This is a summary of the Fullfilment Framework, which is a framework aimed at helping you live a life full of happiness, success and, of course, fulfilment. This forms one of the pages on my blog, but I wanted to share the framework with the world more directly as well, so I am writing it as a blog post as well.
When talking about happiness, success or fulfilment the subject of setting goals is often centre stage, it is often seen as a pre-requisite of achieving these things. However, I believe that none of these three are things that can be ‘achieved’. I believe that they are a result of living well rather than a way of aiming to achieve happiness, success or fulfilment. I believe that fulfilment itself is dependent upon two pillars, the pillars of happiness and success, and each of these is dependent on how we live, rather than having these as the goals we set ourselves. For example, those who help others be happy are happy themselves as a result. Those who help others be successful become successful as a result, because they are trusted, respected and recommended by their peers. So, it makes sense to take actions every day that are in keeping with this philosophy. Many religious, philosophical and secular texts from around the world back this up, which I and many others consider to be wisdom. This is why I believe it is so important to actively acquire wisdom from such sources, on a daily or weekly basis.
I’m not saying that we should not set goals, of course we should, but the goals should be focused on the betterment of ourselves and others. For example, to live with integrity or to hustle (work hard) consistently. Setting the goal to be happy or to be successful is self-defeating, because these are states that we cannot go out and get, they are states of being, they are ways of living and to a large degree they are states of mind. For example, to be content with what we have is a catalyst for being happy in our lives. I believe that to be happy, to be successful and therefore to be fulfilled we have to break things down to key elements; our Foundation, our Why, our Way and our Happiness and Success Principles, which I will explain below.
It is important to have a deep knowledge of ourselves. To know thyself is an age-old command and one that will allow us to act in our best interests and live a good life. The combination of self-knowledge and the acquiring of wisdom culminates in what I call the Foundation of living a fulfilled life. This Foundation then allows us to discover and decide on what our beliefs and values are. This is who we are at our very core, and that which dictates what we think, say and do every day, based on our self-knowledge and acquired wisdom, or lack thereof. Our thoughts, speech and actions open or close doors, they create or obscure opportunities. Being the captain of our soul and the master of our fate, to paraphrase lines from the famous poem Invictus, means that we have a solid foundation, beliefs and values that we live by every day of our lives. Our beliefs and values are what I call our Foundational Prism, through which we see, understand and interact with the world.
Our Foundation and Foundational Prism feed directly into the two pillars of happiness and success, and the principles I have associated with these pillars. The Happiness and Success Principles in the Fullfilment Framework are some of the things which I believe will result in happiness and success respectively. They are not a complete list, but I think they are likely to yield happiness and success. I have split them into actions focused on the present moment, which I refer to as Grounding and into actions focused on the present and the future, which I refer to as Vision. This is intended to be used as a way of being grounded in the present with the intention of living a good life moving forwards. The Vision is of the life we want to have had when we look back while breathing our last breath. It is living our legacy in the present moment.
There is an important step that comes between the Foundation and the Grounding, and that is the finding of our Why. This is a concept popularised by Simon Sinek’s book Start With Why, which is about finding the reason why we individually do what you do, finding our reason for being. Yours or my Why is the star that guides us on our life long path. Mine is to try and help others live a fulfilled life. Finding our Why can be hard, it takes a lot of soul searching and self-discovery. We have our Why formed by the time we get to our 20s, but many of us spend most of our lives not really identifying what it is. Finding our Why, however, is vital to living a happy, successful and fulfilled life. Once we know our Why the next step is to find what I call our Way. This is the thoughts, speech and actions we make every day to manifest our Why in our lives, and this is done through living the Happiness and Success Principles, and other acquired wisdom, as well as being true to ourselves. Living the Happiness and Success Principles, and other acquired wisdom, each day also feeds back into our self-knowledge, because every day of our life long adventure we learn something new about ourselves, and the cycle continues. All of this, I believe, will result in a fulfilling life.
This may seem like a lot to be able to do, but if you start small, by understanding yourself and reading, watching and listening to the wisdom of others every day, soon you will have your Foundation from which to build and to live your life well. This is not about being the best or the brightest, it is about finding what we were meant to be doing in this life, as well as the fact that a human life is a wonderful opportunity to make the lives of those around us better, to help them live fulfilled lives by helping them be happy and successful, to make the world better for the generations that will follow us, and for setting an example for them to continue in the same way. This is deep living, this is the path of fulfilment that we can all walk together.
Always strive to be inspired and inspiring.
#LiveDeeply #FullfilmentFramework
The Fullfilment Project 