How to Live A Morally Good Life: Whatever That Means To You

Learning what your own purpose is in life by contemplation and identifying values and principles can provide a path toward a beautiful meaningful life. Here is how to Live A Morally Good Life.

Plato once said, the human soul strives for three things in a good righteous life: wisdom, conquest and gratification. He says a righteous life is governed by reason. All three elements help one to achieve a good and moral life. Using the human metaphor of living, trapped, in a dark cave, facing a blank wall with fire on our backs, Plato suggests that seeing the true light of reality means turning away from the wall and its shadows and leaving the cave.

“Anyone who has common sense should note that the bewilderment of the eyes is of two kinds and stems from two causes either from coming out of the light or from going into the light,” Plato said.

Even today, in the twenty-first century, we can still debate that reason — that in the light of the true reality that Plato claimed to have given reason — offers a solid foundation for wise choice and for the development of a good and moral existence. Three elements make up the core of this search. Its purpose is to improve authenticity: intention, reflection and the meaning of the creation of a road map to escape the dim cave and come to the light of wise choices.

  1. Purpose

The real meaning of living well involves making those difficult decisions that not everyone wants to make while simultaneously overcoming difficult, upsetting, and unpleasant moments. Nietzsche once said, “He who has a why to live for, can bear almost any how.” When times of uncertainty and despair come, shrouding ourselves in the blanket of “Why we have to endure” gives us comfort, sustenance and a future vision that helps us to survive and persevere.

  1. Contemplation

The hardest part of about living in everyday life is that self-awareness is almost impossible to have. We get stuck in a “doing” mode of just getting by. We try to make ends meet with our loaded schedules and responsibilities. It leaves such little time to just “be”. The most important activity for us humans that allows for us to transform and focus inward. True value of life comes from carefully choosing wisely what to give energy to. Also, it is intently moving away from survival instants to more authentic spiritual instincts.

  1. Value

The most significant and important personal decisions that we make are our choices about principles and what we value. For instance, in his book, The Values Factor, world renowned human behavior specialist, John DeMartini, makes the bold statement: “… determining your highest values is one of the most actions you could ever take. Determining your values is the key to living your inspired destiny.” Demartini is suggesting that understanding what we value and intent fully using them to achieve our most meaningful goals is the honest path to transforming “a quiet life of desperation into a beautiful life of inspiration.”

Transformation to a Morally Good Person

There are many points in everyone’s lifetime that give significant moments of self-reflection. If we positively indulge in those moments of reflection, each of those moments will bring about change. Knowing the meaning of how to live a good and ethical life by making wise and honest decisions requires going beyond what we encounter through our senses in order to reach the sphere of ideas. This place plants the seeds of action and transformation. It is flooded with the nutrients of purpose, contemplation, principles, and values.  We should go beyond living life on the surface (surviving). The poet Phillip Larkin, called this the “the million-petalled flower of being here.”