What Is the Key to Feeling Fulfilled?

Maybe it’s one of life’s great mysteries that with all the information sharing technology that we have, we still find ourselves stumped by this question…

Eleanor Roosevelt penned her book “You Learn By Living - Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life” back in 1960 to try to respond to this underlying question she felt she was being asked in the hundreds of thousands of letters she would receive every year.

In the first chapter titled “Learning to Learn,” she writes about how her French school teacher, Marie Souvestre, once scolded her on a paper she turned in by saying, “You are giving me back what I gave you and it does not interest me. You have not sifted it through your own intelligence.”

Because to Madame Souvestre’s point, without “sifting” we believe certain viewpoints at face value which means we’re just parroting back an extension of someone else’s way of thinking. This leaves us subject to going along with knee-jerk reactions, blindly believing unsolicited advice, or succumbing to what is known as “mob mentality."

Actually, not questioning information as it appears before us contributes to our suffering as we can accidentally take on unnecessary insecurities, guilt, aggravation, and even panic.

And this practice of pausing to scrutinize isn’t just about protecting ourselves from unnecessary fear mongering, it’s also a way of fostering our individuality.

When uninvestigated, unconscious conformity lies within, it literally dulls us to living an unauthentic life. It’s our intellectual choice to challenge if our beliefs, sentiments, and attitudes truly belong to us. Taking on that exploration is the one catalyst to developing and defining our own originality.

We can even go as far back as to when we were growing up, what outside opinions still stay with us and inform how we act? Is it that an adult told us, “You’re too difficult.” Or other kids said, “You’re not fun.” Do we go out of our way to proactively prevent these notions from reoccurring even though they may not be true?

In order to feel deeply satisfied we have to pursue and filter out what does not serve, nor accurately represents, our character and identity.

In fact, Eleanor writes in a subsequent chapter, “Remember always that you have not only the right to be an individual; you have an obligation to be one.”

In order to get the most out of this human experience, this is a vital element. The basis for being fulfilled is actualizing our individuality.

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