Inner Fulfilment

Minimize your needs – Enjoy the Process –

A poster outside a coffee shop in the USA reads: “Those who ask you if the cup is half full or half empty miss the point. The cup can always be refilled.”

With that, I want to take you on a journey to examine and understand an important, difficult and valuable word: Fulfilment. Many teachers use the analogy of the half-full or half-empty to make an important point about how to be happy. A positive, optimistic and hopeful mind would see what is there rather than what is missing, and would be contented. A cynical, negative mind would see the cup as deficient and want more. Such people would be unhappy.

But I’d like to ask the third question: does the happy man have inner fulfilment?

Inner Fulfilment, in my life view, is what arises when every moment of life is rich with meaningful, every moment precious and vivid. Every day of such a life is filled with a deep satisfaction. When the time comes to go, such a person will leave with a smile, knowing that this last moment too is perfect. Fulfilment is not the result of material wealth or fortune. It is not the birthright of those with money and power: the billionaires, the presidents, the kings. In fact, neither money nor power have anything to do with Inner Fulfilment.”

Fulfilment, in essence, to me it’s a feeling of completeness, of achieving what you dreamed of and a true sense of purpose. It’s about grasping the here and now, basking in it.

To a person with deep Inner Fulfilment from moment to moment, day to day, that cup of coffee will never stay half for long. It willl always be full again.

This chapter is about living a life rich with meaning and purpose from moment to moment. Like the most important things in life, it is not an automatic skill. It must be learned, and once learned, practiced till it becomes a lifestyle. Such a soul lives in a state of Inner Fulfilment in every waking minute.

The Mathematics of Life

The kindest blessing an elder can bestow on a child in India is Jug jug jiyo —May you live for ages and ages! But I want to make a more modest wish for you — a life 100 years long.

That’s 1,200 months

5,217 weeks and 6 days.

36,525 days.

876,600 hours.

52,596,000 minutes.

3,155,760,000 seconds.

If you did 3 acts of kindness every day, that would be 109,575 living beings whose lives were better because of you.

If you took 16 breaths a minutes, you would 840,960,000 over that life. How much joy would each breath of life give you? How much gratitude would you feel with each breath?

If you saw a sunrise every day, that would be 36,525 sunrises. What do those seconds, minutes, hours and days mean to you?

Inner Fulfilment is what makes each moment of those 100 hundreds eternal, irreplaceable, precious and amazing. It is what fills you with an infectious joy that makes other want to be near you, and bask in the glow of your immense, selfless light.

Achieving Inner Fulfilment

You can set yourself a financial goal, say, that you will be a billionaire by 35. Your bank balance will give you clear proof of whether you succeeded or not. You could aim to have a villa with a swimming pool by your 30th birthday. You could envision having the most perfect soulmate in your life — and you would know when that happens too. But Inner Fulfilment is a continuous state of mind. Like the flame of a candle, it is lit by your ability to appreciate the little things of life, every moment, and live with an awareness of what you can give rather than what you can get. Like a candle, it needs the oxygen of daily moment-to-moment awareness in every action and thought. Like a candle, it burns brighter, the more you feed it of your essential virtue.

I want to share a list of habits of mind, attitudes and perceptions that can actively lead you to Inner Fulfilment.

Appreciate every moment you are alive: Most of us take our lives for granted, convinced that our own end is far away, that life will go on somehow forever. Sadhguruji, in his inimitable style, says, “Life is pretty simple. Birth is not in your hands, and you just have to die one day. Birth is compulsory, death is compulsory. In between, whatever you want. Only two things nature has set for you: you’re born, you have to die. Aren’t you glad you’ve come with an expiry date?”

DO THIS: Gratitude for every day, every hour, every moment that you are alive and conscious to savor and cherish and give your best to the bounty around you.

Let go of the need for total control: Yes, we learn from a young age to think ahead, plan and be decisive so that your life can be exactly what you envision it to be. We dream of life in a world tailor-made for us where everything unfolds exactly as you wanted it to. Sometimes it does, and you feel a sense of accomplishment and power. But often it doesn’t — and then you feel like a straw in a wind. Frustration, stress and helplessness follow. Even more tragic are those who believed they could control the actions and behaviors of those around them.

Control, of any kind, is a fantasy. Planning is how we impose a measure of order on the chaos, but the universe thrives in disorder and uncertainty and that is woven into the fabric of your life too.

DO THIS: Learn to let go. Sadhguru distinguishes between involvement and entanglement. Cultivate a mind intensely involved but open to all outcomes, and work with the outcomes fluidly.

Minimize your needs. To a person living in a single room with a shared toilet, a house with a separate bedroom and a kitchen and bathroom is a palace. But he dreams next of a furnished condo in a building with a gym and pool. We learn that to succeed, you must keep growing — big to bigger to biggest, rich to richer to richest. But titans collapse, giant corporations go bankrupt and celebrities are forgotten. All that the lust for the next big thing does is to prevent you being fully in your moment, happy and fulfilled,

“The moment you feel a boundary, you want to break it. There is something within you that just wants to expand, and seek growth,” says Sadhguru. Human desire is boundless, restless and never satisfied. The more it is fed, the hungrier it gets.

DO THIS: Develop the constant awareness that what goes up, comes down. The universe is cyclical in its every part. Planting follows harvest, and harvest follows planting. You cannot be boundless. Cultivate austerity and a “poverty” mind.

Learn to be happy with imperfection. The belief that something better is just around the corner, the search for the next big thing, the eternal quest for a perfection that never somehow comes within reach — these breed restlessness, dissatisfaction and discontent. They take your attention away form what is in front of you into the next moment and then the next. Fulfilment only comes from being immersed in the here and the now.

DO THIS: Scale down your expectations of what is sufficient. Learn to accept the result of your labors, and be grateful that you had the skills and talent to get there.

Be a student, not a judge.. The Buddha said that the greatest source of misery is the human tendency to develop cravings and aversions — we habitually and automatically assess everything in our life, and pass judgment on it. One of the greatest antagonists of achieving Inner Fulfilment is our habit of holding opinions on the actions and words of others, the tendency to judge them as good or evil, desirable or undesirable. Since we do not control anyone but ourselves, we can never hope to change them those we dislike or disagree with. This alone creates deep inner bitterness, resentment and a continuous feeling of dissatisfaction.

DO THIS: Keep yourself in the learning mode rather than judgmental mode. Ask questions and learn more about the things and persons who you feel a strong negative reaction towards. Often, understanding leads to acceptance. A student is humble; a judge is literally the last word on the matter. Better to be a student.

Practice deep gratitude every day. Numerous scientific studies of gratitude have demonstrated strong and durable psychological and physical benefits from living in a state of thankfulness, from improved sleep and better social relationships, to greater empathy, less aggressiveness, reduced stress and improved ability to deal with trauma. All these come together as a single strong benefit — inner fulfilment.

DO THIS: Make time and space for actively practicing gratitude every day. Keep a gratitude journal, make a Gratitude Board in your house, consciously express thankfulness and appreciation to those who make your life as wonderful as it is. I give the greatest emphasis to gratitude, and in nearly every chapter you will find helpful tips on how to be a more grateful human being.

Slow down. We live lives of deadlines, commitments and pressure. We rush from one thing to the next, and wonder where the time went. The urgency and hurry that fills out days can serious damage your ability to be fulfilled and satisfied with yourself and with life. With your attention on the next urgent task to be accomplished, you will miss the here and the now, and lose sight of what is making this moment precious.

DO THIS: Learn the difference between hurry and speed. A person in a hurry is virtually mindless. But speed is the hallmark of a competent, mindful and attentive person. Cultivate speed, not hurry, and learn to maintain inner calm.

Do not think too much. Shakespeare’s prince of Denmark, Hamlet, says, “There is nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so. To me it is a prison.” Overthinking can become your prison too.

DO THIS: Set aside time for meditation every day. Meditation has been shown to calm the mind and settle the ceaseless flow of thoughts. When the surface of the lake is placid, that is when every reflection is crystal clear.

The One Habit: Inclusiveness

If I could suggest a single habit that can dramatically enhance your sense of inner fulfilment it would be to be inclusive. This means actively devoting significant time and energy in your day to the needs and well-being of others.

You may have worked hard on your own Vision, Mission and Goals. But unknown to you, you may find that your own compulsion to attend to your life needs single-mindedly turns your focus on your self. When your thoughts and actions become selfish and do not include others, you are on a slippery slope.

Plan your moments and days so that significant chunks of your time and energy are devoted to the needs and well-being of other people. This will help you achieve a balance between your needs and the needs of the community that gives you life.

It was Albert Einstein who said, “A life directed chiefly toward the fulfillment of personal desires will sooner or later always lead to bitter disappointment.”

But it was Charlie Munger, 95, Vice Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, who called inner fulfilment”easy, because it’s so simple”. His formula is succinct —

“You don’t have a lot of envy.

“You don’t have a lot of resentment.

“You don’t overspend your income.

“You stay cheerful in spite of your troubles.

“You deal with reliable people.

“And you do what you’re supposed to do.

“And all these simple rules work so well to make your life better. And they’re so trite.”

____________________

References

What does Fulfillment mean to you? https://www.huffpost.com/entry/what-does-fulfilment-to-y_b_8910062

7 scientifically proven benefits of gratitude http://tinyurl.com/y2q6z9pr

How gratitude changes you and your brain http://tinyurl.com/yy2fjtat

Charlie Munger’s secret to a long and happy life http://tinyurl.com/y4tufuz3