Eudaimonia and Happiness

For this week’s blog entry, I’m excited to introduce a new series called “My Favorite (and Least Favorite) Words.” Through this series, I hope to offer current and prospective patients a glimpse into my approach to psychotherapy and integrative mental health care. The aim is to highlight words that might arise in our conversations, and to explore how these words can offer insight and direction in the work we do together.

Let’s start with one of my new favorite words:

Eudaimonia (you-day-mone-ee-yah) — εὐδαιμονία

On August 13, 1963, just three months before his assassination, President John F. Kennedy published a report titled Progress Report by the President on Physical Fitness. In it, he wrote:

“The Greeks defined happiness as the exercise of vital forces along lines of excellence in a life affording them scope.”

I first came across this quote as a teenager, and it left a lasting impression, both inspiring and confusing me for many years.

At the time, my understanding of happiness was simple: the feeling you get when you pet your dog, hug your partner, get a raise, pass a test, or watch a great movie. Happiness was subjective, pleasurable, and fleeting. It was the opposite of sadness, rooted in novelty, pleasure, comfort, and an escape from life’s everyday discomforts. It was something we were told, as Americans, that we could pursue, but never truly possess.

Like many psychiatrists, I once had the hubris to think that that kind of happiness could be delivered through psychotherapy and dopaminergic or serotonergic medications. Just treat the depression, I thought, and happiness would reveal itself.

But JFK’s Greek version of happiness seemed altogether different. There were no vital forces in my clinical understanding of mood. No “lines of excellence.” No mention of scope.

A Turning Point

That changed about a year ago. While looking up the roots of other Greek-derived words like euthymia (“good mood”) and eurythmia (“good rhythm”), I came across eudaimonia again. Don’t ask me why I was looking those words up, it’s one of the perks of being a word nerd with a background in psychiatry.

I had seen the word before, most memorably as the name of a game store in Berkeley, but never explored its meaning. Curious, I dug deeper.

What I discovered blew my mind.

Eudaimonia (sometimes spelled eudaemonia) comes from the Greek:

• “eu” — true or good

• “di” — across

• “mon” — spirit

More poetically, it translates to something like: “being true to your whole being.”

In classical philosophy, eudaimonia was a central concept for Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. They saw it not as a fleeting emotional state, but as the ultimate goal of human life: to live in alignment with one’s authentic self, and to exercise one’s full capacities with excellence and purpose.

Somewhere along the way, likely in an imprecise translation from Greek to Latin in the 15th century, eudaimonia became simply "happiness." That’s the word JFK used in his 1963 report. But what he attributed to the Greeks was far more nuanced than our modern conception of happiness.

What Matters Most

So what does this older articulation of happiness mean? What are these “vital forces,” and how do we define “excellence” or find “scope” in our lives? How does this classical notion of fulfillment compare to the Western pursuit of happiness that often chases stimulation or ease?

At its heart, eudaimonia is less about feeling good and more about being whole. It’s not a momentary mood, but a lifelong practice: the ongoing work of becoming who you truly are.

The “vital forces” are the deepest and most animating parts of you. They’re your talents, your curiosities, your longings, your capacity to love, to create, to persist, to understand. You could think of them as the inner sources of energy and meaning that move through you when you’re doing something that feels purposeful or deeply right, when you’re fully engaged, not just entertained or distracted.

Many of us experienced this harmony as children, through creative play, intense curiosity, or moments of quiet joy. Yet somewhere along the way, we’re taught to ignore those impulses or abandon them for more practical concerns. But those vital forces don’t disappear; they lie dormant, waiting to be reclaimed.

To exercise these forces means to use them, actively, intentionally, and regularly. Just like muscles, they grow through movement, effort, and challenge. Eudaimonia is not effortless. It requires cultivation. It’s not just about doing what feels good, or what we’re naturally talented at, it’s about moving toward what brings meaning and depth to our lives. The journey itself becomes the reward.

Excellence, in this context, doesn’t mean perfection or competition. It means striving toward your own highest expression of integrity and capability. It means doing things well, not to win, but because they matter to you, and because the act of doing them well brings your being into alignment.

And importantly, the excellence of eudaimonia doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Our personal fulfillment is most complete when it intersects with the needs of the world. The “lines of excellence” along which we express our gifts should not only elevate our own lives, but contribute to something beyond ourselves. In that way, eudaimonia becomes both a personal and ethical pursuit.

Scope refers to the range of your life, the arenas in which your vital forces are allowed to operate. That could be work, relationships, creativity, service, play, contemplation, or even healing. Without scope, even the strongest inner forces wither. A person might have great passion or skill, but if their life doesn’t allow room for that expression, they feel stifled. Finding scope is about creating or reclaiming the space to live fully.

So, to live in eudaimonia is to allow the deepest parts of yourself to move freely and meaningfully in the world, with excellence, within real space, over time. It’s the difference between surviving and thriving. And it’s the kind of well-being that therapy, at its best, can help make possible.

What’s striking about this shift in the meaning of happiness provides us with an opportunity to redefine how we look at our lives. Happiness is not a temporary destination, but a perpetual natural resonance that occurs when we live in harmony with our inner nature.

Eudaimonic Psychotherapy

This old/new idea dovetails nicely with how I generally think about and practice psychotherapy. By rediscovering lifelong narratives of personal meaning-making and identifying obstacles (or traumas) that disoriented a person from them, we are able to create a more focused and coherent road map that people can follow towards healing. As a result, the deeper aim of our work becomes something more enduring: helping people live lives of meaning, purpose, and integrity, helping them remember and then move toward who they truly are.

This psychotherapeutic lens can be transformative. So many people come to therapy during periods of disconnection and disorientation: career shifts, relationship changes, grief, or existential uncertainty. In these moments of flux, they discover that they have forgotten who they are, what they value in life, and how the vital forces they once exercised call out to be made excellent once again.

When we invite them to rediscover what gives their life meaning, we don’t just help them feel better, we help them remember themselves.

And once they do, once they recall their all-encompassing truth, and once they come to see that their suffering isn’t an obstacle to happiness but the crucible in which their wisdom was forged, they begin to reclaim what has always been theirs.

In doing so, they find a happiness that is uniquely their own.