Internal Mono(b)log

Looking at an event, a person can either be said to have succeeded or failed in achieving a goal. Looking at a lifetime, how does one judge? Ask yourself “I’m a success? Am I a failure?” I postulate that only YOU can answer that question.

I was thinking the other day about how people think of others and themselves as either (generically) a success or a failure. This is what I came up with.

The label of successful or failure is one that is applied by society or by our buying-in to society’s expectations of what we *should* be doing with our lives. So, for example, a person is typically thought of as being successful if they have a high-paying job, a big house, a nice car, nice stuff, money to go on vacations and spoil those around them. Conversely society will assign a label of failure on a person, if they haven’t “lived up to their potential”. This is, of course, all subjective from the perspective of the observer.

I realized in my pondering that the adjective “Successful” or “Failure” applied to one’s life is not particularily useful. Trying to apply these terms to yourself is always dependent on your frame-of-mind. If you’re in a positive mood, you’ll label yourself a success. If you’re down, you’ll call yourself a failure. These terms are really indiscriptive and both are harmful. Failure implies a negative end-state, success a positive end-state. Both imply and end-state. Not particularily useful if you’re still alive.

I came to the idea that while you’re alive and looking at your life in order to make corrections, the 2 drivers for your life should be the following : *contentment* and *fulfillment*. Unfortunately, these 2 terms are a little difficult to define wholistically in the way I intend.

Contentment… being happy and comfortable in your surroundings. Having food to eat, heat, clothes, etc… Of course, contentment can be lost through external influences and human nature. Things like greed or jealousy work against your contentment by confusing you into thinking that your contentment is dependent on others. Contentment, in many ways, speaks to an internal state.

Fulfillment… living your life in a way that touches others or makes us feel that our life has value beyond our own basic survival and comfort. Fulfillment, in many ways, speaks to accomplishment or actions that our external to ourselves.

A life that strives to be both content and fulfilled and also balanced, is one that I believe to be inwardly “successful”. Society, well, they can make their own call based on whatever expectations they want to place. But someone who is inwardly “successful” won’t care what society thinks.

At times contentment and fulfillment will be at odds with each other. In some cases this is avoidable, but it take a great deal of soul-searching and personal honesty to find these solutions. If you find yourself in a situation where your contentment and fulfillment seem to be at the opposite ends of the same scale, then a radical change is required to align them. Take the factory worker as an example: completely bought into the “game” they have a comfortable living. They probably aren’t mentally or spiritually challenged (at least not by their work) and the majority of the factory-workers I know, I believe, would say that they haven’t had a very fulfilling life. When they challenge themselves and put aside the things that they believe are bringing contentment (cable tv, cell phones, etc.) in favour of finding a path that balances the contentment and fulfillment then they start to have the balance that at the end-of-days makes them feel that they’ve accomplished something with their existence.

When you’re lying on your deathbed, preparing to breathe your last breath, will your 5000 sq. ft. home, BMW, and Armani suits comfort you or will the knowledge of your fulfilling life and your current content state be what you carry into the next realm?

I believe that if we all lived our lives with these 2 barometers to guide us, that the world would be a better place. Seek contentment and fulfillment everyday and in every way. It is your responsibility to yourself to do so.

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I am still fleshing out this thought, input/discussion is welcome. I’ll probably edit this post or repost a more succinct outline when it has all taken shape in my [InternalMonoblog](http://www.internalmonoblog.com/)