No One Tries This When They’re Unhappy (It’s Life-Changing)

The back door to happiness.

“If virtue promises good fortune, peace of mind, and happiness, certainly also the progress toward virtue is progress toward each of these things.” — Epictetus, Discourses, 4.3

Teenaged Andrew would hate 40-year-old Andrew for believing this: virtue is best way to escape misery and achieve steady happiness.

Long term, it might be the only way.

I can hear young me now: Really man? Virtue? Didn’t you get enough of that BS from priests? Are you going to tell me sex is bad and repenting is a ticket to heaven too?

Not that kind of virtue, whippersnapper. Or at least not precisely.

The Usual Approaches Don’t Work

Many unhappy people try to escape malaise by changing their physical lives. They switch jobs, leave romantic partners, and take up new hobbies. These might be reasonable things to do. If you’ve got a thorn in hand, pluck it out.

But such changes usually create short-term happiness spikes that quickly recede to baseline. Retail therapy is another common approach. But that too usually provides only short term happiness bumps.

So we spend our lives buying vacations and clothes, switching spouses, and climbing the corporate ladder — we’re deluded. We expect happiness to be just one more step away. But it’s a lie. We never arrive at real happiness because it’s not a thing we achieve so much as a state we inhabit in this moment.

The antidote to man’s perpetual happiness delusion is ancient and lame sounding: virtue.

Stoic Happiness:

Stoics admit many things are pleasurable and fine to have, but also make a bold claim: virtue is the only good.

Virtue is both the only thing that really matters and the ticket to eudaimonia, a transcendent state of flourishing and contentment we might hew to even if our lives are a wreck of misfortune and chaos.

Stoic virtue has four cardinal parts, under which all other virtues fall: Wisdom, Justice, Courage, and Moderation.

Virtue is the one thing we can always have because it’s a potential response to whatever fate throws at us. We can never be kept from virtuous choices, whatever the physical limitations of the moment.

I’ve found leaning into virtue when I’m most miserable is the quickest way through the morass to something better.

Eudaimonia, in my imperfect execution, feels like the glow of high self regard and benevolence for the world, a kind of insulation from fate. But eudaimonic states are also the opposite of the misery brought about by vice: foolishness, injustice, cowardice, and intemperance. Merely not being these things contributes quite a bit to happiness.

Working The Virtues:

Living virtuously is the work of a lifetime. I’m certainly not perfectly virtuous: I fail all the time. But it’s something anyone can begin to be better at right now and making incremental progress feels great.

Virtue isn’t all joyless slogs and ridiculous standards, but part of self love. The Stoic philosopher Hecaton of Rhodes said, “Do you ask what progress I have made? I have begun to be a friend to myself.¹” If you think virtue demands you be serious and humorless, think again.

So the key question in every moment: what’s the virtuous thing to do right now?

Numerous studies link well being with exercising specific virtues through action. One group of researchers found² virtuous activities like expressing gratitude, volunteering, and persevering in a task were associated with higher well-being.

Virtue is something you do — it’s in your thoughts, words, and deeds.

Let’s look at each virtue in turn.

Justice:

“I will show you a love charm without drugs, without herbs, without any witch’s incantation: love, if you would be loved.”
— Hecaton of Rhodes, quoted in Seneca’s Letter #9

When I’m down in the dumps I ask myself if I’m falling short on Justice, which is not an obvious question. Are there opportunities to practice that I’m missing? I find justice to be the virtue that makes the biggest impact on my happiness, though it’s never the aim. It’s a pleasant side effect.

Justice boils down to doing good things for others. It’s about loving other humans and doing right by them.

We tend to think of toddlers as self-centered and selfish, but they’re happier giving treats to other children then they are consuming them. They even prefer giving away their own treats and depriving themselves over giving away a “free treat³.”

Adults are much the same. Studies have found them to be happier when spending money on others than themselves⁴.

Things I’ve tried over the years in pursuit of justice:

• Volunteering at soup kitchens and food banks.

• Making repairs with Habitat for Humanity.

• Asking random people I come across if they need help with some task I spot them struggling with and do what I can to assist.

• Teach partner acrobatics to newbies and show them that they’re capable of far more than they suspected, which always makes their day, and mine.

• Donating money to medical debt relief or the local food bank.

There’s no right way to be just. Some ways are incompatible with my temperament and skillset, so I leave those to others. I prefer to focus where I have leverage and can make an impact.

Courage:

“[T]he more she saw of him, the surer she was that his courage was mere moral paralysis, and that he talked about virtue and vice as a man who is colour-blind talks about red and green; he did not see them as she saw them; if left to choose for himself he would have nothing to guide him.” — Henry Adams, Democracy (1880)

Exercising courage may never increase my happiness, but fearfully backing-away from what’s right always brings on regret.

When you practice virtue and see the wise, moderate, and just path but avoid it out of cowardice, you’ll become miserable. Your failure will hang over you.

But courage is not always maximalist. Aristotle considered it the mean between cowardice and foolish rashness. Virtue demands we temper ourselves and sound just the right note for the situation we’re in.

Moderation/Discipline

“To the best of my judgment, when I look at the human character I see no virtue placed there to counter justice. But I see one to counter pleasure: self-control.”
— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 8.39

I don’t think I’ve ever been happy when I’m out of control. Lack of moderation tends to spiral, and we can quickly end up in some dark places.

Moderation/discipline is the ultimate self-corrective. If you’ve descended into flagellational austerity and extreme physical exercise, the fix is moderation. If you’re always on the couch or never on the couch, the solution is moderation.

I used to be obese, and immoderate eating saps my respect pretty quickly, like an anchor weighing me down. Those who’ve spent their way into debt report feelings of regret and shame that are hard to shake.

But virtually all things demand moderation:

• Too little or too much constructive work

• Too little or too much rest/sleep.

• Persevering through hardship, but not sticking with lost causes.

• Enough exercise, but not wrapping your identity around it and obsessing.

All subjective, right? That’s the magic of virtue. No one can tell what moderation looks like for someone like you in your specific circumstances. Only you know, and often only after some experimentation.

Wisdom:

Wisdom isn’t a set of facts in your brain, but a skill we acquire and choose to execute, even when it’s easier not to.

To be wise, we ask the right questions of ourselves, look for contradictions in our thinking and actions, and self-correct when we go wrong. It’s about being skeptical of what we think is true.

As we get better at the skill of wisdom, its execution is pleasurable, like boating down a set of rapids without floundering on the rocks.

Journaling like a philosopher is one of the best ways to bring wisdom to your life.

A Daunting Path To Virtue?

If you start trying to live virtuously you may notice that the world isn’t on board. You might examine most majority opinions and conclude they’re the opposite of virtue.

I have some suggestions to help you stay the course.

First: virtue does not demand you be grim and serious. Laugh more!

If You're Not Laughing, You're Probably Doing Stoicism Wrong

Second: If you’re having trouble and feeling isolated, try recruiting a mental mentor:

How to Recruit Peeping Toms for a Great Life

Third: Consider why virtue is good for humans. Maybe it simply makes us happy because of human nature. Maybe — as the ancient Stoics thought — virtue lines up with something embedded with the universe, and when we sound a virtuous note we begin to vibrate with the rightness of it. Many will balk at this.

But I’ve found it does help to have an overarching belief system that explains why virtue is good, and why we should pursue it beyond its ability to increase happiness.

I wrote about how to build one for ourselves here:

Why "I'm Not Religious, I'm Just Spiritual" People Flounder

You’ll face setbacks if you go down the virtuous path, but the rewards far exceed what you can acquire with your wallet. Onwards and upwards.

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1. As quoted by Seneca in “Letters on Ethics”, letter six.

2. Steger, M. F., et al. (2008). Being good by doing good: Daily eudaimonic activity and well-being. Journal of Research in Personality, 42(1), 22–42.

3. Aknin LB, et al. (2012) Giving Leads to Happiness in Young Children. PLoS ONE 7(6): e39211.

4. Dunn, EW, et al. Spending money on others promotes happiness. Science. 2008 Mar 21;319(5870):1687-8. doi: 10.1126/science.1150952. Erratum in: Science. 2009 May 29;324(5931):1143. PMID: 18356530.