There are lessons to be learned in every experience, every interaction, every moment. If our first instinct is to put blame onto a situation or a person then we are not taking responsibility for our own path through life. Taking ownership of every failure and every misunderstanding will lead to looking for what each of these can teach us. We should never stop learning until our dying breath.
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.
Walk Your Own Path
When I was twenty I received a shaving razor from a well known company free in the post, which was a savvy move on their part, as I’m still buying razor blades for it fifteen years later. This razor worked very well and has never given me any cause to think about buying one from another company. However, a few years ago I was doing my usual big shop in a local supermarket when I saw a fancy looking razor that had been reduced to half price. It was made by a rival company, it was white and it vibrated the blade of the razor to give a closer shave. Intrigued and encouraged by the low price, I bought it and gave it a try. It was no way near as good as the razor I had been using for years. The lesson here is not to be drawn in by low prices and the promises of better features that don’t actually improve your life, because they only superficially appear to do so.
It is very easy in our current society to be convinced to buy consumerist products simply by being told they are better than the last thing we were told to buy or to behave in a certain way that is deemed cool or popular because so many others are doing the same. If we are not careful we can start to sleepwalk through life, living based on borrowed thoughts and feelings, on assimilated beliefs, and we end up not following our own path. In this situation I believe rebelling and walking our own path will lead to a happier and more fulfilling life. This, however, is not easy to do. Firstly it takes courage to swim against the stream, and secondly you have to find your own path before you can walk down it. This means lots of mistakes and walks down unfamiliar paths. Walking your own path takes courage but also persistence and self compassion. Mistakes will be made, so go easy on yourself.
A Reflection on Resilience
Resilience is an essential character trait when it comes to happiness and success. It is the ability to treat knock-backs and disappointments as feedback, as opportunities to learn, which will result in both happiness and success. However, this can be a difficult mindset to engage in, because it feels more natural to react to knock-backs and disappointments with negativity, to treat them as negative feedback. This is due to the mental habits we have developed, the examples we have witnessed and the general assimilation of the narratives from the culture we have grown up in.
What we need to do is detach the negative from the feedback and disappointments, to try to look at it with a neutral mindset and try to tease out what can be constructive, so that we can move forward more positively. This, as with many things, requires practice. To a large degree we are working against all of the mental habits we have thus far embedded into the pathways of our brains. The good news is that if we repeatedly look for the feedback that we can use to make ourselves better, and as a result our careers and our relationships better, we will build resilience to cope with the disasters that life can sometimes drop on us. When we train our minds in this way we become ready for the tough times in life, but it has to be a daily practice otherwise when the disaster hits we will crumble.
The Fullfilment Project 