Short Heroic plus one podcast episode by Brian Johnson (Heroic +1 #1,460). Johnson recaps a previous episode on habits of successful people, then explores Aristotle's concept of eudaimonia (translated variously as happiness, success, or fulfillment) using Jonathan Barnes' commentary. The episode reframes Aristotle's Ethics as guidance for living a successful life—realizing one's aims and ambitions by putting virtues into practice—and closes with motivational exhortations to embrace effort, uncertainty, and integrity in service of individual fulfillment and community impact.
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Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another Heroic plus one. In our last plus one we talked about the nine Things Successful People do Differently. As you may recall, leading motivational psychologist Heidi Grant Halvorson told us that highly successful people set very specific goals, seize the moment to act on their goals, know exactly how far they have to go to hit their targets, are realistic, optimists focus on getting better rather than being good, have grit, build their willpower muscles, don't tempt fate, and focus on what they will do rather than what they won't do. The notes are coming soon. Check out the blog post for more. Today I want to talk about the fact that being said successful isn't just a modern idea supported by pom pom waving, self help gurus and or leading scientists. It's an ancient idea. Let's invite Aristotle to the party to help us understand more about his ideas on what it means to be a success. Actually, let's invite Jonathan Barnes, the editor of his classic Ethics, to join us. Quick context as you may recall, Aristotle tells us that the ultimate purpose of life, the highest good have I mentioned it before? Or summum bonum, is to experience eudaimonia. The person who can achieve that was called a eudaimon. So Barnes tells us, and I quote, to call a person a eudaimon is to say something about how he lives and what he does. The notion of eudaimonia is closely tied in a way in which the notion of happiness is is not to success. The eudaimon is someone who makes a success of his life and actions, who realizes his aims and ambitions as a man who fulfills himself. Then Barnes tells us, and I quote again, it will not do to replace happiness by success or fulfillment as a translation of eudaimonia. The matter is too complicated for any such simple remedy, and in what follows I shall continue to employ the word happiness, guarding it with a pair of inverted commas. But it is worth considering Aristotle's recipe for eudaimonia with the notion of success in mind. The ethics we are thus supposing is not telling us how to be morally good men or even how to be humanly happy. It is telling us how to live successful human lives, how to fulfill ourselves as human beings. And that's today's plus one. To be a eudaimon we must learn how to not only move from theory to practice to mastery by living in integrity with our heroic identities as we put our virtues in action, we must make a success of our lives and realize our aims and ambitions as individuals. That is the only way that we will fulfill our individual potentials while making a difference in our communities and be a worthy exemplar who inspires others to play the ultimate game as well as so they can change the world with us together. Here's to your success, dear Hero. Embrace the pain and uncertainty and hard work of fulfilling your destiny today.
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