Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Fulfillment...is it possible?

I'm starting a project. I'd like your help.

I've been thinking, endlessly, for about 25 years now, about the perfect life. Is it primarily a successful, loving, supportive, and passionate relationship? Is it professional rewards: living wage, emotional fulfillment, intellectual challenge? Is it family? The right neighborhood that offers community, interests, good food? Seeing the world? Learning about other cultures? Staying in bed all day on a Tuesday? What if you have all of these things and still don't feel it? How do you even identify it?

I have no answers. I'd like to hear yours. Where have you found fulfillment? Partial or full? Routes to get there?

I would love to blame this on a tough job market, a generation of indecisive kids, a lack of creativity, but none of those are it. Please email me your ideas.

kungpaocat@mac.com

Thanks. 

3 comments:

  1. I can relate to that as I have lived a life pleasing others, causing me to not know what exactly it is that fulfills me and creates happiness in my life. It may sound silly but I started to do little things such as working in the garden, for a strange reason it gave me this feeling of accomplishment while feeling a peace within myself. My future plan is to explore avenues I haven't thought of yet, perhaps it will work but maybe it will not, I however will keep on trying.
    Good luck hope you get your answers as well :)

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    1. Oh Anonymous! Thank you for the comment. I understand the feeling of peace that comes from a garden, I've been lost in sweet peas and pumpkin patches more than once. Good luck to you on your fulfillment journey as well. I wish us all the balance in the world!

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  2. I think fulfillment is about balance. To truly be happy, your life needs to be in balance. My quest for fulfillment brought to me massage therapy school from a long career in high tech software sales. An exercise we are going through right now is a "Snapshot of Fulfillment". It has us rating from 1-5 (5 being our most fulfilled) our level of fulfillment in 10 categories: Joy, Health, Career, Creavitity, Money, Knowledge, Spirituality, Home, Social Life and Partnership. Upon starting to fill out this sheet, I realized how my answers have changed in some of the categories quite drastically from last year to this year. If you asked me if I felt fulfilled while I was working in my previous career, I'd had answered "mostly no and a little yes" because I didn't love my job, nor did I respect it as a profession. Rather I described it as a means to an end. I excelled at the job because I followed a basic formula and once mastered, kept repeating it over and over. I considered myself fulfilled then, not in work, but only in my personal life (and that took effort too - I had to get involved, it didn't just happen for me). My work afforded me cash to get into triathlons, which in turn brought me to meet amazing people, see cool destinations, and many massage tables.

    My switch to massage therapy and personal training (also in the works), is one that might not pay quite as well but will give a rating of "5" in many more categories in my fulfillment exercise. This is not to say that someone else in my previous position couldn't feel completely fulfilled, as fulfillment is extremely personal and subjective. My decision to make this switch because I did have a passion. I'm thirsty to learn in this space, to be that constant gardener. I recognized that helping others gave me much more fulfilled. Money, or just enough money will follow, I'm confident.

    Fulfillment isn't something you achieve one day either; it's something to keep working to achieve. As I experience and live, the ratings I give each category will vary, but as long as I reflect on and revise this sheet from time to time, it'll help me realize where I lack and work to improve it. It'll also help with perspective by showing me the bright side; it'll prevent me from getting down if I'm stumbling in one area.

    Therefore I believe fulfillment is a continual process that we all have to go through each day of our lives with the goal of achieving balance, not in the end, but as often as possible. There are no absolutes and no guarantees that fulfillment will last, so keep thinking about what you'd like to achieve and work to get there.

    I hope this exercise helps you too!
    "A vision without a task is just a dream, a task without a vision is drudgery, but if I have a vision and a task, I can change the world." - Black Elk

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