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What Is a Life Well Lived: Meaning, Fulfillment, and Impact

Table of contents, embracing meaningful experiences, cultivating personal growth, fostering connections and relationships, leaving a positive impact.

Frankl, V. E. (2006). Man's Search for Meaning. Beacon Press.
Seligman, M. E. (2011). Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-being. Free Press.
Dweck, C. S. (2007). Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. Random House.
Brown, B. (2018). Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts. Random House.
Keltner, D. (2016). The Power Paradox: How We Gain and Lose Influence. Penguin Books.

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3 key indicators of a life well lived, 1. an "unfolded" self and life..

Posted March 9, 2022 | Reviewed by Davia Sills

Everyone has a slightly different definition of what makes for a life well-lived.
Yet people generally derive fulfillment from 3 factors: unfolded self, worthwhile life, and positive impact.
Individuals who place more importance on a fulfilling life tend to have higher levels of life satisfaction.
The same is true for those who spend more time thinking about a fulfilling life.

A new article published in Frontiers in Psychology attempts to quantify the factors that lead to a fulfilling life, such as the ability to pursue one’s own goals , taking advantage of opportunities, and having the courage to do what one feels is most important in life. According to the researchers, people derive fulfillment from many things, but three factors rise to the top: “unfolded self and life,” “worthwhile life,” and “positive impact and legacy.”

“Unfolded self and life, worthwhile life, and positive impact and legacy are unique features of fulfillment and distinguish it from other concepts such as happiness ,” said Doris Baumann and Willibald Ruch, psychologists at the University of Zurich in Switzerland and lead authors of the research. “It is not achievement per se, but that which feels worthy and remains that way later in life that fulfills a human.”

Here’s how the researchers define the components of life fulfillment:

Unfolded self and life refer to the extent to which one can pursue projects that personally matter, be their unique self, and lead a true life.
Worthwhile life relates to the perception that one can invest one’s own capacities well and can live a meaningful life.
Positive impact and legacy refer to making a positive difference, leaving something of value, and doing something with one’s life that matters to others.

To better understand the composition of life fulfillment, the researchers studied perceptions of life fulfillment in two samples—first in a sample of 282 adults, ages 50-93, and second in a sample of 406 adults, ages 40-85. They asked participants how concepts such as making a positive difference, pursuing authentic pursuits, being true to oneself, making a contribution, being honest, and having a calling influenced the degree to which people felt fulfilled in their lives.

The authors found that the three-pronged criteria were the most accurate way to summarize the patterns they observed in the data.

They also found that people who considered the topic of a fulfilled life as important and who spent more time thinking about it assessed their lives as more fulfilled.

Beyond their criteria, the authors also point out that certain character strengths are related to life fulfillment.

“The character strengths of hope, making efforts to attain goals, and zest (e.g., doing things wholeheartedly) are important for a fulfilled life,” they say. “Other strengths such as social intelligence , leadership , perspective, and bravery are also relevant.”

The authors reported no association between life fulfillment and gender , but they did find life fulfillment to increase slightly with age. Married people and parents also reported higher levels of life fulfillment in their sample, especially on the “worthwhile life” dimension.

Other factors that promoted a fulfilling life were:

Volunteering
Spirituality
Financial stability
Positive childhood experiences

The researchers note that leading a fulfilling life is a long-term process and not one that can be achieved in a short amount of time. It also requires a giving spirit.

“The good life is not a self-centered life,” they say. “Helping others, passing on one’s experiences, or making a difference in one’s environment—which can happen on a small scale—provides people the feeling that their lives matter. The beauty of this concept is that one can make a positive difference in another person’s life regardless of age or resources.”

Facebook /LinkedIn image: WAYHOME Studio/Shutterstock

Baumann, D. & Ruch, W. (Interview) Inspiring wisdom on how to live a fulfilling life . Therapytips.org , February 7, 2022.

Mark Travers, Ph.D., is an American psychologist with degrees from Cornell University and the University of Colorado Boulder.

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How do we define a well-lived life first scientific evidence helps us get closer to an answer.

By Doris Baumann, University of Zurich

Image: Maridav/Shutterstock

Doris Baumann is currently finishing her PhD at the Department of Psychology at the University of Zurich. She is particularly interested in the factors that contribute to living and aging well. In her thesis, she investigates fulfillment in life from a positive psychological perspective. She wants to inspire and support people in finding their niche, where they can be at their best, fulfill their potential, and make unique contributions.

A transition, such as the beginning of a new year or entering the second half of life, can strengthen our desire to be more aware of what really matters to us. People naturally take stock of their lives and look ahead to determine their priorities for their next chapter in life.

In the end, humans want to be able to look back on a life well-lived. But what constitutes a fulfilled life? And what are its defining characteristics?

Though our study published in Frontiers in Psychology confirms the relevance of the concept of fulfillment in life for individuals of different ages, it has been neglected in psychological research. Together with Prof Willibald Ruch, we have initiated this new line of research in the field of positive psychology to fill this gap and advance the study of the good life.

To establish a theoretical foundation, we provided a conceptualization and a model of fulfillment. There is indeed a difference between happiness and fulfillment. The latter is long-lasting and comes from deriving a sense of wholeness, from perceiving congruence, and from recognizing value regarding one’s self, life, and impact.

► Read original article ► Download original article (pdf)

Assessing a fulfilled life

Our understanding of a fulfilled life comprises both cognitive and affective aspects. Our model of fulfillment in life entails that individuals be able to develop and realize their full potential; become whole and complete, feel true to themselves, and lead authentic lives. It further involves the feeling that one’s existence is significant and the ability to leave one’s unique mark on this world and to contribute to others’ well-being. Given that fulfillment is a new research area, it was essential to study the concept from different angles. Therefore, we investigated what laypersons understand by a fulfilled life.

After building a conceptual framework, the next important step in advancing the empirical study of a fulfilled life was to test whether this concept can be measured. We developed a multidimensional instrument based on our model. In our article, ‘Measuring What Counts in Life: The Development and Initial Validation of the Fulfilled Life Scale (FLS)’, published in Frontiers in Psychology , we demonstrated that a fulfilled life can be assessed. We evaluated the questionnaire using the standard criteria of reliability and validity.

In addition to its use in research, the FLS can also be applied in practice. Life and career coaches could employ the scale to support their clients in building a life that suits them well and that they experience as worthwhile. A fulfilled life can be regarded as an indicator of the good life and a proxy for aging well.

Is the pursuit of a fulfilled life vanity, selfish, or a luxury? Quite the contrary, it is essential for humans not only to be free from mental illness but to thrive at all life stages. Doris Baumann

The importance of fulfillment

Is the pursuit of a fulfilled life vanity, selfish, or a luxury? Quite the contrary, it is essential for humans not only to be free from mental illness but to thrive at all life stages. Our findings indicate that appraising one’s life as fulfilled is a predictor of mental well-being. Furthermore, perceiving one’s life as fulfilled is associated with better self-rated health. Individuals experiencing a fulfilled life reported a more positive attitude toward aging.

That a fulfilled life is not a self-centered life is demonstrated by our results showing that high levels of fulfillment are related to generative concerns (eg, caring for the well-being of younger generations) and voluntary engagement. Investigating participants’ conceptions revealed that making an impact and leaving a positive mark in others’ lives is indeed viewed as an essential component of a fulfilled life.

What can support the endeavor to create a fulfilling existence? Certain attitudes toward life, such as performing meaningful activities, engaging in tasks in which one feels absorbed, or pursuing goals from which one derives a sense of achievement, have been shown to be conducive to experiencing a fulfilled life. Sensing one’s profession or an activity as a calling can also provide a strong sense of fulfillment.

Our findings reveal a slight increase in life fulfillment as individuals age. People might acquire more resources and qualities to lead a fulfilling life as they get older. These may include knowledge, life experience, or expertise that can be passed on. Through generative actions, people can derive contentment and a sense of meaning. On the other hand, older adults have developed their character strengths, which help them overcome adversities and create a fulfilling life.

Finally, longevity and the increase of healthy years in one’s life provide unprecedented opportunities. Today, people have a longer time frame to realize their strengths, pursue their dreams, and leave a legacy. Later life offers greater freedom to be who one is, express oneself, and choose what is personally meaningful. Will you take advantage of these new possibilities for leading a more fulfilling life?

Doris Baumann. Image: Renate Szinyei, goldenpictures.ch

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What Is The Good Life & How To Attain It

Yet with more than 8 billion people on this planet, there are probably just as many opinions about what the good life entails.

Positive psychology began as an inquiry into the good life to establish a science of human flourishing and improve our understanding of what makes life worth living (Lopez & Snyder, 2011).

We will begin this article by exploring definitions of the good life, before presenting a brief history of philosophical theories of the good life. Then we’ll introduce a few psychological theories of the good life and methods for assessing the quality of life, before discussing how you can apply these theories to live a more fulfilling life.

Before you continue, we thought you might like to download our three Happiness & Subjective Wellbeing Exercises for free . These detailed, science-based exercises will help you or your clients identify sources of authentic happiness and strategies to boost wellbeing.

This Article Contains:

What is the good life, what is the good life in philosophy, theories about the good life, assessing your quality of life, how to live the good life, positivepsychology.com resources, a take-home message.

The word ‘good’ has a very different meaning for very many people; however, there are some aspects of ‘the good life’ that most people can probably agree on such as:

Material comfort
Engagement in meaningful activities/work,
Loving relationships (with partners, family, and friends)
Belonging to a community.

Together, a sense of fulfillment in these and other life domains will lead most people to flourish and feel that life is worth living (Vanderweele, 2017).

However, the question ‘what is the good life?’ has been asked in many fields throughout history, beginning with philosophy. Let’s look at where it all began.

According to Socrates

Interestingly enough, the ancient Greek philosopher Socrates never wrote anything down. His student Plato reported his speeches in published dialogues that demonstrate the Socratic method. Key to Socrates’ definition of the good life was that “the unexamined life is not worth living” (Ap 38a cited in West, 1979, p. 25).

Socrates argued that a person who lives a routine, mundane life of going to work and enjoying their leisure without reflecting on their values or life purpose had a life that wasn’t worth living.

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According to Plato

Plato’s view of the good life was presented in The Republic (Plato, 380-375 BCE/2007) and supported the views of his teacher, Socrates. The Republic examines virtue and the role of philosophy, community, and the state in creating the conditions needed to live well.

In this dialogue, Socrates is asked why a person ought to be virtuous to live a good life, rather than merely appear to be virtuous by cultivating a good reputation. Socrates answers that the good life doesn’t refer to a person’s reputation but to the state of a person’s soul.

The role of philosophy is essential because philosophers are educated in using reason to subdue their animal passions. This creates noble individuals who contribute to a well-ordered and humane society. A person who is unable to regulate their behavior will be unstable and create suffering for themselves and others, leading to a disordered society.

Therefore, educated reason is crucial for cultivating virtuous conduct to minimize human suffering, both individually and socially. For Socrates and Plato, rational reflection on the consequences of our actions is key to establishing virtuous conduct and living the good life, both inwardly and outwardly.

For a fuller account check out the Wireless Philosophy video by Dr. Chris Surprenant below.

According to Aristotle

For Plato’s student Aristotle, the acquisition of both intellectual and character virtues created the highest good, which he identified with the Greek word eudaimonia , often translated as happiness (Aristotle, 350 BCE/2004).

Aristotle believed a person achieves eudaimonia when they possess all the virtues; however, acquiring them requires more than studying or training. External conditions are needed that are beyond the control of individuals, especially a form of state governance that permits people to live well.

It was Aristotle’s option that state legislators (part of Greek governance) should create laws that aim to improve individual character, which develops along a spectrum from vicious to virtuous. To cultivate virtue, reason is required to discern the difference between good and bad behavior.

For more on Aristotle’s version of the good life, click out the Wireless Philosophy video by Dr. Chris Surprenant below.

According to Kant

Immanuel Kant was a Prussian-born German philosopher active during the Enlightenment period of the late 18th century (Scruton, 2001). He is best known for his seminal contributions to ethics, moral philosophy, and metaphysics.

For Kant, a capacity for virtue is unique to human beings, because the ability to resist bodily desires requires the exercise of reason. Kant claims that human reason makes us worthy of happiness by helping us become virtuous (Kant, 1785/2012).

Kant’s argument describes the relationship between morality, reason, and freedom. One necessary condition of moral action is free choice.

An individual’s action is freely chosen if their reasoning determines the right course of action. Conduct is not freely chosen if it is driven by bodily desires like hunger, lust, or fear, or behavioral coercion that applies rewards and punishments to steer human actions.

For Kant, individuals should act only if they can justify their action as universally applicable, which he termed the categorical imperative (Kant, 1785/2012). He argued that all our behavioral choices can be tested against the categorical imperative to see if they are consistent with the demands of morality. If they fail, they should be discarded.

A virtuous person must exercise reason to identify which principles are consistent with the categorical imperative and act accordingly. However, Kant claimed that reason can only develop through education in a civilized society that has secured the external conditions required for an individual to become virtuous.

For example, an individual who lives in fear of punishment or death lacks the freedom required to live virtuously, therefore authoritarian societies can never produce virtuous individuals. Poverty also erodes an individual’s freedom as they will be preoccupied with securing the means of survival.

For a deeper examination of these ideas view the Wireless Philosophy video by Dr. Chris Surprenant below.

According to Dr. Seligman

Dr. Martin Seligman is widely regarded as one of the founding fathers of positive psychology. For Seligman, the good life entails using our character strengths to engage in activities we find intrinsically fulfilling, during work and play and in our relationships.

For Seligman, ‘the good life’ has three strands,

Positive emotions
Eudaimonia and flow

Dr. Seligman’s work with Christopher Peterson (Peterson & Seligman, 2004) helped to develop the VIA system of signature strengths . When we invest our strengths in the activities of daily living, we can develop the virtues required to live ‘the good life’; a life characterized by positive emotional states, flow, and meaning.

Here is a video to learn more from Dr. Seligman about how cultivating your unique strengths is essential for living the good life.

Theories about what constitutes the good life and how to live it abound. This section will look at some of the most recent psychological theories about what contributes to the good life.

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Set-Point Theory

Set-point theory argues that while people have fluctuating responses to significant life events like getting married, buying a new home, losing a loved one, or developing a chronic illness, we generally return to our inner ‘set point’ of subjective wellbeing (SWB) after a few years (Diener et al., 1999). This is largely inherited and tied in with personality type.

In terms of the Big Five personality traits , those predisposed to neuroticism will tend more toward pessimism and negative perceptions of events, while those who are more extroverted and open to experience will tend more toward optimism.

According to set-point theory, the efforts we make to achieve our life goals will have little lasting effect on our overall SWB given we each have our own ‘happiness set point’ (Lyubomirsky, 2007).

Furthermore, set point theory suggests that there’s little we can do for people who have been through a difficult time like losing their spouse or losing their job because they will eventually adapt and return to their previous set point.

This implies that helping professionals who believe they can improve people’s SWB in the longer term may be misguided. Or does it?

Other research provides evidence that achieving life goals can have a direct effect on a person’s overall contentment (Sheldon & Lyubomirsky, 2021). Specifically, pursuing non-competitive goals such as making a family, building friendships, helping others in our community, and engaging in social justice activities improve our sense of wellbeing.

On the other hand, pursuing competitive life goals like building a career and monetary wealth exclusively undermines SWB.

For set-point theory, the good life depends more on innate personality traits than education. For a surprising account of this, using a practical example, view the video below.

Life-Satisfaction Theory

Typically, life satisfaction refers to a global evaluation of what makes life worth living rather than focusing on success in one area of life like a career or intimate relationship, or the fleeting sense of pleasure we often call happiness (Suikkanen, 2011).

However, there tend to be two dominant theories of what causes life satisfaction: bottom-up theories and top-down theories.

Bottom-up theories propose that life satisfaction is a consequence of a rounded overall sense of success in highly valued life domains . Valued life domains differ from person to person. For a professional athlete, sporting achievement may be highly valued, while for a committed parent having a good partnership and stable family life will be super important (Suikkanen, 2011).

Of course, these are not mutually exclusive. For most people, multiple life domains matter equally. However, if we are satisfied with the areas that we value, a global sense of life satisfaction results (Suikkanen, 2011).

Top-down theories propose that our happiness set-point has a greater influence on life satisfaction than goal achievement. In other words, personality traits like optimism have a positive impact on a person’s satisfaction with life regardless of external circumstances, whereas neuroticism undermines contentment.

The debate continues, and life satisfaction is likely influenced by a combination of nature and nurture as with other areas of psychology (Suikkanen, 2011). You can read an extended discussion of the evidence in our related article on life satisfaction .

So, while life satisfaction is associated with living a good life, it’s not necessarily related to education, the exercise of reason, or the cultivation of virtues as proposed by the philosophers mentioned above. For example, a successful financial criminal may be highly satisfied with life but would be deemed a corrupt human being by such lofty philosophical standards.

Hedonic treadmill

Meanwhile, the concept of the hedonic treadmill proposes that no matter what happens, good or bad, a person will eventually return to their baseline emotional state. For example, if someone gets married, moves to a new home, is promoted, loses a job, or is seriously injured in an accident, eventually, they will default to their innate set point (Sheldon & Lyubomirsky, 2012).

This has also been termed hedonic adaptation theory (Diener et al., 2006). It means that no matter how hard we chase happiness or try to avoid suffering, ultimately, our innate tendencies toward pessimism or optimism return us to our baseline level, either dysphoria or contentment (Lyubomirsky et al., 2005).

If you tend to see the glass as half empty rather than half full, don’t be discouraged, because recent research by Sheldon and Lyubomirsky (2021) acknowledges that while we each have a happiness set point, we can also cultivate greater happiness. We’ve offered some tips in the ‘how to’ section below.

Nevertheless, assessing the quality of life has led to an abundance of international research using quality of life indicators (QoLs) in a variety of scales and questionnaires (Zheng et al., 2021).

Gill and Feinstein identified at least 150 QoL assessment instruments back in the mid-1990s (Gill & Feinstein, 1994). Since then, scales have been refined to measure the quality of life in relation to specific health conditions, life events, and demographic factors like age, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status (Zheng et al., 2021).

Our article Quality of Life Questionnaires and Assessments explains this in more detail and guides you on how to choose the best instrument for your clients.

Meanwhile, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development ( OECD ) has developed the Better Life Index to measure how people from different demographics define a high quality of life. You can find out more in the brief video below.

How can each of us live the good life today given our array of differences? Below are five steps you can take to clarify what the good life means to you, and how you can apply your strengths to set goals that will lead to greater fulfillment.

1. Clarify your values

Clarifying what is important to you helps invest your life with meaning. Download our values clarification worksheet to get started.

2. Identify valued life domains

Investing in activities in valued life domains is intrinsically rewarding. Download our valued life domains worksheet to find out more.

3. Invest in your strengths

You can find out your character strengths by taking the free survey here . Playing to your strengths helps you overcome challenges and achieve your goals leading to greater life satisfaction. Read our article about how to apply strengths-based approaches to living well.

4. Set valued goals

Finally, we all benefit when we set goals and make practical plans to achieve them. Try our setting valued goals worksheet for guidance.

5. Ensure high-quality relationships

Healthy relationships with partners, family, friends, and colleagues are essential for living the good life and achieving your goals. To assess the quality of your relationships, take a look at our article on healthy relationships with free worksheets.

You can also look at our healthy boundaries article with more free resources. Healthy boundaries support you in living the good life in all life domains, while poor boundaries will leave you feeling unfulfilled.

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We have an excellent selection of resources you might find useful for living the good life.

First, take a look at our Meaning & Valued Living Masterclass for positive psychology practitioners. This online masterclass follows a practical process of identifying values, investing in strengths and then applying them to living a more fulfilled life.

In addition, we have two related articles for you to enjoy while exploring the role of meaning in the good life:

Realizing Your Meaning: 5 Ways to Live a Meaningful Life
15 Ways to Find Your Purpose of Life & Realize Your Meaning

Next, we have an article explaining the role of human flourishing in living the good life.

What Is Flourishing in Positive Psychology? (+8 Tips & PDF)

Finally, we have an article on how to apply values-driven goal-setting to living the good life.

How to Set and Achieve Life Goals The Right Way

We also have worksheets you may find useful aids to living the good life:

Our How Joined Up is Your Life? worksheet can help your client identify their interests and passions, assess how authentically they are living their life, and identify any values that remain unfulfilled.

This Writing Your Own Mission Statement worksheet can help clients capture what they stand for, their aims, and objectives. Having a personal mission statement can be useful to return to periodically to assess our alignment with our values and goals.

Finally, this How to Get What You Deserve in Life worksheet can help clients identify what they want as well as justify why they deserve a good life.

If you’re looking for more science-based ways to help others develop strategies to boost their wellbeing, this collection contains 17 validated happiness and wellbeing exercises . Use them to help others pursue authentic happiness and work toward a life filled with purpose and meaning.

We all want to live the good life, whatever that means to us individually. The concept has preoccupied human beings for millennia.

If you currently struggle, which we all do at different times, we hope you’ll consider trying some of the science-based strategies suggested above to steer your way through.

All the evidence we have shared above shows that you can improve your life satisfaction and subjective wellbeing by living in line with your values. But you have to be clear about what’s important to you.

Values-based living invests your life with more meaning and purpose and is key to living the good life.

We hope you enjoyed reading this article. Don’t forget to download our three Happiness Exercises for free .

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For me a happy life is having the necessary things to have a good life in the physical aspect, economic aspect ,social aspect, achievement and also family, love and health . The luxuries are also good but they are extra things in life. The most important thing in life is love and peace.

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I lost approximately 14,000 dollars because of a bank fraud. This money is a product of my hardwork as a nurse and I have been saving it so I have a money when I travel back to be with partner. And the bank refused to refund my money. This incidence has made me feel devastated about life. It affected me emotionally and mentally. But I tried to contain this emotion for a few months and avoided to work and avoided my friends. But I am lucky that my parents, my sisters and especially my partner have been very supportive and understanding to me. They showed me the love and care I needed especially those tough times. Only a few days ago that I realised I should start to help myself and this is why I started to listen to a different talks and read articles that will help me to stay positive in life. Having this article read, it reminded me that I should be grateful that I am surrounded with great people. So thank you for sharing this article and making it accessible to everyone.

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How to Grow Old: Bertrand Russell on What Makes a Fulfilling Life

By maria popova.

“If you can fall in love again and again,” Henry Miller wrote as he contemplated the measure of a life well lived on the precipice of turning eighty, “if you can forgive as well as forget, if you can keep from growing sour, surly, bitter and cynical… you’ve got it half licked.”

Seven years earlier, the great British philosopher, mathematician, historian, and Nobel laureate Bertrand Russell (May 18, 1872–February 2, 1970) considered the same abiding question at the same life-stage in a wonderful short essay titled “How to Grow Old,” penned in his eighty-first year and later published in Portraits from Memory and Other Essays ( public library ).

Russell places at the heart of a fulfilling life the dissolution of the personal ego into something larger. Drawing on the longstanding allure of rivers as existential metaphors , he writes:

Make your interests gradually wider and more impersonal, until bit by bit the walls of the ego recede, and your life becomes increasingly merged in the universal life. An individual human existence should be like a river — small at first, narrowly contained within its banks, and rushing passionately past rocks and over waterfalls. Gradually the river grows wider, the banks recede, the waters flow more quietly, and in the end, without any visible break, they become merged in the sea, and painlessly lose their individual being.

In a sentiment which philosopher and comedian Emily Levine would echo in her stirring reflection on facing her own death with equanimity , Russell builds on the legacy of Darwin and Freud, who jointly established death as an organizing principle of modern life , and concludes:

The man who, in old age, can see his life in this way, will not suffer from the fear of death, since the things he cares for will continue. And if, with the decay of vitality, weariness increases, the thought of rest will not be unwelcome. I should wish to die while still at work, knowing that others will carry on what I can no longer do and content in the thought that what was possible has been done.

Portraits from Memory and Other Essays is an uncommonly potent packet of wisdom in its totality. Complement this particular fragment with Nobel laureate André Gide on how happiness increases with age , Ursula K. Le Guin on aging and what beauty really means , and Grace Paley on the art of growing older — the loveliest thing I’ve ever read on the subject — then revisit Russell on critical thinking , power-knowledge vs. love-knowledge , what “the good life” really means , why “fruitful monotony” is essential for happiness , and his remarkable response to a fascist’s provocation .

— Published July 3, 2018 — https://www.themarginalian.org/2018/07/03/how-to-grow-old-bertrand-russell/ —

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What Does It Mean to Live a Life Well-Lived

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Introduction

Living a life well-lived without regrets.

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The fast track to a life well lived is feeling grateful

Photo by David Pollack/Corbis via Getty Images

by David DeSteno + BIO

A Second World War-era poster painting of a sailor shaking hands with a male and female worker beneath the text “I’m proud of YOU FOLKS too!”

For the Ancient Greeks, virtue wasn’t a goal in and of itself, but rather a route to a life well lived. By being honest and generous, embodying diligence and fortitude, showing restraint and kindness, a person would flourish – coming to live a life filled with meaning and finding an enduring, as opposed to ephemeral, happiness. Today, that view hasn’t much changed. While we hear plenty of stories of celebrities, politicians and even our neighbours finding fleeting pleasure through self-gratification, dishonesty or hubris, we can also see the ‘other shoe’ eventually drop, leading to despair, social rejection or worse.

If it’s true that virtue leads to a life well lived – a view that receives more empirical backing with each passing year – the question How do I become virtuous? takes on a bit of urgency. For the majority of ethicists, both ancient and modern, the answer is clear: virtue comes from living an examined life, one where deep deliberation leads to the embrace of noble qualities such as honesty and generosity, no matter how difficult it can be to enact them.

There’s a problem with this well-worn path, however. In a busy world where many feel inundated with the demands of daily life, devoting time to philosophical deliberation – worthy as it might be – can feel like an elusive luxury. So while the usual route for pursuing virtue can certainly work, after more than two decades studying how emotions shape the mind, I think there might be an easier way to achieve the same end.

In considering moral character, the Roman orator Cicero said: ‘Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all others.’ And while I think it’s an overstatement, Cicero’s view does offer up the tantalising prospect that, simply by cultivating gratitude, other virtues will grow. If correct, it suggests that there’s an entirely different way to improve moral character – one that is rapid, easy and efficient.

At base, emotions are about the future, not the past. From an evolutionary standpoint, feeling pain or pleasure that can’t change anything would be a useless waste of the brain’s efforts. The true benefit of emotions comes from their power to guide decisions about what comes next.

In the case of gratitude, it’s long been clear that it nudges people to repay debts. As the German sociologist Georg Simmel described it at the start of the 20th century: ‘Gratitude… is the moral memory of mankind.’ It doesn’t let people forget that they must accept some future sacrifice to benefit a past benefactor. And as research from many labs, including my own, has shown empirically, Simmel was right. The more gratitude people feel toward those who have helped them, the more diligently they will work to pay them back.

H ow does gratitude work its mental magic? By what mechanism does it make us willing to devote time, money or other resources to repay others rather than to enhance our own enjoyment? It appears to come down to self-control. Any time a person sacrifices for another, she’s choosing to forgo her own immediate needs in service of a larger future gain. For instance, if you value your friendship with someone, the gratitude you feel when he helps you move your sofa to a new apartment makes it more likely you’ll return the favour, even though at the time he asks for help you’d rather be doing almost anything else than hoisting furniture. Yet, agreeing to help is necessary for ensuring that the benefits of that friendship keep coming down the line – benefits that, when aggregated over time, will likely outweigh the pleasant feelings of going out to dinner if it means leaving a friend in the lurch.

To prove the point, we’ve repeatedly been able to show the close link between gratitude and self-control. In 2014, we demonstrated that people induced to feel grateful, compared with those induced to feel happiness or no emotion at all, became much more willing to wait for a larger financial reward (eg, $80 in three weeks) compared with a smaller, immediate one ($35 now). Like the successful children in Walter Mischel’s famed ‘marshmallow test’ at Stanford University in the 1970s, these grateful adults were better able to resist temptations for immediate gratification that came at the cost of larger benefits in the future.

Given that many moral dilemmas boil down to an issue of self-control – as the Stoics pointed out centuries ago – such findings suggest that gratitude might indeed be a parent virtue of sorts.

Consider honesty. Say I ask people to play a game of chance where they could flip a virtual coin to win one of two monetary prizes: a small one or a larger one. Let’s also say the flip occurs in private. All people need do to get their money is hit a computer key to indicate the result: ‘heads’ means the larger reward; ‘tails’ the smaller one. Now, let’s make one final tweak: the coin in question is rigged to come up tails.

If gratitude enhances honesty, the prediction is clear: those feeling grateful at the time of the flip should be more likely than their peers to report that they got tails, thus ensuring they’ll get the smaller reward. As it turns out, when we conducted this experiment, published in Psychological Science this May, that’s exactly what happened. The percentage of cheaters fell by half (from almost 49 per cent to 27 per cent) among those who had just recalled a time when they felt grateful, compared with those who described a time when they felt happy or no particular emotion at all.

Any single experiment, of course, can’t be taken as strong proof. So in the same article, we describe a second experiment in which we raised the stakes. This version had two key differences. First, the coin flip determined whether any given participant would have to complete an enjoyable 10-minute task or a difficult 45-minute one. Second, we led participants to believe that the next person to come would be assigned to complete whichever task remained.

Taken together, these changes meant that people’s decisions not only involved options that dramatically differed in the time and effort required, but also directly affected the outcomes for others. In deciding to cheat by reporting that the virtual coin flip came up heads, people were giving themselves a much shorter and more enjoyable task, but in so doing, were also unfairly dooming another person to a more onerous task.

As one might imagine, the overall frequency of cheating was lower. Nonetheless, gratitude worked in the exact same way. Whereas 17 per cent of people cheated when feeling neutral or happy, only 2 per cent cheated when feeling grateful.

The empirical literature shows a similar influence of gratitude on other virtues. People feeling grateful are more likely to help others who request assistance, to divide their profits in a more egalitarian way, to be loyal even at cost to themselves, to be less materialistic , and even to exercise as opposed to loafing.

It’s essential to recognise that the people who acted more virtuously in these studies didn’t do so because they were ‘good’ people from the start. They weren’t those who, as the virtue ethicists would prescribe, spent years focused on philosophical analysis. They were people from all walks of life who, when presented with temptation, had to make a quick decision about whether to behave nobly or not. And while many acted in a less than honourable way, all it took for some to behave fairly was a few moments spent stoking a feeling of gratitude.

None of this should be taken to mean that a rational consideration of why and how to behave ethically isn’t a worthwhile endeavour. It most certainly is. But it isn’t the only , or even perhaps the most efficient, way to help foster virtue and a life well lived. Boosting morality from the bottom up by cultivating a sense of gratitude a few moments each day might work just as well, with the bonus that you won’t have to wait years for results.

This Idea was made possible through the support of a grant to Aeon from the John Templeton Foundation. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Foundation. Funders to Aeon Magazine are not involved in editorial decision-making.

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Autonomy: An Essay on the Life Well-Lived 1st Edition

In everyday life, we generally assume that we can make our own decisions on matters which concern our own lives. We assume that a life followed only according to decisions taken by other people, against our will, cannot be a well-lived life – we assume, in other words, that we are and should be autonomous. However, it is equally true that many aspects of our lives are not chosen freely: this is true of social relations and commitments but also of all those situations we simply seem to stumble into, situations which just seem to happen to us. The possibility of both the success of an autonomous life and its failure are part of our everyday experiences.

ISBN-10 1509538003
ISBN-13 978-1509538003
Edition 1st
Publisher Polity
Publication date July 26, 2021
Language English
Dimensions 5.8 x 0.9 x 8.7 inches
Print length 380 pages
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Editorial Reviews

“It needs a rare mixture of hermeneutical sensibility, analytical scrutiny, and existentialist imagination to give the individual search for autonomy the right place within the imponderables of one’s life. Beate Roessler, possessing these talents abundantly, is in my view the first one to fully illuminate both the desire and the difficulties we have in finding our own voice in the midst of social obstructions, individual self-misunderstandings, and communicative relationships. Her new book is by far the best philosophical study on this intricate topic and therefore a must-read.” Axel Honneth, Department of Philosophy, Columbia University

“In one of the most lucid and insightful treatments of the subject of autonomy in the recent literature, Roessler takes profoundly seriously the contingencies and ambivalences inherent in everyday life, even in well-lived lives. The view of autonomy that emerges is thereby more nuanced, appropriately complex, and true to life than most on offer. The masterful use of literary examples, echoed in her own elegant writing, makes Roessler’s treatment of the topic a joy to read. Moreover, the account she offers, both of autonomy and its connection to a life well lived, is powerful and compelling.” John Christman, Professor of Philosophy, Political Science and Women's Studies, Pennsylvania State University

“Engagingly written, and enriched with a series of well-chosen literary examples, Autonomy masterfully articulates the tensions between two conflicting but deeply entrenched conceptions of ourselves – as self-determined agents, and as beings who are subject to situations and circumstances that we do not choose. In explaining how these tensions can be reconciled, Beate Roessler presents a compelling argument for the view that autonomy is a necessary condition for a well-lived life. A lucid exploration of the interconnections between autonomy, self-knowledge, privacy, and social relationships, Autonomy makes an important contribution to the contemporary literature on autonomy.” Catriona Mackenzie, Professor of Philosophy, Macquarie University

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Publisher ‏ : ‎ Polity; 1st edition (July 26, 2021)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 380 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1509538003
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1509538003
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 14.4 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.8 x 0.9 x 8.7 inches
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Home — Essay Samples — Life — Quality of Life — What Is a Good Life and How To Live It

What is a Good Life and How to Live It

Categories: Quality of Life

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Words: 648 |

Published: Jan 30, 2024

Words: 648 | Page: 1 | 4 min read

Defining a good life, factors influencing a good life, paths to living a good life, obstacles and challenges in pursuit of a good life.

Aristotle, & Irwin, T. (2000). Nicomachean ethics. Hackett Publishing.
Emmons, R. A., & McCullough, M. E. (2003). Counting blessings versus burdens: An experimental investigation of gratitude and subjective well-being in daily life. Journal of personality and social psychology, 84(2), 377–389.
Ryff, C. D., & Singer, B. H. (2008). Know thyself and become what you are: A eudaimonic approach to psychological well-being. Journal of Happiness Studies, 9(1), 13–39.

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How to Grow Old: Bertrand Russell on What Makes a Fulfilling Life

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What Does It Mean to Live a Life Well-Lived

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The fast track to a life well lived is feeling grateful

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