What Does Fulfillment Mean to You?

By Audrey Seymour

There's a natural tendency for our goals and ideals to grow stale over time as we continue to evolve. What are the cornerstones of fulfillment for you? Watching your children grow up and make wise choices? Serving your clients well? Building a reputation as a star public speaker? Publishing a book that gets featured on Oprah? Retiring and moving to Italy?

One of the best ways to explore how well your goals still fit is to ask yourself these questions:

1. What major life goals are still unfulfilled?
2. What is important to me about completing each one of them?
3. What do I look forward to receiving as a direct result of reaching each goal?

One of my favorite stories comes to mind:

A very successful businessman was vacationing in Mexico at a sleepy seaside village. Every day he noticed a young fisherman who would return in the afternoon to snooze on his boat after selling the day's catch. Finally the businessman could contain himself no longer and decided to give the young man some advice.

"You know, if you stayed out all day and fished longer, you could catch more fish and earn a lot more money."

"Yes, and why would I want that?"

"Well, if you had more money, you could buy a bigger boat and bigger nets and catch even more fish and earn even more money!"

"Yes, and why would I want that?"

"Then you could buy a fleet of boats and hire others to work for you and earn even more money than that!"

"And then?"

"Then if you worked hard for many years, eventually you could retire."

"What would that mean?"

"Retiring means that you get to stop working so hard and relax in a nice peaceful location and enjoy more time with your family and community."

"Ah, now I understand. Thank you for your kind advice, but I already have all of this and enjoy my life exactly as it is."

So my question to you is, have you ever considered that there might be a more direct route to where you want to be? This is often the case, particularly if you are feeling frustrated and not enjoying the journey to your goal.

We often turn our goals into shiny objects in the distance that we struggle and suffer for, thinking they will finally bring us what we really want. But why not go directly for what matters most to you?

All it takes is a willingness to ask yourself the hard questions, and to listen to what your heart tells you.

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