling ones potential’.
Every life has a maximum potential to positively effect human flourishing. Aristotle argues it is through morals — courage and wisdom mostly — that we achieve this potential.
I don’t think this is a useful framework for most.
eudaimonia as it relates to a life is tough to visualize, quantify, and ultimately act on. But eudaimonia as it relates to a day, is a cake walk.
Everyday you begin has an ideal outcome for you and the people around you. If you reach for a eudaimonic day each morning — even if you don’t grasp it — you will have done what you can to make your life and others better.
Stack a few hundred of those days together and you will be a different person. Not shaped by idealistic and ill defined morals, but by your own choices amalgamating in an organic moral framework. A framework built by you and designed to improve the world.
Each day when waking — picture a day that you and everyone else would be grateful for you to have lived. Then live that day.
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