Happy Sunday!
And welcome to today's edition of 'Conscious living with Purnima'. In today's post I explore the difference between happiness & fulfilment. And see how they apply to our lives.
Many years ago, I had shared this poster on Facebook:
Seeing this one of my wiser & more spiritually evolved friends told me, "You know what Purnima, happy people do nothing." I tried to reason with her saying, "majority of people are doing something". For which she said, "Majority of people are not happy."
Today I am able to make sense of what she was trying to tell me.
We live in a world where it is easy to fall into the trap of believing that we need to keep doing something or the other in order to be happy. Our achievements can generate feelings of happiness, but you know that it's a temporary feeling. And you need one achievement after another to sustain that feeling.
The act of doing something should not be with the end goal of happiness but fulfilment. When we do things that are meaningful to us - it could be any of those things listed on that poster 👆 we feel fulfilled and aligned with who we are. That can make us happy. But it's not necessarily the only route.
Let's look at the dictionary meaning of the 2 words:
Happiness is defined as “a state of well-being and contentment.”
Something that can be accessed right here right now. To be happy is to accept who we are, how far we have come & appreciating what we have. You don't need to do anything more to be happy. That feeling is already accessible to you if you know how to tap into it. So that makes happiness a choice.
“And they keep asking me where happiness can be found, but I’m no longer trying to find happiness. I just appreciate where I am, and happiness finds me.” - Soyen Shaku
Fulfilment on the other hand is defined as the feeling of happiness because you are doing what you are intended to do in life.
As a new week starts tomorrow pay attention to what your idea of happiness is - do you think you need to do XYZ things to be happy? Do you believe that you can be happy now? Also pay attention to your actions. What actions are you doing that are meaningful to you and thereby fulfilling and what actions are you doing under pressure to conform and how that makes you feel. You may not always be able to avoid the activities that drain you, but awareness can give you access to more choices.