The not-so-subtle differences between fulfilment and peace of mind. Does fulfilment in your career and life lead to peace of mind?

What is fulfilment?

What makes you tick individually as a human being? What gets out of bed in the morning? Can you get paid for it?

Fulfilment is doing what you love and getting paid for it, it is all about finding your purpose of living.

How to find your purpose?

Have you ever felt the sense of time vanish? Did you lose yourself in the act of doing? Did you achieve that state in the past week or month? Think about it.

Psychologist Mihaly calls this state “flow”, and described it as the pleasure, delight, creativity, and process when we are completely immersed in life.

How to get paid for it?

You have to become really good at it, but how?

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then is not an act but a habit. - Aristotle

Focus on enjoying daily rituals and using them to enter the state of flow. Don’t worry about the outcome, it will come naturally. As a rule of thumb remind yourself: “Rituals over Goal”.

Although separated by great distance both Indian and Japanese wisdom converge

1. Your right is to work only and never to the fruit thereof, focus on the purpose and process - Gita.

2. Ikigai (生き甲斐) is a Japanese concept referring to something that gives a person a sense of purpose, a reason for living.

Hector Garcia author of the book “Ikigai” interviewed residents of Okinawa, Japan – who live longer and have fewer diseases than anywhere else in the world.

They don’t retire from something to nothing, they retire to their “Ikigai”. If you keep your mind and body busy, you will be around for a long time.

I highly recommend this book.

Personally speaking, I am in search of my “Ikigai”, curiosity drives me, and writing about my curiosities is an act of finding my Ikigai.

How to achieve peace of mind permanently?

Interestingly, all major civilizations came to the same conclusion independently. Relinquish all attachment and worldly possessions.

Why?

Losing hurts more than winning, it is an empirically proven fact. The pain of losing is psychologically about twice as powerful as the pleasure of gaining according to Nobel Prize-winning Daniel Kahneman.

Investment Banking Traders to Monks all over the world will vouch for it.

Whilst the common man strives to minimize losses, monks eliminate the possibility of losing by relinquishing all attachments and worldly possessions. Monks have a higher probability than the common man of achieving peace of mind permanently.

Finding peace of mind is Monk's Ikigai, getting paid is irrelevant.

There you have it; not-so-subtle differences amongst success, happiness, fulfilment and peace of mind.

Epilogue:
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