Author: The Fullfilment Project

My philosophy is ‘Finding happiness and success is a path we walk all together.’ Meaning that if I know the way I have a responsibility to guide others to find it and sometimes others will know the way and I have to be humble enough to follow them. Happiness and success are found in cooperation with others.

The Good Health Triad: Good health is part of our Foundation

The Fullfilment Framework

“The first wealth is health.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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The Fullfilment Project, and the Fullfilment Framework, are an evolving endeavour to better understand how to live a life that brings fulfilment, so I can pass on this knowledge to as many people as possible. While reviewing the Fullfilment Framework recently I realised that I had left out a key element, that of good health. If we do not have good health everything else, whether it be related to happiness or success, becomes more difficult. Health, therefore, should really form part of our Foundation, in addition to self knowledge and acquired wisdom.
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When we think of health there are different elements that need to be considered,  all of which fall into three pillars of good health; the pillars are mental and emotional health, physical health and energy health. I call these the Good Health Triad. The first two are well known and much can be found on these two pillars of health in books, videos and other online resources, but energy health is not so commonly referred to or known about. We all have an energy system that is well known about in the East, which refers to the movement of Chi (or Qi) around the body along the meridian lines. If our energy system is not functioning properly we become unwell. Chi needs to flow through us, but if there are energy blockages the Chi stagnates, if there is not enough Chi in the body, fatigue sets in and physical health declines.
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Mental and Emotional Health
Mental and emotional health, which includes how balanced our emotions are, influences our mindset, which the world filters through to our conscious and unconscious awareness. Emotions, like energy, come and go, but when negative emotions hang around for long periods of time this reduces our good mental and emotional health. If sadness becomes depression or pride becomes self importance we have negative results appearing in our lives. Our mental and emotional health is dependent on positive mindsets and positive environments. Our environments are key here, and this also includes our relationships. This is why we should choose our partner, our friends and our work colleagues carefully, they all, in part, form our support structure, as we form part of theirs. It can be very beneficial to seek support from trained Counsellor or Psychiatrist depending on your level of need. Be brave enough to seek support is essential to good mental and emotional health.
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Physical Health
Physical health is equally important. Anyone who has ever been sick with the flu, or a more serious illness, knows how debilitating it can be. The mind may be willing but an unwell body often is not. Our physical health is largely dependent on two things, our diet and our level of physical activity. Everything that we eat and drink literally becomes our physical body. The water we drink becomes the fluids in our body and fats, fibres, proteins, vitamins and minerals all play very specific roles in the ecosystem that is our body. Aerobic exercise builds up stamina and anaerobic exercise builds muscles and our body becomes in good working order, if we regularly exercise in both of these ways. This does not mean that we have to run a marathon every day or lift crazy amounts of weights, we should start at our level and build up from their. I would recommend following the advice of a trained fitness instructor to ensure you do not injure yourself.
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Energy Health
Energy health is also equally important. Our energy health can be maintained by practising Chi Kung (or Qigong) and/or Tai Chi and/or physical Yoga. These Eastern practices allow the Chi in our bodies to be healthy and to flow. Chi, like the water in a river, needs to keep flowing,  as well as be of good quality and quantity for us to remain healthy. If water is stuck on one place it becomes stagnant, our Chi is the same. Often people will go to see an Acupuncturist to keep their meridians in working order to keep the Chi optimised for good health. Daily practice of Chi Kung, Tai Chi and physical Yoga are also excellent ways to keep our energy systems flowing and functioning at their best, which contributes to our overall good health.
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Keeping ourselves in good health means that we have to cultivate the habits and actions that boost and balance our health in all of these three areas, mental and emotional health, physical health and energy health, none of them should be neglected. The Good Health Triad is such a foundational part of our happiness and success it now has it’s place as part of the Fullfilment Framework Foundation.
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Resources 
               by Christopher Hansard
               by Susannah Steel
               by Kenneth S. Cohen

Mini Reflection: Success depends on necessity 

Mini Reflections, Success

Quite often we know what we have to do to be successful. Most of the time we know how to do what we need to do as well, but we don’t do it. Something inside us, some doubting voice in our head says it is too difficult or it will end in failure, so we don’t take action and success remains illusive. Breaking through this mind barrier to take the action that will bring us success is not easy, but it is possible. What we need to do is make these actions a necessity. As Tony Robbins tells us, we have to turn our shoulds into musts. Success by necessity is how we can achieve success consistently. This is what I refer to in my Fullfilment Framework when I talk about raising your standards periodically. Raising your standards of what you expect of yourself, what your musts are. When you reach your current standards for yourself it is time to raise the bar and keep doing so. These standards need to be a necessity for success to manifest in your life.

– Fullfilment Project

Mini Reflection-Talking yourself into it

Mini Reflections, The Fullfilment Framework

Many of us have ambitions to do certain things, big dreams, or even medium sized dreams, but there is often a little voice inside out heads that whispers discouraging words. Suggesting that we are not qualified enough, we are not clever enough or that we will likely fail so what is the point in trying. Learning to control our inner dialogue is one of the most important things we can do, because our brains have evolved to talk us out of things that could be dangerous or life threatening and in our modern day world the brain still reacts in the same way to any bit of anxiety we have. Recognising when our primitive brains are hijacking our decision making abilities is the first step. Then we need to engage in positive self talk; “I am capable”, “I am courageous”, “I will achieve my ambitions one step at a time.” Thirdly we have to take positive daily actions towards completing our ambitions.

However, before we get started on talking ourselves into doing any old thing that makes us feel anxious, we first have to know ourselves really well, this is part of what I call the Foundation in the Fullfilment Framework. We need to know if an ambition is true to our core values and beliefs, because if it is not it will not bring the desired happiness or success if we achieve. We have to know ourselves and then control ourselves to achieve our true ambitions.

– Fullfilment Project

Bad leadership and what to do about it

Leadership

We have seen the recent beginning and ending of bad leadership in the world on a global level. The electing of President Trump in America has seen the divisions across the lines of race that go back to the American civil war come out into the open, somewhat encouraged by the words and actions of the President, who seems unable to be a great leader, which such a position really does demand. We have also seen the end of Robert Mugabe’s 37 year reign as President of Zimbabwe, to the joy of the people of Zimbabwe. I mention these examples to illustrate the seemingly divided world we now live in. The tone of whether society is divided or united comes from the national leaders that we have, whether this be a President or a Prime Minister, because what is acceptable in society often comes from the words and actions of our global leaders.

If we take the case of President Trump, his comments and actions have stirred up hatred of many minorities, including Black people, Muslims and Mexicans, especially with him recently retweeting videos from the far-right group Britain First. It is this type of divisive thinking that creates much of the division that happens in the world, from person to person and nation to nation, the flames of which are often fanned by the media coverage of such unpleasantness. What the American election of the current President, and the rallies and debates that preceded it, highlight for me, is the desperate need for good leaders to lead the many countries of the world. Good global leaders are people who inspire others to take positive action for the greater good of society and inter-global relationships. They create a situation where people feel safe and valued; they encourage cooperation, stewardship and integrity. But that leaves people like you and me with a problem, what can we do to stem the flow towards division and conflict.

Well, what we do and what we say shapes the world we live in. Through our interactions we co-create our relationships, which in turn creates our society, which in turn creates our nations and our cultures. How we choose to live our lives will influence everything else, even if just a little. What we need is a harmony revolution, because the only sensible way to counteract division in our own lives is to bring people together in harmony. By harmony I mean, to use a metaphor, the bringing together of very different instruments into an orchestra to create beautiful music. When we come together as human beings and we share what makes us unique, then we can collaborate, cooperate, and co-create. We can make the world a better place to be.

Taking the time, when possible, to make perhaps a bit more of an effort in ways that you may already be doing, to chat and ask after each other’s wellbeing, share a story or a joke. Our children and others will see this and perhaps change their own behaviour for the better. Even though it seems such a small thing to do, there is evidence of efforts of this kind having a genuinely positive effect on those doing this and on those around them witnessing it as well. So, I ask of you all, in your own way, to have a think about what you can do, and what you may have thought about doing, along these lines, but have not done yet, because for one reason or another you just haven’t. Make that call to that friend or relative, knock on that door. Lift your head and give a sign of greeting and even stop for a quick chat with that neighbour or colleague at work. Connect with your eyes, words and smiles. Chances are the world will start smiling back at you a lot more often too.

Mini Reflection: Contentment and progress are not opposites

Happiness, Mini Reflections, Success

There is a temptation to discount the idea of contentment in favour of progress, as if they are somehow opposites. I would like to suggest that we need both of these things to feel fulfilled in our lives. The mistake that some make is believing that the acquiring of money and expensive things shows the world that they have progressed, but these shallow achievements will not bring happiness.

If the goal of progressing is to have more things and be more rich, then this will move us further away from contentment, because things and money do not last. Putting our hopes for happiness into these things takes control of our happiness and gives it to things which are out of our control. Things break and money is spent and gone as a result.

However, if our progress is rooted in our self development, in our ability to be better at the things we feel passionate about. If we acquire more knowledge and skills to do more and help more people, then our progress will be closely aligned with our contentment, as long as we are content with how we live our lives. The relationships, the opportunities and the necessities. If we can manage to be both content and to progress then we will live deeply and live well.
– Fullfilment Project

The Fullfilment Framework

Happiness, Success

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.

Foundation & Prism-Illustration of the Fullfilment Framework

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.

Principles-Illustration of the Fullfilment Framework

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.

Why and Way-Illustration of the Fullfilment Framework

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

 

Mini Reflection: Open your heart

Mini Reflections

We so often harden our hearts against those who are different from us in their views, their beliefs and their cultures. This is born out of conflict and a wish to stay within our own ‘tribe.’ We harden our hearts to protect ourselves. When conflict occurs we close ourselves off from anything different from ourselves. The irony is that if we opened our hearts and let ourselves be vulnerable we would lead richer, deeper and more fulfilling lives. We would have more love and joy in our lives. Don’t let the media and the news trick you into thinking that the world is against you. Open your heart and welcome the world in. This is deep living.

– The Fullfilment Project

The problem with To Do lists

Success

If you are anything like me you frequently use To Do lists, but often it can seem like all we do is write lists of things that never get done. Sometimes we can create a massive long list, which seems overwhelming and as a result we distract ourselves by doing non-essential things like watching TV, scrolling through social media or playing video games.

The problem I think is that when we have the list written out we don’t know where to start, we have no system of prioritising the items on the list and we feel overwhelmed. I have struggled with this for years until I found a solution. I listened to lots of YouTube video where very productive people were talking about prioritising their To Do lists by the importance and the urgency of each item on the list. Now I use To Do lists very differently and have become more productive as a result.

Firstly, I write everything that I need to do as a list. Secondly, I categorise the items on the list by writing a number and a letter next to each item. Either a 1, 2 or 3  and an A, B or C. This is what these numbers and letters mean.

1 – Very important
2 – Important

3 – Not important

A – Complete as soon as possible
B – Complete within the next week

C – Complete in the next month

I can then prioritise the items by how soon they need doing and then their importance, so everything with 1A is complete first, then 2A and then 3A. I then move on to any item with B next to it and so on. What also helps is that when the items are prioritised I then add them to the calendar in my phone with reminders to get them done at certain times and days around other things like work, family and socialising.

There are also mobile apps that allow you to create To Do lists where the items can be moved around in order and categorised by colour, as well as adding items onto the app calendar. Some of these apps also sync the app calendar with the calendar on the mobile phone and email account. I recommend the To-Do Calendar Planner by isoTimer. This is only available on Android but is an excellent app.

Having these strategies in place means that your days are planned out and you will be more productive, and your To Do lists will work to your advantage rather than causing things to go undone.

How successful have you been with To To lists?

Mini Reflection: 3 things we need to reach greatness

Mini Reflections

If we want to reach greatness in any particular area we need to continuously do three things. First we have to work hard. This might seem obvious, but very few are prepared to put in the hard hustle. Second we have to be able to accept criticism and use it to improve. Feedback is fuel to get to greatness, if we use it as fuel. Third we have to be teachable. To become great we need mentors and leaders to get from good to great, but if we are not teachable, if we think we can learn it all ourselves and we don’t need help from others we will only reach mediocre.

Mini Reflection: The challenge of short and long term goals

Mini Reflections

Always have a vision, an almost unachievable and wonderful reality that matches your values and beliefs, but also set achievable daily goals which are aimed at the vision ahead of you. The vision is the destination, your values and beliefs are your compass and the map comes into existence when you know where you are and where you want to get to. However, without achieving the daily goals we will never get there.

To be inspired and to inspire 

Leadership

There are two ways in which we can be persuaded to do something, we can either be manipulated by fear and/or incentives or we can be inspired. The former does not bread loyalty or trust, and it means that the manipulations have to be repeated again and again. Whether this is used in a workplace to keep the staff in line or whether it is used to get the most customers, the whole process is tiring and is often not strictly ethical.

Inspiring people is a much better way to get people to do what you want. But how do you inspire someone? What you need is a vision of how things could be. Then you create a safe space where you take care of those around you and allow them to take the vision and make it their own. You might be thinking that this all sounds well and good for a CEO or a Manager, but not for you. I would argue that inspiring others into action is something we can all do.

To develop our own vision we need to be inspired ourselves. Spending time seeking wisdom is a good way to do this. We can read books, watch YouTube videos or listen to podcasts. We can find a mentor to help us find our path.

Often it is what we think, say and do towards our vision that sends signals to others, whose values and beliefs align with our vision. This causes them to become inspired to make changes in their own lives.

It is difficult to be inspired and to inspire but it can be done. However, we don’t have to be a Martin Luther King or Steve Jobs to inspire others. We can inspire those around us by being inspired ourselves and striving towards our vision. We are all inspired by those who strive for an ideal that makes the lives of others better and who takes care of those around them, and then we can make this cause our own and we then inspire others by our words and actions. This is something we can all do.

What is it that inspires you?

Mini Reflection: Mastery in the moment

Mini Reflections

It can be very beneficial to have big plans for our lives, but focusing on achieving the whole thing can be debilitating. It is better to try and master what is in front of us. To believe that we can be at our best in this moment and the next moment and so on. If we can try to master the one thing that is set before us in each moment then soon we will be the masters of our whole lives, because how you do anything is how you do everything.

Mini Reflection: The blessings of others

Mini Reflections
Let us ponder on our blessings, on the gifts that come into our lives. Each of us is a gift to each person in our lives, and each person who comes into our lives is also a gift. Sometimes they make us smile, other times they help us to practice patience, other times they help us to practice working together for a collective goal. Let us all try to be a gift to every person whose lives we touch.
-The Fullfilment Project

Starting the journey towards fulfilment

Happiness, Success

On the way to experiencing fulfilment we need a place to start. Every journey begins somewhere, but I don’t mean the day we were born or some moment of revelation. What I mean here is the creating of a foundation for our sense of self; the me, the I, the self. I believe that this Foundation has three parts to it.

The first part is a deep knowledge and understanding of ourselves. This comes from continuous  questions and answers about how we tick, how we see the world and what makes us feel the whole spectrum of emotions that we feel. It also means trying out new things and seeing how we respond to them. This can be done at any age but I recommend starting to do this in the first quarter of your lives. If you are further along your life journey like me, begin from where you are, as it is a continuous process. The art of fulfilment is in the act of living our lives well, and to do this we first need to know ourselves deeply.

The second part is the acquiring of wisdom. This should be a constant endeavour. Wisdom enriches our lives and guides us along our life long journey. Reading, watching or listening to wisdom every day will give us the ability to make wise choices, to behave nobly and to help others to live their lives well. Wisdom is never self serving, it is always focused on the greater good. It is the constant mixing of this self knowledge and acquiring of wisdom that builds the Foundation from which we experience and interact with the world.

The third part of this Foundation is what I call our Foundational Prism,  the prism of our values and beliefs that we view the world through. This prism affects what we think, say and do in every moment and is a major key to living a life well, and living a life well is how we can experience fulfilment. This Foundation is a kind of alchemy, a mixture of self knowledge, acquired wisdom, our values and beliefs. Fulfilment is not something we find, it is a biproduct of living our lives well, starting with our Foundation. This is deep living.

What is stopping you from getting to know yourself deeply?

Mini Reflection: Being a Why Finder

Mini Reflections

“A Way Finder is someone who is skilled at finding their way forward to an intended destination. To be a skilled Way Finder in the journey of life, first you have to be a Why Finder. Understanding your purpose in this life means that you have a North Star. Your Why is your North Star and no matter what challenges you face having a Why means you can find a Way.” – The Fullfilment Project

6 Principles to finding happiness 

Happiness

Many of us, throughout our lives, strive to find happiness; something which can often seem illusive. I think the reason we can find it so difficult to achieve it consistently, is that it our happiness is very individual to us on a surface level, but true happiness is something different.

I want to explain what I mean by happiness. Happiness, according to the English dictionary is “The state of being happy.”  Simple enough, but I would add that it is the state of being happy ‘consistently.’ True happiness is not fleeting, it is a constant state created by wisdom and frequent practice of wise actions, which allow us to experience a consistent state of happiness. It is a result of how we live our lives each and every day. Happiness is similar to success, in that they are both a bi-product of living a life well.

In order to live our lives well we can cultivate wisdom by studying the best of human philosophy, theology and science, and try to understand ourselves more deeply on a daily basis. The wisdom of the present and past also extend to what I call the principles of happiness. These are the attitudes and behaviours which are necessary if we are to be happy consistently. Let’s go through the six principles for finding true happiness.

The first, and most important happiness principle is something that Tony Robbins calls ‘choosing your state.’ Tony Robbins is an American author, entrepreneur, philanthropist and life coach. Our state is the emotional and psychological state that we are in. If we let the experiences we have and the people in our lives dictate our state, then we lose control of our sense of self. Actively choosing how we feel about the circumstances we are in is not only empowering, it is also a path to happiness, and fulfilment. If we have a choice why would we ever choose to be demoralised, upset, jealous, angry or frustrated? This is not easy, but it is possible with practice.

Viktor E. Frankl knew this more than most, he was a Psychiatrist and a survivor of a Nazi concentration camp, and he witnessed first-hand the horrors the inmates were subjected to and the effect of this on their psyche. In his book Man’s Search For Meaning, he talked about his experiences in the camp and he said:

“We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

This is part of the path to experiencing true happiness, to choose one’s own way. There are some practices which help us to achieve this. These practices are contentment and gratitude, both of which are necessary for us to choose the state we are in.

The next happiness principle is humility, the antidote to having a large ego. When we focus on ourselves selfishly at the cost of others this often brings suffering, because of two things. Firstly, selfish actions that seem to promise happiness rarely result in actual happiness. Secondly, if we act in a way that is selfish, we can damage the relationships we have, and this brings negativity into our lives.

The next happiness principle is having no boundaries. This refers to boundaries that are often imposed by others and those we learn. When we see an us and a them, divisions along the lines of race, religious, country, gender, sexuality, education, class or politics, we create conflict in our lives. At every division there is a conflict, but if we try we can see ourselves as one, as one community, one humanity, one universe, then we will have less conflict in our lives. The more unity we have in our mental attitudes, the more connection we will have, which takes us onto the next principle; connection.

If we are going to have more positive human connections then we have to do some daily practices. We must have compassion for others, to motivate us to see them as beautiful amazing people that we want to help and love. This applies to animals and all of nature as well. We must practice empathy, putting ourselves in the shoes of others, so we can better understand where they are coming from. This allows for better understanding and connection. We also must practice forgiveness, both for ourselves and for others. Carrying around hate and distrust is a heavy burden to carry.

Cultivating a connection to the greater oneness of the universe or God or Tao or Bradman, whichever connects with your beliefs. Duly meditation or prayer will allow us to make such a connection.

The next happiness principle is integrity. This connects directly to our values and beliefs and committing to living by them, no matter what temptations or difficulties there are in our lives. This can be very difficult, but I believe that integrity is very important to our happiness, because if we are not true to ourselves we can feel uncomfortable in our own skin and negativity can seep into our sense of self and corrupt our happiness. The final happiness principle is the act of helping others find happiness, this is very important.

The Dalai Lama said “If you make others happy, you’ll be happy. If you make others unhappy, you’ll be miserable.” We have evolved to be social creatures that protect those we care about. If we extend this to all people and all beings we can be very happy indeed.

Know where you are starting from

Happiness, Success

Sometimes we feel paralysed by life and we feel that we should be doing something greater, something better, but we are unsure what this is. Fear of the future and the regret of the past paralyses us. It is important to pay attention to both the future and the past, but we have to do this in the right way.

When we are fearful of the future or regretful of the past our mind is rarely in the present, we are fully focused on the fear and the regret. If we are not present in the moment then we are preventing ourselves from being happy or successful in the present. We cannot act in the future or the past, but we can act in the present, so to get out of this paralysis we have to focus on what is happening now.

I used to spend a lot of my time thinking about what the future may bring, what my life might be like without knowing what I wanted to do with my life. I was so focused on the future I was missing the present. This is something that many of us do. We either don’t have a clear idea of what we want to achieve or we do have an idea but we aren’t sure what we need to do to reach this achievement, because we haven’t researched what we think we want. To figure out what we want to achieve with our career or our health or our relationships, we need to research our plans and start from where we are. This process has three stages to it: Grounding, Reflection and Decisive Action.

Grounding.

We need to move our focus and ground ourselves in the present. Asking ourselves what we are happy with and what we are unhappy with, what we have control over and what we don’t. This is our base camp and the end goal will be the summit of a theoretical mountain. Knowing ourselves deeply is always the best place to start. If we know ourselves then we will make decisions in our best interests.

Reflection

Next we need to reflect on our past through the prism of our present. We should reflect on our experience, our skills, our strengths, our interests, our values and our beliefs. Understanding how all of these things make up who we are in this present moment is very important.

This will help us to realise two things. What our overarching purpose is in our lives and from this what we want to see manifest in our lives. Our purpose is our why, why we do what we do and the way we do it. My ‘Why’ is “Finding purpose is a path we all walk together, through helping each other find happiness and success,” which is why I write this blog. Your ‘Why’ will help you find what you want to manifest in your life.

When we find our ‘Why’ and what we want to manifest in our life, next we should research it and find out all of its aspects before reverse engineering the steps from where we are now to where we want to be.

These first two stages will not happen over night, becoming grounded in the present involves developing new mental habits, which takes practice and dedication. However, it does help to think of this as creating new habits which will replace old ones, rather than trying to remove the old habits. This is a matter of where we put your focus.

Decisive Action

When we have grounded ourselves in our present circumstances and reflected on our skills and experience, our values and beliefs, then the next step is to set steps to achieve on the way to the goal. These will be metaphorical milestone on the climb up the mountain to achieve what we want to see happen in our lives.

An important step that many miss out is to research the goals we want to achieve in order to clarify what is involved and, importantly, if it is truly what we want to see happen. Some goals are set because something looks or sounds good or others are doing it and it is right for them. Just as we reflect deeply on ourselves, we have to put the same effort into analysing our goals. If the research is not done then we may achieve our intended goal but it may not produce the fulfilment we expect.

We each walk through our lives picking up experiences and memories, skills and understandings. Our sense of self is formed like a sculpture chipped out of rock over time, bearing the marks of these things. Each of our lives is a journey and our happiness and success are shaped by everything we experience and everything we think, say and do. Therefore, in order to live fulfilling lives our goals need to match who we are. Ground yourself in the present, reflect on your past and this will help you reach your desired goals in your future, the summit of that metaphorical mountain.

What is getting in the way of you finding the goals that match your true self?

Fear of others

Happiness, Leadership, Success

We live in a more and more insular society where communication is often restricted to the sending and receiving of words and pictures on digital devices. It reminds me of the short story The Machine Stops by E. M. Forster, about a future humankind that lives underground individually in hexagonal room, each exactly the same as the other, all over the world. The machine controls the air temperature, the lighting, the access to food and water and provides a way to communicate with others around the world through screens. No one travels or even leaves their room, life is solitary, lived through a global machine. This is an extreme situation but it resonates, I think, with the way we often communicate, or don’t communicate with each other today.

I often sit in social situations, like a restaurant or a pub, and the majority of people that have clearly come to this place together are not talking to each other, or even looking at each other, they are silently checking their social media on their mobile phones for snippet of other people’s lives and to see who has liked or commented on the snippets of their own lives that they have shared. It seems ludicrous to me that people socialise with others, without socialising with them, without interacting with them, they are just people who know each other that are in the same area. The rise of mobile phone technology and social media has created a rift in our culture between people, created by the lack of social skills needed to navigate human relationships. The generations growing up with this technology are failing to learn the social communication skills of holding a conversation with someone, sharing their thoughts and feelings with someone and are more likely to turn to Facebook than a person when they suffer from mental difficulties like depression or anxiety.

This is the problem, unseen by many, which has two parts to it.  Firstly, the more we use social media to communicate with each other the less able we are to have face to face interactions. The trial and error needed to learn these social skills while growing up happens less because there are less opportunities, due to the time spent on social media. These social skills are needed to have healthy, positive relationships with family and friends, romantic partners and colleagues at work. So many people become daunted by the idea of striking up a conversation with a stranger or an acquaintance, because they have not had the practice while growing up. Secondly, the very nature of social media means that we accumulate social media friends which agree with the things we believe in or do what we do, and it becomes very easy to remove a connection to someone by unfriending them; instantly cutting ties with a person with a click of a button, if their way of being clashes with ours. As a result we rarely engage with people we disagree with, so the skills needed to debate with others or to find our own values and beliefs become lost, because these things come from interacting with people we disagree with.

This all creates a situation where we are less likely to engage with people who are different from us, so we begin to fear people who are different. This might manifest in the belief that our town/city, country, religion, lack of religion, politics, language, culture, skin colour, home, car, family, friends are better than those of other people who are different. This manifests in the dislike of ‘foreigners,’ or people fro a different town or city within our own country, without the realisation that we are foreigners in the eyes of others too. In any culture, whether it is a country or a business, difference is an advantage. Life flourishes in the places where a multitude of species coexist. Creativity flourishes in the same type of environment, where difference is abundant. The ability to accept others who are different from us and to interact with them using an open mind and an open heart is certainly an advantage. When we become so caught up in our own ideologies we become tribalistic, we become extremist, we become intolerant, we become an us, as opposed to a them. In the Bible Jesus said “Love your enemies,” to me this means that if we love our enemies then we will have no enemies. Love is the antidote to fear. When you hear reporters or politicians referring to people from other places in terms of a them, reframe the situation in your mind and think of them as one of us. Our tribe is called mankind and we are in this together. There is only a ‘them’ if we choose to use this term to refer to other people. We are in control of how we see the world and each other. Let us disagree, debate and share our ideas together as a collective, so we can change each other for the better.

Question:

What beliefs or experiences in your life cause you to fear others?

The art of listening 

Happiness

I have often heard the saying that we have one mouth and two ears, so we should spend twice as long listening than we do talking. Which often gets a smile, but I believe that this deceptively simple idea actually has a deep meaning. If we followed this advice we would know more about each other and therefore would judge each other less, because knowing someone’s personal circumstances can help us better understand what they do and what they say. It also encourages us to build bridges between ourselves and others, rather than separating ourselves in an attempt at self preservation.

Listening well is a skill. There have been times when my mind has started to wander when someone was talking to me. I started thinking about the things I was going to do that day or things that were causing stress in my life at that time. I was not listening to what was being said. There have also been times when I was not listening because I was waiting for a gap to say what I wanted to say. We have all done these things, part of being human is making such self centred mistakes (occasionally). The aim is to notice that we are doing these things so we can make positive changes, but we have to be self confident enough to analyse our behaviour and adjust it for the better.

The more I have reflected on the importance of listening the more I have come to see listening as a gift; it is never about you and it is always about the person speaking. The gift of listening well to others is that they feel listened to, that they count and somebody cares enough to want to know what they have to say. Sometimes this is because they are going through a tough time and they don’t want answers, they just need someone to listen.

Sometimes listening well allows you to make appropriate suggestions that can help the person talking. The art is not only to listen well, but also to know when is the right time to comment or give advice and when you should just listen. It is an art because it is hard to get right. It takes practice, for some more than  others and that is OK.

The benefit of listening also means that you learn new things.  You can learn from every person you meet if you listen to them. When you listen you receive. When you talk this can’t happen. Let us all try to listen more and talk less.

Have you ever successfully helped someone by listening to them?

The goal is not everything 

Success

There is a growing trend in our culture today that allows us to obtain almost anything instantly. If we want to watch a film we put on Netflix, if we order something it can be delivered the same day, if we are hungry we can go to a fast food place and get food in minutes. This expectation of receiving things straight away is spreading to the world of work and of personal success, because for many it has become a natural part of our thinking, we habitually assume this applies to all things.

Part of the problem is the development of mobile technology, specifically the use of apps on mobile phones. We can now talk to anyone in the world, find a date, find a friend, buy things and manage our money instantly. Those who have grown up with this techology are succumbing to an instant gratification mindset.

If we use the analogy of a mountain to description the goals we set ourselves, professionally and personally, then the summit would be the goal and base camp would be where we are beginning from. In our current culture of instant gratification we often focus on the summit forgetting entirely that there is a mountain between where we are and where we want to get to. This has a sad side effect, which is that when we only focus on the goal we will inevitably feel like we are failing until we get there, and if we feel it should be a goal we reach soon then the instant gratification mindset compounds the problem.

What we need to do is twofold. Firstly changing our focus from the goal, and nothing else, to a focus on the process that will get us where we want to go. The goal then becomes where we set our compass to and the process becomes our preparation,  whether we work as a team or go it alone, the map that we use and the targets we set along the way. To continue with the analogy of the mountain, we can set camps that we aim to get to after we leave the base camp. These are the stages of climbing the mountain. There can be as many target camps as you like and reaching each one will be a success.

Secondly we need to cultivate patience. Some goals take a long time to get to, and that is OK. You cannot climb a mountain in a day. Sometimes there is a lot of preparation that needs to be done before getting to the base camp. Sometimes set backs occur and alternative roots need to be taken. Patience is also a skill that needs practice, which ironically can take a while to master.

So, if we change from focusing entirely on the goal to the process we do to get to the goal, with targets to achieve along the way then our success will be measured by the progress we are making not reaching of the goal in the end. If we feel successful we are more likely to work harder, feel happier and be more creative. This mindset of working towards our goals one step at a time can be cultivated in ourselves, but what really needs to happen is that our work places create a culture where progress towards goals is favoured over the achieving of goals over everything else. If this is achieved colleagues will feel encouraged to work harder and feel safe enough to try and fail and try again. This is how innovation happens.

What are your views on prioritising progress towards a goal over prioritising achieving the goal over everything else?

Don’t let where you’ve come from ruin where you are

Happiness, Success

There are many of us that have gone through mentally challenging times in our lives, and the memory of these times can be carried with us during each day. These experiences can cause anxiety and stress to permeate the various parts of our lives, causing our past to corrupt our present.

But it doesn’t have to be like that, we don’t have to let where we have come from ruin where we are now. So many people act as if they are still in a bad situation which they have been delivered from, still going on and on about it, talking about how other people couldn’t possibly understand the trauma and the tyrrany they went through. Some experiences that people have gone through will need specialist support allow them to move on and move forward and can be hard to do. What I am talking about is the other bad situations that don’t required specialist support, they just need the person to move on.

The problem is that people will treat you differently depending on how you present yourself, and if you are nothing but negative you might not be invited to that event or hired for that job or asked out on a date, because you are living as if you were still in a past situation. This is one of the ways that people let their past ruin their present.

It is better to put on a fresh attitude, to drop the issues of the past and be positive about the here and now. If you spend your time focused on the past you will miss opportunity after opportunity in the present. Our attitude to our circumstances is the barometer of how others view us, either positively or negatively. What we ideally need to try and do is to be positive about our present circumstances and to leave the past in the past. This can be hard to do sometimes depending on the severity of the circumstances we have been in.

I do think that some people like to have a moan, as a way of getting attention. This is the wrong kind of attention, in terms of building positive relationships. Our relationships are the framework of our lives, they interlink our family life with our friendships with our work life with our hobbies, etc etc. It is our human connections that largely encourage the happiness in our lives, along with how we view these relationships. If those we care about and those we meet for the first time only see the negativity we are emitting then they may well not want to spend time with us or connect with us. Choosing to moan about the negative can be detrimental to our relationships,  which is in turn bad for us.

We are only human, as the saying goes when we refer to our frailties, but we also must take responsibility for how we think, speak and act. If there is an option of being positive or being negative, and there often is a choice if we take a look, then being positive will always be the better option. The more we make the choice to be positive the more it will become a habit, and the old mental pathways connected to our previous negative circumstances get replaced with better mental pathways, better mental habits.

Have you ever felt a shift of positive change happen in your life when you left bad circumstances in the past and focused on the positive circumstances in the present?

Standing by your principles 

Leadership, Success

The recent political debacle in the UK has highlighted to me the need to stand by your principles, and to spend time working out what your principles are, because they are the framework for every decision you make and every action you take. You could say that your principles define you, so you need to firstly define your principles, but is it as easy as knowing what your principles are?

During political elections like the one we have just had, principles play a very important role. When we decide who to vote for, we usually look for people who have similar views to us on important matters like education, the health service, housing etc, and we look for a political leader that we feel will stick with these principles when making big decisions about the big things that effect our lives. However, we see very often that political leaders do not always do what they say they are going to do, which leads to a lack of trust and cynicism sets in. Consistently living by your principles builds trust and respect from others. So if we want to work well with others we firstly need good principles and then we need to stick by them in the hard times and the good.

What is it though that makes principles good? The thing that I think is a large indicator is the effect it has on others. For example, if we believe that money will solve all of our problems, then we may well sacrifice relationships to get more money, hurting others in the process. If we believe that we should be completely honest all of the time then, for example, telling someone that they are fat will have a negative impact on the other persons self esteem. Money and honesty are not bad things in and of themselves, but the application of them should be for the greater good for both of ourselves and others, which should form part of the principles we hold.

Even though, I believe that fundamentally our principles should come from our own views on the world and everything in it, we should be open to the principles of others. It is only when we actually listen to the view points and principles of others that we can shape and sculpt our own. We all begin with the view points and principles of our parents and our peer groups, but this should be the beginning of our life long quest to shape and sculpt our own principles. This being the case then we have to live in two states. The first is being open to listen to others and learning from them, so we can reflect on our own principles to see if they still hold water. The second is to stand by our principles in every situation. This will mean we make good decisions and we build trust and respect in the relationships we have throughout our lives.

Two of my important principles are:

  1. Kindness should be part of every action and every word.
  2. Generosity that is received should be shared with those who need it.

What are your principles?

Bringing a new focus to this blog

Happiness, Success

After much consideration I have reshaped the focus of this blog. I have come to realise that happiness and success are in fact the pillars which support fulfilment in one’s life. The goal of life is fulfilment, which is impossible without understanding how to achieve both of these pillars. This is the manifesto for my new blog, which I have renamed The Fullfilment Project, the aim of which is to help people live a full life.

Manifesto

The Fullfilment Project is about inspiring every individual to find fulfilment in their lives. I believe every human being deserves to live a fulfilled life, which stands on two pillars, that of happiness and success. These are two vital intertwined states of being. You may be beaten down by life and circumstances, you may be living a blessed life, either way I aim to inspire you to be a better version of yourself today than you were yesterday, and as a result to find fulfilment.

I will post weekly content aimed at inspiring you to be the best version of yourself that you can be, a self that is happy, successful and fulfilled. I will focus on personal development, setting goals, daily hustle and cooperation with others.

I am on a journey studying the best ways to find fulfilment in life, so that I can share my findings and help as many people as I can to achieve their dreams and feel fulfilled, because I have a vision of a world where everyone cooperates with each other to find happiness and success, and therefore find fulfilment.

If we know the way to find fulfilment then we have a responsibility to guide others to find it and when others know the way we have to be humble enough to follow them. Happiness, success and fulfilment can be found in cooperation with others, because when we help others find these things we find them ourselves. This is our fulfilment manifesto.

How to plan your career

Success

When it comes to a career it can seem like navigating without a map or a compass, when these are in fact the exact things we need. The map shows us where we want to go and how to get there, while the compass provides the bearing to keep us on course. Some of us may have a working compass but no real idea of what we want our career end goal to be, and so we settle for a job that does not inspire or excite us, it just pays the bills.

What we need to do is find out what we were born to do, what we excel at and what we love doing. If we can find the right career then it will not feel like work.

I believe that there are four stages to finding the career you were born to do. I call the stages Foundation, Grounding, Vision and Actions. The Foundation is the Values you have, the behaviours and beliefs that shape who you are, it is your culture and your upbringing. Your values should form the foundation of your life, so exploring what your values are and having them in your mind will give you a compass to navigate through your life. It is important to check your bearings at regular intervals to see if you are still on course.

The Grounding, as I call it, is taking a good look at where you are now, in the present. What are your skills, experience and achievements? What makes you feel positive emotions and what makes feel negative emotions? It is an audit of your life and yourself, it is where you begin your endeavour towards your ideal career. This is the starting point on your map for success.

With the Foundation and the Grounding done you should have a better idea of where you want your career to go. Start with broad things like customer service face to face or working independently at home and then zone in on what role you really want to be doing. This is a big decision and listening to your gut can really help. The part of your brain that makes decisions,  called the Limbic brain, does not have the capacity for language and this is why we feel it rather than think it when we make ‘gut’ decisions. Listen to this and let it guide you. Once you have figured out your dream career this becomes your destination on the map to success. This becomes your Vision.

So how do you get from where you are now to where you want to be? Just thinking about what you should do here is not enough. You need a plan, but without Actions to back it up it will never happen. This is the forth stage. The best way I have found is to firstly list the actions you need to take. This could be training, shadowing someone, getting advice or applying for a position that starts you on your way to the career you want. This is essentially a To Do list, but as you may well know To Do lists often become lists of things we don’t get done.

To get past this there are some steps you can take. For each action write down why you should do it, followed by how you should do it and then, the crucial part, add a time frame for getting it done. A time frame puts pressure on yourself to get it done, and you can decide on the level of pressure by adding realistic timescales. Knowing why you should do the action also speaks directly to the decision making part of the brain, which thinks in terms of why rather than how and what, as Simon Sinek has taught us in his book ‘Start With Why.’

The reason why you do each action should be guided by both your values and your vision. This will keep you on course on your map for success. Once this framework is set up you will need to keep moving forwards, achieving the actions and following your values and vision, but the thing that is crucial is the application of consistent actions, every day, every week and every month. It may take years to get to where you want to be, but with patience and persistence I believe you can get there. You can have the career you want by following your compass and your map to success. Good luck.

Foundation: Values

Grounding: Skills, achievements and experience

Vision: The dream job/career

Actions: What, Why, How, Timescale

#career #findyourwhy #values #vision

How can we build a legacy?

Success

Have you ever thought about what legacy you are leaving behind you? When I think of legacy my natural instinct is to think of big businesses and powerful movements that change the world, nothing that I would associate with myself. However, I am beginning to think of legacy in broader terms. I have come to realise that every person’s legacy will be unique to them, and it can be both positive and negative.

It is the long lasting affect we have on the world, which out lives us. It has to therefore be about other people, we cannot create a legacy if we only focus on ourselves, this is how people die regretting the impact they could have had in the world. We have an innate feeling that we want to be remembered, that if people remember us after we die then our lives will have had meaning.

I think this innate feeling is slightly skewed. The way to find meaning is to find purpose, and the best way to find purpose is to help others realise their dreams, even if this is just being supportive or being available to listen when people need us to. Often it means being a good friend or colleague. It is less about being remembered and more about the affect you have on the lives of those around you.

I hope my legacy will be the positive change I make in other people’s lives and the positive change they will make in other people’s lives, and so on and so on.

Finding your Why

Happiness, Leadership, Success

You may have heard this banded about quite a bit recently with people on YouTube offering ways to find your Why. The motivational coaching space seems some what saturated with this since the book Start With Why was written by Simon Sinek and his TED Talk on the subject went viral on the Internet. But here’s the thing, finding your why is essential in order to find both happiness and success. It is your reason for being,  your reason for getting up in the morning. It is the reason why you feel so amazing when you do things that you love, and it should guide everything that you do in your life.

But how do you find your why? You start by find the things that bring you joy, the activities and life events that have a tremendously positive impact on your life, and then finding what links them. It took me until I was 35 years old to find my Why. It is now my philosophy for everything.

“Finding happiness and success is a path we walk together.”

If we collaborate rather than dictate then we find our happiness and success together, inspiring and supporting each other. This is why I write this blog every week, because I want to help others find both happiness and success. I do believe that we can all find both of these and that they are inseparable. This is my Why now go and find yours.

The relationship between values/beliefs and trust

Success

“Value, by definition, is the transference of trust… …You have to earn trust by communicating and demonstrating that you share the same values and beliefs.”

– Simon Sinek

Our values and beliefs are the reasons why we say what we say and do what we do, our behaviours and decisions are the product of these values and beliefs. As human beings we are drawn towards others who “…share the same values and beliefs.” This is how we should communicate with each other, telling the world what we stand for and what we believe.

It can be as simple as saying please and thank you, which shows that we believe manners are important. And when we meet people who believe the same thing a connection is made. This is why we join groups and wear certain clothes, to fit in with a specific group.

Problems can occur when we try too hard to join a specific group that we want to be part of, but we are not being our authentic selves, the values and beliefs of the group don’t align with ours. If what we communicate through our actions and words is not authentically us, people will often pick up on this and trust cannot develop. Authenticity matters, even though it has become a popular buzz word. Knowing why who hold certain values and beliefs will influence how you behave, it brings a self confidence and is broadcast out to the world.

The same is true in business, because every client, customer and colleague is a human being, who will trust we if they share the same values and beliefs, but they have to come from us first. Find your authentic self, pitch your metaphorical tent and those who believe what you believe will be drawn to you and trust can build, but your focus needs to be on the greater outcome, on something bigger than yourself, on a cause, even if this is just excellent customer service or being a kind person.