I’m going to share a chapter from Conscious Accomplishment every week for the next few weeks on topics I think might be particularly helpful.
Today’s chapter outlines the distinction between Success and Fufillment, as well as where higher forms of fufillment actually come from. This is very useful to understand if you aspire to evolve your consciounsess and create the change you wish to see in the world at the same time.
Chapter 16: The Mountain of Success & The Spiral Of Fulfillment
When you want to take your awareness to a higher altitude, many factors matter for your ascent. You need to have the right training, tools, and an understanding of the terrain. But perhaps more important than all these things is making sure the path you’ve chosen will lead you to where you want to go.
As someone who had a fair amount of worldly success, yet lived on the daily roller coaster of conditional well-being, I no longer believe that success and fulfillment are the same. I chased success because I thought it would make me happy. Although each achievement generated a temporary blip of happiness, the feeling never lasted. After the glow faded away, I was back on the treadmill to create the next blip. It took many years of playing this game at a high level to recognize that what I really wanted wasn’t more success, but an enduring state of well-being and fulfillment.
Success is the achievement of desired outcomes. Though success is ultimately subjective, your concept of success is informed by your conditioning. It’s why in some cultures success can mean being rich and famous, while in others it’s measured by having a big family or deep spiritual connection. It’s important to recognize that until you start to investigate your consciousness, your definition of success is mostly inherited.
Most people relate to success like reaching the summit of a mountain. They envision a specific destination, believing life will finally feel complete once they arrive. Success could be hitting a certain net worth, finding your dream partner, selling your company, or—if you tend to create excessive expectations for yourself like I did—all of the above. It’s true that when you finally reach the summit, you feel amazing. The problem is you can’t live on the mountaintop. So after the sweetness of enjoying the breathtaking view, you’re off to find the next mountain to climb to recreate this feeling.
Though success is often commingled with fulfillment, they are distinct. Fulfillment is a deep and lasting sense of satisfaction, contentment, and completeness. It often arises from achieving goals, living in alignment, and finding meaning. There are fulfilled people who are wildly successful and others who don’t have a penny to their name.
These definitions clarify that success is a concept while fulfillment is the enduring state of well-being that most people truly desire. Understanding the difference can help you get clear on which path you want to be on. Do you want to satisfy some conditioned definition of success in order to temporarily feel good. Or are you after a persistent and unconditional sense of well-being? It’s common to conflate these things, but as far as I can tell, there’s no correlation between having a nice house, an impressive career, or social status, and one’s capacity for unconditional well-being.
Conscious Accomplishment recognizes that success without fulfillment isn’t a worthwhile pursuit. You certainly can have both, but having one does not imply the other. Conscious Accomplishment offers a path to move towards success while enjoying the sense of fulfillment that comes from consciousness evolution.