Step 8 - The Integrated Good Life & The Four Pillars of Eudaimonia

This lesson shows us, how the good life looks like, because society unnecessarily compartmentalizes the parts in our life, instead of integrating everything into one piece.

Most people today have everything separated. Their work, their gym, their love life, their family, everything seems separated from each other.

But the good life is only attainable through the integrated life.

We need to shift the small parts in our life and integrate them with each other, so that we don't compartmentalize the parts of life anymore.

The people who have the good life, have their work integrated with what they like.

They make friends in the field they like. They don't separate their spare time from their work time and thus they don't need to be after their vacation and they don't hate Mondays, because they do what the like and they like what they do. Their work is their life and their life is their work.

But the same integration applies also to the remaining pillars of the good life. You need to integrate health into your life. Don't just compartmentalize it, by having it Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays from 7 to 8 at the gym. You need to integrate it in your daily life.

Also the same applies to the Pillar of Love, which represents friends, family and romance. Integrate your love life into your work. Start a business with a friend or family. Find romance in the field you adore. Integrate your neighbor in your health life.

Linear reductionists break their life in small pieces and assemble those pieces together to get their life.

But life can not be reduced, and compartmentalizing it is not OK.

Life is just life. My life is my work and my work is my life. Aspire a life where every day is a good day, instead of having a life, where you hate 11 months of the year. Don't make church just the Sunday for you. Make it part of your life.

We seek the integrated life and not the parts in it. Health, physically. Wealth, financially. Love through friends, family and romance. Fulfillment through purposes larger than yourself.

We measure the good life through measuring and focusing every moment of our life, on how close we are getting to the integration of life and hitting on those four interdependent cylinders.

Why do you go to the gym? You should have a gym in your house.

According to the edge theory in Biology, life is most present at the intersections between forests and meadows or between meadows and ponds, instead of deep in the forest or deep in the ponds.

Accordingly at those intersections, where the 4 pillars integrate with each other, we find happiness, because it is an integration instead of separation.

Don't be a linear reductionist. Integrate your job into your social stuff. Pick an industry that brings you around people you love. Make business with family. Doesn't mean that you have to pick any- and everyone.

The sum of the parts can be greater. Integrate. Look for areas in your life, where you are not integrating.

If you say you are christian, than Sunday is the same as Monday.

Jeff Bezos says, if you decide something, commit to it. And own it. Be it.

Avoid the dichotomy, where you do something that you don't love, to do something that you do want in your spare time. Make your spare time the same as your everyday time.

Adapt your life to have it integrated to what you want. You like tennis? Why don't you start shifting your work toward tennis? Why don't you play tennis in your spare time? Meet women playing tennis.

Questions

1. What are two things that you have not integrated well in your life?

Love and Work are not integrated at all. I work most of the time alone and after that I nurture my relationships. I keep them completely separated, but I would love to integrate specific family members into an upcoming business. Why not. I'll do that for the next project.

Health. I don't necessarily go to any gym, nor do I do any sports. But I integrated push ups every time I use the flush, since I mentally connected it to trigger my motivation for doing so. I also should integrate other people for running. Might use sex as a sport also.