5 Steps to Finding Lasting Happiness and Fulfillment

Happiness and fulfillment are two different things. You can have fulfillment without happiness, but you can’t have complete happiness without fulfillment.

Being happy is about feeling good, experiencing something pleasurable—something philosophers refer to as hedonic well-being.

Fulfillment, or eudaimonic well-being occurs when humans reach for something beyond pleasure in life—which may include contributing to others or to society in a way that is bigger than the self.

More simplistically, leading a happy life, some psychologists say, can be associated with being a “taker” while leading a fulfilled life corresponds with being a “giver.”

In a January, 2013 issue of Atlantic, for example, Emily Esfahani Smith says,

“By putting aside our selfish interests to serve someone or something larger than ourselves — by devoting our lives to “giving” rather than “taking” — we are not only expressing our fundamental humanity, but are also acknowledging there is more to the good life than the pursuit of simple happiness.”

Being fulfilled, but not really being happy

So how is it possible to be fulfilled, but not really happy? Giving of ourselves can be demanding, time consuming, and exhausting. Sometimes, it doesn’t make us at all happy. But while it doesn’t always lead to happiness, it always leads to lasting satisfaction—a feeling that we have done some good in the world.

Being happy, but not being fulfilled

Experiencing happiness, on the other hand, is temporary, and always needs to be renewed. During our younger years, when we are striving to establish a family, or a career, we grasp happiness in bursts, taking what we can, but once we are older, and have reached all of our early markers, indulging in pleasure for pleasure’s sake no longer seems to make us happy. The feelings that we crave, in later life, lead us on a search for something deeper, and we begin to look to fulfillment as a measure of our happiness.

So what are the 5 steps to fulfillment?

1. Practice gratitude

We are constantly reminded to be grateful for what we have, and told that gratitude is not only the key to contentment, but also a source of joy, and a gateway to abundance. I admit it’s hard to be thankful for what we have in a world that constantly shouts at us to consume, and acquire more. But I’ve always known that this was an important goal for me to have. Years ago I began a gratitude journal. Through this exercise, I developed a systematic method of practising gratitude. Each morning, as my feet hit the floor, I started a litany of things I’m grateful for, simple things, like running water, food and heat. I’d continue whenever I thought of it during the day, and gradually I developed a habit of being grateful. Of course, it was hard to maintain, because life intervenes to disturb even the best of our intentions, but that period of my life, where I made a special effort to be grateful, resonated with me, and helped me to develop a mindset of being constantly grateful.

2. Clear out the clutter

Having an over-abundance of things in your environment, especially if it is unorganized, can be a detriment to your sense of peace and calm, which is a necessary step to fulfillment. There is a reason that downsizing and minimalism has become such a force. Clutter is a new condition in our culture—it’s only in the past few decades that we have been able to accumulate so much at a cheaper cost. Buying is easy, but making decisions about storing and sorting seems harder for many of us. Clearing clutter—organizing your environment, giving things away, keeping only those things that you need or that bring you joy, —will leave you energized and ready to begin, a more fulfilled chapter in your life.

3. Do something for others

You don’t have to commit to a rigorous schedule of volunteering, or regularly give away sums of money to charities, in order to practise giving. Perhaps you already are a giver, by taking a lonely neighbor out for coffee, picking up a parcel for someone who doesn’t drive, or phoning friends or family members to check on them.

There are examples of this everywhere. In our Condo Complex, we are fortunate to have people who give of their time to create activities for others, and greatly affect the general  quality of life. Artistic expression is also a way of giving. My husband, who is a talented piano maestro, plays at Seniors’ residences several times a year, as well as producing Broadway reviews for people who love that style of music. He tells me that his sense of fulfillment comes from making people happy.

4. End negative thinking

Happiness and fulfillment bloom in positive surroundings, and die in a negative environment. A general negativity about your circumstances can do damage to your health, your relationships, and your entire life. It reflects a lack of confidence in your ability to change the course of bad events in your life and allows you to negate and distort the good things that life has to offer. Understanding that your own thoughts control how you feel will give you the tools to change this way of thinking. The most powerful strategy in ending a pattern of negative thinking is making a decision that you will end it, and stick to it.

End the blaming, end the wallowing in helplessness and especially end the complaining. Acknowledge that it took years to develop this pattern of thought, so it will take a big effort to dislodge it from your life before you can move towards fulfillment.

5. Find a balance between the two types of well-being

Here is where it all comes together. Balancing hedonic and eudaimonic well-being gives us enormous feelings of happiness and fulfillment. Achieving that balance includes continuing the activities that give you pleasure, but also developing your inner life. You can now give yourself permission to stop striving to accomplish and accumulate. You no longer need to prove anything to yourself or others.

You can begin the practise of doing what gives you enormous satisfaction, whether it’s expressing a long hidden artistic talent, working to alleviate human suffering or join a greater cause.

Humanistic psychology calls this self-actualization, a process of raising your consciousness, and becoming the best that you can be. But I call it simply relaxing into this stage of life, taking each day as it comes, giving myself permission to have real joy, within the framework of accepting simple pleasure, and at the same time, experiencing the fulfillment of doing something for the greater good.