Living Your Best Life (Part 1)
Recently I was having one of those weeks when things just felt a little … meh. Everything was fine. Nothing was on fire; no one was in crisis. But I noticed myself doing more online shopping than usual, and gravitating toward excessive amounts of sugar. In both cases, I was looking for quick hits of happiness that required me to keep going back to the same, unsatisfying well.
What might positive psychology say about this?
Two types of happiness are frequently explored in positive psychology research. Borrowing from Aristotle, hedonia is the pursuit of pleasure and avoidance of pain. Hedonia is what calls us to watch Grey’s Anatomy and eat candy in bed after a stressful week. It’s that feeling of ahhhhhhh when slipping into a warm bath, or our eyes lighting up when the UPS guy comes around the corner. Nothing wrong with that!
For most of us, though, hedonia has diminishing returns. After too much of a good thing, whether it’s that third glass of fantastic wine, a few too many Nerds Clusters (just me?), or Season 7 of Grey’s Anatomy (nothing has been the same since George died!), we notice that we’re not getting the same benefits we did from earlier sips, bites, or episodes.
Aristotle proposes that the cure for this nice-to-have problem is eudaimonia. Eudaimonic happiness can be thought of as fulfillment, meaning, or purpose. It involves growth, self-actualization, and striving for the highest good. That looks different for everyone, but it includes things like caring for others, living in alignment with deeply held spiritual principles, and pursuing excellence in areas that are personally meaningful. Eudaimonia is often found in activities that are not easy, and may not even feel good at the time (think, training for a marathon vs. taking that warm bath), but are deeply satisfying.
Eudaimonia is what I was missing. Luckily, I knew where to look for it.
I just had to think back to past exercises I have done to discover the things that give my life the most meaning. (One of these is the “Best Life” exercise, which I will discuss in Part 2 of this post.)
For me, some of those things include coaching, writing, and yoga. Returning to yoga and a regular writing practice (including this blog, among other projects!) over the past few weeks has rekindled my enthusiasm for life by infusing my days with greater purpose. True, it’s not as easy as binge-watching the latest GA love triangle with my phone in one hand and a Gobstopper in the other … but it feels a whole lot better.
What’s the right balance of hedonic/eudaimonic happiness for you? What are the activities that satisfy your soul? I’d love to hear about them!
