'What is a fulfilled life?' he asked (Part 1)

Forty-three minutes in and we are approaching the final stages of the conversation with Sina, when he asked me how I live a fulfilled life. This is a question that if he’d asked me even just a year earlier, would likely have yielded a very different response.

Before getting into the answer I gave, I wanted to check on the dictionary definition:

So - fulfilment is multi-layered. It can come from achievement, completion, by gaining happiness, or even just carrying something out as planned. {Which came to your mind first?}

Looking at the definitions, there's one common trait I find which links them: expectation. A sense of achieving or completing something; or gaining happiness from something (or someone); will be determined by what our expectation of that end state / outcome is from the start.

This question also reminded me of a podcast I heard with Arnold Schwarzenegger. He spoke about how he doesn't expect others to have the same level of intensity, drive or hunger that he's had towards reaching his goals. Many are content and satisfied with where they've reached in life - and while there's nothing he has against that, he talks about how he always carried unprecedented ambitions (World's best bodybuilder, top Hollywood actor, Governor) that wouldn't let him rest until he'd succeeded. Something became clearer to me after this:

For me, a fulfilled life really is where I reach the feeling of ‘have I got to a point where I am genuinely content with what I’m doing throughout my day; and are these daily actions leading me to where I want to go?'

For a long, long time; since my late teenage years, I don’t really think I knew what a fulfilled existence would look like or feel to me. As I say on the podcast, since being first exposed to spirituality (which I cover earlier in the episode), “I’ve been trying to balance this desire to become ‘spiritually successful’ and ‘materially successful’, and I guess there is some trade off there so I never really knew how to merge the two”.

Then, whether good timing, or by a stroke of fate, I've very recently come across one of the best conversations I've listened to: Mo Gawdat appeared as a guest for the second time on Steven Bartlett's well known podcast (btw I highly recommend listening to it, it's the first time I've watched an entire episode from start to finish, fully engaged). In one part, he speaks about embarking on spending 50% of his time immersed in 'monk-like' activities - connection, reflection, stillness and service - and the other 50% on being a modern day warrior as he describes it. This allows him to be fully engaged when carrying out his pursuits, while then being able to use the other 50% of his week to search internally, to reflect, and maybe figure something out that better serves those days where he is fully engaged in his modern day ambitions. While the 50% is arbitrary and very much a personal choice to be made (and refined as you practice it), it helped me to even further elucidate what fulfilment is for me: a life where I can align my actions with my internal and external ambitions, while giving myself the required time to dedicate myself to both.

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In part 2 of What is a Fulfilled Life article snippet (out next week), I conclude this topic with what those bigger ambitions are for me, and what keeps me fulfilled while in the pursuit of achieving them.

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