“Fulfillment is sustained happiness.”
I believe one of the core things we’re all chasing in life is a sense of fulfillment. It’s a belief that we’re making the most out of our lives, that we’re contributing something meaningful to the world, and we’re experiencing the richness that life has to offer. Fulfillment is being at peace with yourself and feeling bliss and great joy.
These feelings are earned over time. Sure, you can experience fulfilling moments, but to live a fulfilled life you need more than just a one-off positive experience. That’s why I believe “fulfillment is sustained happiness.”
One of the greatest challenges in life is making things last. The human condition causes us to lose focus once we reach a certain level or achieve a certain thing. It causes your drive to fade out and with that, you become less consistent taking the actions required to maintain the result. In professional sports, that’s why it’s so hard to defend championships. With success you lose sight of that next gear and it comes with consequences.
This is partly because humans are hard-wired to prioritize short-term gain over long term reward. In fact I believe this is humanity’s fatal flaw. The reason eating healthy is hard to do is because we don’t see the consequences of eating unhealthy until months have passed, and the joy of greasy or sugary food makes us feel really good in the moment.
Fulfillment is like that delayed payoff for making the right decisions. It involves being at peace with your decisions and experiencing bliss for the ways you’re living your life. A consistent positive experience is only possible when you take consistent positive action, which sustains your happiness.
Similar logic can be seen in the way Brendan Burchard defines ‘high-performance’. He calls it “creating ever-increasing levels of both well-being and external success over the long-term". It’s real if it lasts the test of time, and whether it be high-performance or your personal fulfillment, it isn’t substantial if it only lasts for moments. Kind of like how we say “it’s about the journey and not the destination”, fulfillment is a constant.
In my opinion, the quickest way to fulfillment is to consistently live fulfilling days, which involves acting in integrity with your best self, applying your gifts and talents in service of the world, being present in life’s experiences, and finding authentic gratitude in the blessed life you live. And guess what? You can start doing all of that… Right now, today!
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