Being Enough — The Power of Fulfillism
A guiding philosophy for life, creativity, and inner peace
Can you have your cake and mindfully eat it?
It’s something I’ve struggled with throughout my life…
A plaguing desire for more.
At various points I’ve been a compulsive gambler, compulsive eater, and compulsive worker. Now I’m probably a compulsive writer (although this feels like the lesser of the evils).
To try and deal with these problems, I’ve tried just about everything — meditation, mindfulness, minimalism, religion, spirituality, atheism, nihilism, quietism.
But nothing quite seems to fit.
Quietism is about the best match that I’ve found so far, but even that has flaws.
Since reaching 40-years-old, I’ve decided that I’m going to start living life my way. I’m going to march to the beat of my own drum. Not in an ‘in-your-face’ way, because that’s not my style. But in a quiet, calm, introverted way.
That’s why I’m writing about a guiding philosophy I’m in the early stages of developing.
I’ve dubbed it “Fulfillism”.
Why we rarely feel fulfiled
As mentioned, I’ve found quietism to be beneficial. It brings some essential stillness and balance into my life.
Quietism has helped to set me on a more spiritual path, where I’m more inclined to follow my instincts and intuition more closely.
But I don’t think that quietism does enough to counteract the problems a lot of us have (myself included) in terms of over-consumption, pleasure-seeking, and instant-gratification.
This is the ‘hedonic treadmill’.
We’re constantly seeking something outside of ourselves that will make us happy — but we never achieve it. We never get there, because as our desires are met and positive changes happen, we quickly slide back and our happiness returns to its base level.
It’s a treadmill that never gets us any fitter.
For example, we think that we’ll feel great when we can finally afford that new car or a luxury vacation. We get it. We feel great. For a while. But within a few days or weeks, we drop back to our previous level of happiness.
The problem is — we’re relying on external things to make us happy.
In reality — happiness is an ‘inside job’.
Until we feel fulfilled in ourselves — our true selves, we’ll never be happy.
So what’s the answer? Minimalism, perhaps?
I don’t think minimalism works either — not on its own anyway.
Why minimalism doesn’t work
The theory of minimalism is that by removing external pleasures, indulgences, and distractions — we’ll be more free to focus on internal growth and fulfilment.
I’ve tried this to varying degrees in my life, but I always end up resentful. Maybe it’s just me, but I like to indulge myself at times. Pleasure is important, as long as we don’t overdo it.
The key is balance.
Going to extremes in either direction — too much looking to the material world for happiness, or too much looking inwards — can be damaging.
That’s where Fulfillism comes in.
What is Fulfillism?
The overall aim of fulfillism is to feel fulfilled in our lives and ourselves, without the need to over-consume or overindulge.
The emphasis here is on “over”. It’s okay to consume and indulge in moderation, but not excessively.
It’s a balance point between consumerism and minimalism.
The difficulty comes in trying to decide where that fulfilment point is.
This is where Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs can help.
Are our basic needs being met — shelter, food, sex, love, support, friendship, community?
Once these are fulfilled to a basic level, then we can progress to the higher needs — achievement, self-esteem, purpose, self-actualization, etc.
Everything else is frippery.
I don’t need a flash car, expensive clothes, or the latest i-Phone to feel fulfilled.
If I start to feel like that, then I need to start looking inwards again.
With Fulfilism, you decide which indulgences will help you to feel fulfilled, and stop there.
The whole point is to avoid getting back on the hedonic treadmill.
Feel your way to fulfillment
For me, it’s all about being in touch with how I’m feeling.
When I’m on, or heading towards, the hedonic treadmill, I start to feel anxious, distracted, rigid, and overly future-orientated.
When I’m in a place of fulfillment, I feel content, happy, grateful, relaxed, creative, and playful.
I’ve learned this the hard way.
In my gambling days, everything in my life was focused on getting money to gamble. The hope and dream was to ‘win big’ and buy more stuff, treat my family like royalty, and be “happy”.
It was all a false reality. I never felt fulfilled. Even on the rare occasions that I won a lot of money, I would soon feel restless and anxious for more again.
Sadly, gambling took me to a place where I lost everything — my house, my family, my possessions.
That was a wake up call.
It opened the door to discovering the 12 steps, and later the principles of quietism.
Applying the principles of quietism — peace, meditation, prayer, serenity — have helped me to improve, but it’s a constant process of renewal and maintenance. I journal daily to make sure that I’m not slipping back into hedonic ways.
Now it’s time to take this a step further with a new philosophy — Fulfillism.
One that blends quietism, existentialism, and self-actualization.
I’d like to expand on this idea of “Fulfillism” in this blog over the coming weeks and months. I’m welcome to ideas and comments to help me develop it, so please feel free to comment below 🙂
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AI Prompts Used While Writing This Blog Post
As mentioned here, I’m disclosing every ChatGPT prompt that I use to assist my blog writing.
No AI tools were used in the writing of this article (cub scout’s honour and cross my heart hope to die).
This one came from the heart ❤️Xxxx❤️