How to have a good life—even amidst anxiety, failure, and loss

5 strategies from an MIT philosopher

Many of us assume, consciously or subconsciously, that a good life = wall-to-wall happiness. But MIT philosophy professor Kieran Setiya says that’s the wrong target.

A good life will inevitably involve grief, failure, and uncertainty. The trick is to learn how to live well with those experiences.

Here are five of Kieran’s strategies for building a good life amidst all the shitstorms:

• Choose contact over comfort. Negative emotions like regret, fear, or disappointment aren’t glitches to be eliminated—they’re how we stay in touch with reality. As Kieran puts it, if you could take a pill to erase grief or anxiety, you’d also erase the love and meaning that gave rise to them.

• Grief is not a problem; it’s proof that something mattered. The pain of losing someone is a signal of having cared deeply. Instead of trying to forcibly override grief, you can reshape the bond—through rituals, memories, or weaving their wisdom into daily life. Grief then becomes less about severing ties and more about carrying the relationship forward in a new form.

• Enjoy the process, not just the prize. Yes, it’s a cliché—but it’s one worth unpacking. When you focus only on outcomes (publishing a book, getting promoted, finishing a marathon), success extinguishes the very project that gave you meaning. The antidote is to cultivate what philosophers call atelic activities—ongoing practices like parenting, conversation, or learning—that hold value while you’re doing them, not only when they’re finished. (One example from my life is that I have become the co-organizer of several recurring dinner groups. The very point is to enjoy the dinners, not to achieve some end-state.)

• Shrink your horizon in hard times. When pain or uncertainty threatens to swamp you, a more useful question than “How will I survive the next year?” is “What makes today good enough?” Anxiety feeds on the future. Narrowing your time frame helps you cut off that anticipatory suffering.

• Reframe FOMO as richness. FOMO is the anxious sense that you’re missing out on the “better” life you should be living. But as Kieran points out, missing out is structural, not personal. In a world with lots of genuine goods, every real choice means missing out on others. Move abroad for a new adventure, and you miss milestones with family back home. Choose financial security, and you forgo the thrill (and risk) of entrepreneurship. That sting is the price of abundance. Seen this way, regret isn’t a sign you chose badly—it’s proof you live in a world worth wanting.

Bottom line: life definitionally includes sorrow and lamentation. But with the right attitudes and strategies, you can still make it a good one.

For more on how to live well amidst life’s trials and tribulations, check out today’s episode of 10% Happier with Kieran Setiya.

Paid subscribers also get a companion meditation from our September Teacher of the Month, Vinny Ferraro. This one’s called “How to Live with Loss” and is designed to help you meet grief with curiosity and kindness, rather than resistance.

Also: I’m going live tomorrow, Sept. 23, at 4:00 p.m. ET for a guided meditation and Q&A exclusively for paid subscribers. Don’t miss it.

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Episode cheatsheet

The big takeaway

MIT philosopher Kieran Setiya shares his compassionate, philosophical approach to living well—even when life includes pain, failure, loss, or uncertainty. Rather than trying to eliminate life’s difficulties, Setiya argues the good life means learning to face hardship, adapt, and find meaning amid what’s realistically possible.

How to Live Well—Even When Life Is Hard

Key takeaways:

• Living well doesn’t mean constant happiness: Kieran highlights that a good life isn’t the absence of grief, failure, or pain. The real goal is to engage honestly with reality, and learn to navigate its messiness with resilience and self-compassion.

• Missing out is inevitable—don’t sweat it: FOMO (fear of missing out) happens because the world gives us countless valuable, often incommensurate choices. Missing out is simply the price of living in a rich, meaningful world.

• Grief and adversity as part of love and meaning: Experiencing loss deeply isn’t evidence of weakness, but of attachment and love. Painful emotions often reflect what we value most, and trying to numb or detach from them means cutting ourselves off from life itself.

• Pivoting matters more than perfection: Obstacles and changing circumstances are inevitable, so the way we reset expectations, adapt goals, and “expect adversity” is what makes for a well-lived life—not rigid pursuit of an ideal.

6 practical ways to face failure, change, and loss (and still lead a good life):