Why focusing on fulfillment as a whole is more helpful than just our achievements
Hello fellow Protagonists,
I have been thinking recently about certain achievements that everybody has the ability to reach but can be some of the most challenging for us adventurers.
For example, I believe every single person reading this post has the ability to improve their health, relationships and financial situations, to name just a few.
Who do you know has decided to lose some weight, get rid of certain debts, or to meet new people, who either never really started, suddenly stopped working towards these, or did manage to achieve something to then return to where they started? Maybe we can associate with this directly.
We just can't seem to find the motivation at times, or achieving something didn't pack the punch we hoped it would.
So why does this occur when we all have the ability to change?
This is because fulfillment is required to make meaningful, lasting change and achievement alone is not fulfilling.
Achievement is only one ingredient in the recipe for fulfillment. This means that if we achieve but do not focus on other important areas we may never feel fulfilled however much we manage to accomplish.
If we are feeling fulfilled then we are far less likely to return to a previous position where we felt less fulfilled. This means less likely to gain weight back on, less likely to place ourselves in more difficult financial situations, and less likely to stop meeting people.
Tony Robbins places a great emphasis on the consequences of ignoring fulfillment, he states that "Success without fulfillment is the ultimate failure".
Achievement is also the ingredient that relies the most on external factors. For example, we may want to become debt free and then 2 months later our dog needs surgery and our car breaks down. These things happen and can extend the time it would take to achieve our ambition regardless of how motivated we are.
So lets take a look at the other ingredients in the recipe for fulfillment and see how it would help someone who wants to improve their health.
Learning
Learning is a brilliant aspect of fulfillment because we learn from both positive and negative outcomes. Achievement alone implies that only positive outcomes matter. We arguably learn more from mistakes and can use these experiences to become more knowledgeable moving forward. On our journey to improve our health we can use this ambition to learn new recipes, new exercises, new forms of meditation and mindfulness and also learn from what did not work as well as we initially thought.
With this mindset we are going to be building levels of fulfillment regardless of the outcome. We can only learn more as time goes on so this is a never ending resource.
Progression
Progression is what we are becoming rather than what we are trying to get. As we try to improve our health, each time we do any form of exercise we are progressing. There was a valuable contribution I read on The Chive recently and one person applied this concept amazingly. They said that even if they went to the gym for 15 minutes it was progress compared to not going at all. For them it was about building character (What we are becoming) and not necessarily the workout itself.
Progression is also about showing appreciation for every step in the direction you want to go. If you have lost 1 lb over the last week, that is progression in the right direction. From my previous post this is also known as meaning.
Giving
Find ways how our ambitions can help give to others. Firstly, what can we do for other people if we become healthier? If we made healthier, more nutritious meals for us and our family then they are also gaining the benefits. The more we learn the more we can teach.
Maybe we have a neighbour who is trying to dig out old fence posts. This will help them and also class as a functional workout at the same time. Nobody loses.
All suffering comes from the self. Everything that feels negative comes from our own thoughts, interpretations and predictions. There is no suffering in giving to others unless we start thinking about ourselves again.
It is important to also Include taking time for ourselves. Balance is everything.
Gratitude
Gratitude for the present prevents us from falling into the trap of always thinking happiness is found in the next achievement.
Yes we may not be as healthy as we want to be, but we are still alive and able to change that if we wish.
We may have made some progression already and need to show a little self-empathy and gratitude for what we have been able to achieve, even if this was years ago and we re-gained the weight. We were still able to achieve it once and so can do it again, but this time with more learning.
Passion
Follow our interests to reach our ambitions. If we love to cook then that is where we are more likely to improve our health and stick to learning new recipes. If we love cycling then don't worry about the treadmill.
Some people love to workout alone as a form of mindfulness, others love the social aspect of group exercise.
Do what you love to get where you want to be.
I must point out that a few weeks ago, me and a friend decided to do a week of workouts which included only exercises we don't enjoy and usually avoid. This can be used to develop mentally to complete things we don't like. I wouldn't do this every week though.
Don't lose, detach
I wrote a post about this recently. Fear comes from the illusion of loss so set our ambitions around gaining something rather than losing something. A classic pit fall here is to "lose weight". It might sound fine but loss is something we all fear on a subconscious level.
Instead of aiming to lose weight, aim at gaining freedom through detaching ourselves from the things we don't want anymore. A subtle change in wording and focus can make huge amounts of difference.
Adding these ingredients to achievement will help us to feel more fulfilled and will enable us to stick to our ambitions because we are no longer relying solely on how we are currently doing against our goals.
Ambitions around health, finances and relationships are far more spiritually based then we may initially think.
Fulfillment is the focus.
GLHF (Good Luck Have Fun)
Warrick
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