“I have it all, and I’m not happy.” This sounds strange to many people, but those were the words of a client I had a few months back. “I have everything,” they told me, “The successful career, the wealth, the husband, and the kids. Why?” She asked. We tend to believe that fulfillment is when we reach the proverbial top of the mountain we’re all trying to climb. And we believe it so much, we chase our dreams for so long, that it becomes who we are.
Then we reach that mountaintop, only to find there’s a higher one to climb, like a video game with endless levels. I’ve seen many souls climb summit after summit and never feel like their lives are complete. You may be chasing that next career milestone, financial goal, maybe a new car, or planning that next big vacation, and those things might feel suitable for a while, but eventually, the experience passes. We’re right back to chase another one, and it becomes an endless cycle. That’s what life feels like when we tie our sense of worth closely to achievement and wealth.
So, when do we actually get to feel we’ve conquered the mountain (if ever)?
As an expert and coach in 5D consciousness and transcendental psychology, I’ve found that the difference between happiness and success is that fulfillment will never come from outside circumstances, no matter how grand. Fulfillment can only come from an awareness that we exist here and now, and how we feel in this moment after a great accomplishment will also determine how we feel when we reach our next goal.
If we feel empty here, we’re going to feel empty there. When we believe something is lacking now, we will feel lacking when we reach our next goal. It’s counterintuitive, and it’s not usually what we’re told growing up.
Jim Carrey famously said, “I wish everyone got all the fame and fortune they wanted, so they see that it’s not the answer.”
We are creating a dilemma in our minds when we say, “So then if getting wealth, achievement and accolades isn’t going to make me happy, then why do anything at all?”.A few thoughts on this come from mystery and esoteric schools of thought, which I’ve learned to be the answer to this question.
They teach us that the soul always asks, “what else can I become? What more can I experience?”. That’s not going to change. Whether it’s more caring, more abundance, more contribution, or more challenge, it’s our nature to want more. This wanting leads to action, experience, and growth. Wealth and achievement naturally go with one’s desire to grow and become better.
However, life is complex, and one’s self-esteem to continue to progress and grow depends on the outcomes of their experiences rather than their belief in their ability to face whatever life throws at them. For example, impressing others to feel confident only creates more need to impress others. The urge for external love to know you matter only makes the need for more external love.
We can ultimately tackle this cycle of void and action by identifying our preference rather than their need.
Do you know who you are, what you want, and why you want it?
I’ve found that wanting more is not the same as needing more. Attaching our emotions to outcomes and the perceived benefits that come with those outcomes tends to feel like we’re running on a hamster wheel we can’t get off.
On the other hand, aspiring to be more, create more, and experience more without attaching our sense of worth to those outcomes is liberating for the soul. The releasing of expectations so we can fully express ourselves creatively in the now.
So the big question is, as asked by the poet Charles Bukowski, “Do you remember who you were before the world told you who to be?”.
It’s worth asking what price we’re paying to become a success. What have we achieved, if not happiness?
I, for one, believe that you can have your cake and eat it too, and you can be massively successful in the traditional sense and feel completely fulfilled. Still, it requires an understanding that fulfillment is not a sense of worth, love, or safety we get from our external adventures. Instead, fulfillment will go hand in hand with our relationship with ourselves throughout those experiences.
The caring, the contribution, the challenge, the meaning we give to life, and the mission we bestow upon ourselves to carry out before we leave this life… those are some of the factors that will define how we feel in wealth and in poverty, in sickness and in health, in love and in loneliness.
So it is pretty fulfilling to pursue what your soul wants to experience in this life – to achieve and prosper, have fun, and climb mountains. Whatever else it may be, as long as we understand that it’s the process we do it for… because the process unravels the light within us, the person we become by chasing those goals. As countless wise men and women have shown us, it’s all about the journey, not the destination.
It’s about how complete we make ourselves feel here and now, not how complete we believe our lives will be.
In the end, this is personal evolution. Letting go of the versions of ourselves that no longer serve us, even if they served us at different points in our lives to get to where we are today. Seek completeness from the inside out, not the other way around. And in doing so, we can start to enjoy all external things as an accessory to the happiness that’s already there, not as placeholders until the next dopamine rush comes along.
Now and then, you’ll get a bite, and it’ll taste amazing for a little while, and then off we go again to the next one. Winston Churchill famously said, “Success is not final, failure is not fatal, it is the courage to continue that counts.”
No matter what your current endeavor is, my friend, be sure to feel complete and excited here and now, so you can fully enjoy what tomorrow brings!
Written by Enrique Delgadillo, the author of “How Do You Find Personal Fulfillment Once You’ve Achieved It All.”