Your Life Your Dream: A Primer on Personal Fulfillment is my first formal attempt at getting clear about the nature, meaning, and realization of personal fulfillment.
The focus of this work is to prime a personal sense of promise with a sense of possibility, with ideas and principles that move persons in the direction of creating the lives of their dreams.
When I wrote this primer, I assumed a Witness perspective to convey these ideas and principles. I drew on a wealth of encounters and experiences in my lifetime to paint the big picture.
I believe this work is special in at least two ways: first, it offers a unique structure to the subject of personal fulfillment, and second, it provides a distinctive overview of this subject.
Overview of the Content
I divide this 96-page primer into seven sections, which I organized sequentially in a way that made logical and intuitive sense to me:
- seven meanings of personal fulfillment
- five major components of the Witness
- the five requisites of personal fulfillment
- seven opportunities to realize personal fulfillment
- four basic practicalities of personal fulfillment
- six common pathways of personal fulfillment
- the two pinnacles of personal fulfillment
In line with these sections, I asked seven basic questions.
First, what exactly does it mean to be fulfilled personally? I was more than a little surprised when I discovered seven officially recognized meanings of fulfillment that apply to how we could feel about ourselves and our lives. I explore these meanings with definitions, illustrations, and elaborations.
What precisely is being fulfilled when we say, “I feel fulfilled”? Because a Witness perspective is so important for being objective about the nature of personal fulfillment, I decided to examine five main components of the Witness: body, mind, heart, soul, and spirit. I shed some light on the Witness perspective before exploring the nature of the body, mind, heart, soul, and spirit in relation to it.
What is generally required in order to be personally fulfilled? A requisite suggests an imperative. In other words, “I must have this in order to have that”. I rely mainly on common sense to identify five requisites for the realization of personal fulfillment: totality, viability, maturity, visibility, and integrity. I learned that any given requisite depends for its full realization on the requisites that come before it.
What opportunities arise on a path of personal fulfillment? Here, I’m focused on what it means to make the most of your opportunities to learn, grow, and evolve into the most enlightened version of yourself on a path of personal fulfillment – to wit: to create a world, live your dream, guide your focus, cultivate presence, share the love, express the power, and follow the truth.
What are the practicalities of following a path of fulfillment? In general yet practical terms, I look at the use of your time, space, energy, and matter (your stuff, your things, your possessions) to arrive at an optimal understanding of what it means to appreciate and realize personal fulfillment.
Which pathway of personal fulfillment is most conducive for your path of growth and development? An answer requires your own response, but I can offer six options to help you get started so that you can choose or confirm a pathway that best serves the realization of your personal fulfillment.
Finally, after all is said and done, what are the pinnacles of personal fulfillment?
Assuming that you’ve grasped the meanings, found perspective with the components, come to terms with the requisites, found value in the opportunities, and made peace with the practicalities and the pathways, you’ll be in a sound position to stand tall at the pinnacles of personal fulfillment, viz., to find continuity in your fulfillment (i.e., to follow your bliss) and leave a lasting material or spiritual legacy.
I added my final thoughts at the end of these sections as a summation of my effort, and included an appendix with instructions to do an exercise that puts all of this into perspective for your own life.
Concluding Remarks
This work is a useful and important stepping stone for me – a step up on my way to formulating and presenting a clear, concise, and comprehensive guide to personal fulfillment in the body human. As such, I’ll be using this primer to reference its terminology, concepts, principles, and perspectives.
Your Life Your Dream assumes an ascendant perspective, which I expect will inform (perhaps even inspire) considered opinion on the nature, meaning, and realization of personal fulfillment.
I trust that you’ll enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.
Practical details for obtaining a copy follow in the section below.
Practical Details
Update: Over the past year, my relationship with personal fulfillment has deepened. As a result, my intention with Your Life Your Dream has shifted to provide a deeper, more representative paradigm of promise and possibility. Much of the content from this publication is still valid, but an update feels necessary. Details as to content, format, and delivery will follow at a later date.
This primer appealed to anyone who wants an overview of the nature, meaning, and realization of personal fulfillment so as to improve or increase their chances of having it in their own lives.
As of February 20, 2012, this publication is no longer available for purchase.