We judge our internal sense of fulfillment against six factors that I call the Fulfillers: Purpose Meaning Achievement Relationships Engagement Happiness (Location 281)
Meaning, purpose, engagement, relationships, and achievement are equally vulnerable. We reach for them and grasp them, but with alarming rapidity they slip through our fingers. (Location 291)
Regret is the polar opposite of fulfillment. Regret, in the words of Kathryn Schulz in her wonderful 2011 TED talk on the subject, is “the emotion we experience when we think that our present situation could be better or happier if we had done something different in the past.” (Location 297)
It’s looking back in retirement and wishing we’d allowed ourselves more leisure time to develop interests outside work. (Location 313)
The simplest tool I know to finding fulfillment is being open to fulfillment. (Location 315)
Our official policy on regret in these pages is to accept its inevitability but reduce its frequency. Regret is the depressing counterweight to finding fulfillment in a complex world. Our primary theme is achieving a life of fulfillment—what I call an earned life. (Location 331)
We are living an earned life when the choices, risks, and effort we make in each moment align with an overarching purpose in our lives, regardless of the eventual outcome. (Location 393)
something truly earned makes three simple requirements of us: We make our best choice supported by the facts and the clarity of our goals. In other words, we know what we want and how far we need to go. We accept the risk involved. We put out maximum effort. (Location 405)
magical brew of choice, risk, and maximal effort is the glorious notion of “an earned reward.” (Location 408)
Just don’t expect every attempt to “earn” a goal to deliver the appropriate reward. The payoff is not as reliable as you wish or deserve. (Location 425)
Happiness leaks out of us from the first second we’re aware of it. We get a long-sought promotion, and with alarming haste we raise our sights to the next rung on the ladder, as if we’re already dissatisfied with what we worked so hard to earn. (Location 428)
Live your own life, not someone else’s version of it. Commit yourself to “earning” every day. Make it a habit. Attach your earning moments to something greater than mere personal ambition. (Location 440)
“Earn this”). Your options are endless, but the earning process remains the same: (a) making a choice, (b) accepting the risk, and (c) getting it done with no gas left in the tank. The only difference is that you’re attaching your efforts not to a material reward but to an overarching purpose for your life. (Location 487)
A core pillar of Buddhism is impermanence—the notion that the emotions, thoughts, and material possessions we hold now do not last. (Location 509)
sense of fulfillment cannot be accomplished by wallowing in memories of who we were and what we accomplished. It can be earned only by the person we are in the moment at hand. And earned again and again in subsequent moments when we are someone new again. (Location 593)
The truth is, we are never finished earning our life. There is no hard-stop moment when we can tell ourselves, “I’ve earned enough. I’m done.” We might as well stop breathing. (Location 597)
Roosevelt Thomas’s point was that if you know a person’s referent group—to whom or what they feel deeply connected, whom they want to impress, whose respect they crave—you can understand why they talk and think and behave the way they do. (Location 713)
What we abhor shapes us almost as much as what we love.) (Location 716)
Our default response in life is not to experience meaning or happiness. Our default response is to experience inertia. (Location 752)
Inertia is an active event in which we are persisting in the state we’re already in rather than switching to something else. (Location 754)
The most reliable predictor of what you’ll be doing five minutes from now is what you’re doing now. (Location 762)