What is Fulfillment?

As defined by Webster’s dictionary (or whatever dictionary my Mac uses on the dashboard) fulfillment is: satisfaction or happiness as a result of fully developing one’s abilities or character. The achievement of something desired, promised, or predicted.

For me this definition implies that fulfillment is not an absolute or permanent state of being but rather that it is developed and maintained, and achieved – again and again over time.

One major goal of coaching is to help people live a fulfilled life. Self fulfillment is self-actualization.

To be in a state of fulfillment requires that we know with some degree of clarity what we really want. Knowing want we want requires that we have an understanding of our deepest needs and values.  What we deeply want is not material objects but rather; what is the dominant state of being that we would like to live in; contentment, peace of mind, hope, enthusiasm?

“Often people attempt to live their lives backwards: they try to have more things, or more money, in order to do more of what they want, so they will be happier. The way it actually works is in reverse. You must first be who you really are, then do what you need to do, in order to have what you want.”
Margret Young – Popular singer and comedienne in the 1920’s

Although self-actualization was originally coined by Kurt Goldstein an organismic theorist in the 1930’s it was brought to the main stream public by Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.  As defined by Maslow; self-actualization is

“…the desire for self-fulfillment, namely the tendency for him [the individual] to become actualized in what he is potentially. This tendency might be phrased as the desire to become more and more what one is, to become everything that one is capable of becoming.”

There were also characteristics that stood out to Maslow that seem to be part of the make-up of people who achieved actualization: the ability to embrace reality and facts rather than denying truth, spontaneity, being ‘focused on problems outside themselves’. They ‘can accept their own human nature in the stoic style, with all its shortcomings’, similarly acceptant of others. They generally lack prejudice, are independent, have a tendency to form few but deep friendships. They have a “philosophical” sense of humor, a tendency to resist outside pressures and a general transcendence of the environment rather than “coping” with it.

Now this is not to say that if you do not have these characteristics that you cannot achieve self-actualization but that these can be seen as a road map to fulfillment.

Coaches have developed a multitude of tools that help one to hone in on what parts of the map need to be filled in, understood and fleshed out in order to be on your path to fulfillment. We will explore some of these tools next week.

This is a process that is about the ability to recognize and develop parts of ourselves which allow us to make the best of a situation and see ourselves through to the life we want to live.

“If you can dream it, you can do it.”
Walt Disney

QUESTION OF THE WEEK:
What is it you most want? What are your deepest needs and values?