A great journey awaits you. It’s not for the faint of heart, so pack your resilience and sharpen your instincts. You’re heading down a long, winding path to a dark place, a very cold, small dungeon near the basement of your soul, to unlock your essential self.
Sound fun?
Perhaps a more enticing journey, and a more fitting way to kick off new beginnings would be to look for what most everyone looks for—happiness and fulfillment.
These words are often used together, and at times, interchangeably. But in truth happiness and fulfillment are two arrows pointing in opposite directions.
Happiness is an external journey, a side effect of surface desires satisfied, partaking in pleasures, or finding your life aligned with cultural norms and expectations. It’s short-lived, but it lights up your life from the outside. The champagne toast, the promotion, or the perfect dinner party can make one happy happy happy.
Fulfillment, on the other hand, is an internal contentment. It’s an inner journey undertaken to get closer toward your most essential, most true self. When you feel that sensation of “yes!”, the gut feeling that something feels right beyond any doubt, an inner spark of joy, no matter how tiny, that’s when you know you’re heading in the right direction, a breadcrumb toward fulfillment. Some different markers are an unequivocal “no!”, making the gut-wrenchingly painful but correct choice, or saying a goodbye that’s terrifying but a huge relief, miles better than staying trapped where you were.
The catch, of course, is that fulfillment is not quite as glamorous or obviously gratifying, and takes more work. But unlike happiness, it is deeply satisfying and lasts much longer.
So which do you choose?
Here’s the other catch: it’s not a choice between one or the other; you need both. The trick is to know the difference, and being aware of which one you’re really looking for so you’re not wasting time and energy chasing one thing when you what you need—deep down inside—is something else entirely.
It is surprisingly easy to chase the wrong thing; for one, it is usually what’s considered normal and in high regard in society (we all want to fit in), and for two, it feels easier to aim for. So we chase, chase, win and chase some more, and if we get it, we don’t understand why it doesn’t feel as good as we thought it would. Then we chase for more.
Meanwhile, your essential self sits in the dark. But pushed too far it makes its presence felt. The further you move away from your truth, the more likely it is you’ll succumb to self-sabotage, ride life on an undercurrent of anger, or against a backdrop of heaviness and captivity. Two arrows pointing in opposite directions, straining at the core.
The tough but beautiful truth is that you can change course at any given moment. You can cease this internal split and realign to a better direction. Crisis, loss, growth—these are times of vulnerability, when things did not go as you demanded, and a signal to recalibrate. It’s neither pain nor self-sacrifice that are to be your guide, but your essential self, your truth.
It may take some time to realize the dungeon isn’t keeping you safe, because then you would never need seek happiness nor fulfillment. But if you are still seeking, pack up your essentials, and get started—a great journey awaits you.
Photo by Tianshu Liu on Unsplash
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