I went into the week with a heavy heart. I had too many “challenges” at work. But guess what? It’s Friday already! I made it through the week!
It wasn’t easy. I had to carry the heavy heart every day. But, I tried my best to focus on the moment, to focus on the work at hand. Mind over matter. One challenge at a time. One day at a time. And now, it’s Friday!
Which brings me back to Sam's Ingredients For A Fulfilled Life.
There is nothing wrong with dreaming. Dreaming is good. It’s good to look to the future; to look at a goal, an end state, to get the things that fill us. However, dreams are supposed to inspire us. They are supposed to drive us. They should not be a source of frustration and unhappiness. Dreams become a burden when we spend more time whining for them than working for them. We need to deal with the here and now to get to our dreams in the future.
Dealing with the here and now. Now, that is work. Hard work. Life throws us lemons and curved balls. Deciding whether to catch the lemons and turn them to lemonade or deciding whether to get hit or to dodge curved balls by moving to the right or to the left. Making decisions is work and acting on decisions even harder work. Regardless, making decisions require that we focus on the moment.
Now, how does one survive the moment? For sure, even the moment can bog us down and drown us. Well, the following work (notice, the word is “work” as there is effort involved) for me:
- I think positive. I look at the glass as being half full and not half empty.
- I ponder upon and take to heart the "Serenity Prayer". There are just some things I can’t control and that I just have to let go. That no amount of anger, of sadness, of worry, of dwelling, etc. will correct and make the situation go away. That the only thing I can do is look at the situation straight in the eye and take the beating if need be.
- We need to take time out ... yes, a drop-everything-time out to smell the roses.
- As a result of #2 above, I just have to believe. Believe that this moment shall pass and that tomorrow, the future, shall come.
- Part of believing is knowing that what I have to endure at the moment is necessary for me to get to the future. The moment is my investment towards a fulfilled life. As it has been said, "Nothing beautiful ... (a fulfilled life in this case) ... comes easy."
Monday, then I was a 5 year old not wanting to work. Friday, now I am an adult looking forward to a restful, fun-filled weekend. Have a great weekend, everyone!
This is a true story.
A year and a half ago, my friend A had a miscarriage. After listening to her story, I said: “I don’t want to make you feel any worse. But you do know that you lost your baby because you were stressing yourself with anger; anger at your bosses for not supporting your move to and promotion in another division, right?”
And she started crying. In between sobs, she said: “Thank you. For aside from my mom, you’re the only person who recognized the connection between my anger and my miscarriage. You don’t know how good it feels to be understood.”
Fast forward to last week. A surprised me when she asked the trainer: “What’s next? What if I feel so happy and contented now?”
Huh?!
After the miscarriage and the lost promotion opportunity, A once again conceived and, this time, successfully gave birth. She’s still in customer service with the same boss and still wanting to get a more challenging job. So, what changed?
Here’s what. A almost lost her life after giving birth. As she explained, “I am just happy being alive! What they say is true. We tend to appreciate the things we take for granted when they are (almost) taken away from us. I had such a scare at the thought that, in death, I will lose my family!”
Still, something was not quite right to me so I had to ask, “If you’re really so happy and contented, why even ask for what is next? Why not just revel in the moment and wish that the moment never end?”
And she answered, “Because I want to know if I am missing something while I am in this happy and contented state.”
Another "Huh?!"
Moral of the story: “knowing what will fill your life" is probably the trickiest of all the ingredients in having a fulfilled life. Why? As A’s story seem to show, it may be because there is no one thing that will fully fill your life. Maybe it is a combination of things over a continuum of time. Maybe we get to know “what’s missing” after we go through life’s experiences. Maybe it’s trial and error. Maybe Maslow* is head on.
Remember our analogy on how a "fulfilled life is like a full stomach"? How the need to fill our hungry stomachs is just like the need to fill our hungry lives? Maslow said that we will experience perfect moments; moments when a need is filled. However, needs change. And, being the intelligent and full-of-possibility human beings that we are, there is a need that we will never fill. And this is the need to fully satisfy our potential – you know, the “I can be this … I can be that … I must be this … I must be that … I will be this … I will be that,” kind of thing. Yes, man is such an insatiable being!
Wait a sec though. Does this mean then that we are just wasting time, me writing and you reading this blog since it seems impossible that we will ever experience having a fulfilled life at all?
On the contrary, this is the reason why I will continue to write and, hopefully, you will continue to read. For Sam’s second ingredient for a fulfilled life is: knowing when to stop!
* Want to know more about Maslow?
Funny, but I was having a hard time writing up the answer to the question, “What is a fulfilled life?” Too many answers racing thru my mind that I was unable to pin down what it is that I really wanted to say.
So, to put structure to my thoughts, I decided to google the subject. And this is what Google showed: About 19,400,000 results (0.21 seconds). Even Google had too many answers. Encouraged by all the jumble I saw, l think this is the best way to go about it …
A fulfilled life is literally a life that is fully filled. Questions are:
• What is it that will fully fill life?
• And knowing the “what”, how does one fully fill life with it?
• In the first place, what does “fully fill” mean?
Again, we begin at the end. To fill is to saturate, pack, make something full.
Imagine your stomach as your life. Remember how an empty stomach feels or, on the other hand, how a full stomach feels? Hunger can cause you to feel some discomfort, to lose concentration and, at times, to even get sick. A full stomach generally gives a good feeling. It gives you energy to continue on. A fulfilled life doesn’t feel like an empty stomach. A fulfilled life feels like a full stomach.
Extending this analogy further. Ever experienced overeating and all you can think about is throwing up and getting whatever you ate out of your body? Or, worse, ever experienced eating something that just didn’t go well with your body, you get this stomach ache for hours and you find yourself ending up in the hospital?
Same with life. We may be filling our lives with things that we thought we want or need, only to realize that we should be filling our lives with something else.
I won’t drag this first point any further. Without further ado, here it is. Sam’s first ingredient for a fulfilled life: Know what it is that will make you feel fulfilled.
