To Fulfilled Life: Some Useful And Practical Advice

A life of regret is no life at all

Being fulfilled is an awesome feeling, but unfortunately, it’s a feeling that many have trouble finding. Fulfillment is an easy concept on the surface, yet it’s so elusive. However, living a fulfilling life is well within the reach of everyone. Always have dreams, make goals small or big, keep working hard to achieve them. Keep going, that is life and with each goal you hit you will have this feeling of fulfillment.

Oliver Burkeman’s Eight Secrets to a (Fairly) Fulfilled Life

(abstract)

There will always be too much to do – and this realisation is liberating.

Today more than ever, there’s just no reason to assume any fit between the demands on your time – all the things you would like to do, or feel you ought to do – and the amount of time available. Thanks to capitalism, technology and human ambition, these demands keep increasing, while your capacities remain largely fixed… The upside is that you needn’t berate yourself for failing to do it all, since doing it all is structurally impossible. The only viable solution is to make a shift: from a life spent trying not to neglect anything, to one spent proactively and consciously choosing what to neglect, in favour of what matters most…

When stumped by a life choice, choose “enlargement” over happiness.

I’m indebted to the Jungian therapist James Hollis for the insight that major personal decisions should be made not by asking, “Will this make me happy?”, but “Will this choice enlarge me or diminish me?” We’re terrible at predicting what will make us happy: the question swiftly gets bogged down in our narrow preferences for security and control. But the enlargement question elicits a deeper, intuitive response. You tend to just know whether, say, leaving or remaining in a relationship or a job, though it might bring short-term comfort, would mean cheating yourself of growth…

The capacity to tolerate minor discomfort is a superpower.

It’s shocking to realise how readily we set aside even our greatest ambitions in life, merely to avoid easily tolerable levels of unpleasantness. You already know it won’t kill you to endure the mild agitation of getting back to work on an important creative project; initiating a difficult conversation with a colleague; asking someone out; or checking your bank balance – but you can waste years in avoidance nonetheless…

The future will never provide the reassurance you seek from it.

As the ancient Greek and Roman Stoics understood, much of our suffering arises from attempting to control what is not in our control… The spiritual teacher Jiddu Krishnamurti said his secret was simple: “I don’t mind what happens.” That needn’t mean not trying to make life better, for yourself or others. It just means not living each day anxiously braced to see if things work out as you hoped…

The solution to imposter syndrome is to see that you are one.

Humanity is divided into two: on the one hand, those who are improvising their way through life, patching solutions together and putting out fires as they go, but deluding themselves otherwise; and on the other, those doing exactly the same, except that they know it. It’s infinitely better to be the latter (although too much “assertiveness training” consists of techniques for turning yourself into the former)…