The Fulfillment Formula: Living with purpose and urgency

So many books and blogs promise us the answers to the most important questions in life like how to lead the most fulfilling trip in your numbered laps around the sun. It’s not a secret, really.

The answer a fulfilled life can be summed up in five words: live it to the fullest. It sounds cliché until it doesn’t. Then you’re left to grapple with some really tough questions like the ones I heard my colleagues ask after a recent meeting.

Recently, I was in the room with several colleagues and I was listening to them talk about retirement, their careers and plans when they decide to turn in their retirement letter.

Of course, I am at the start of my career and I really haven’t bloomed in the sense of reaching my most significant milestones. In many ways, I’m truly just getting started, which is equal parts unnerving, comforting and exciting.

I listened as they went on about excitement and they asked questions rooted in all of our fears, “will me and my spouse get along when I retire,” “will I adjust well,” and “I wonder what that will feel like, what will I do.”

I laughed and assured them they would be Ok and that I wouldn’t encourage them to retire just yet.

Then came an important and valuable nugget of wisdom and I’ll paraphrase a bit to flesh out the point.

“No matter what you do, you have to be Ok with being alone. You have to love yourself. You have to be enough. You have to talk to yourself and value yourself. You have to have a deep, rooted self-sufficiency to help you through.”

That was a lesson learned through more than four decades in the workforce and it’s pretty profound especially for newcomers like me eager to change the world but impatient as the clock slowly ticks the last few hours of the work day away.

The encouragement of that nugget was to go home to a hobby and enjoy it. To do what you love and to have a life with your family.

How many of us waste away at our desks checking off tasks from a never ending list wondering if the impossible deadlines can be met? How many times do we take those worries home with us? Do we spend more time working our lives away than living them?

I have a pretty strong work ethic handed down to me from my parents and family and of course I intend to instill that value in my children someday.

But at the same time, I am not afraid to take time off when I’m sick.

And I do find myself compartmentalizing more effectively these days.

But what a deep truth and sense of urgency that gives me.

Take the time off. Take the trips. Make the memories. Do it now.

Make the most of each day because you’ll never see it again. You won’t live it twice.

What if we took all of these words of advice to heart?

When the last sands in the hourglass trickle down to the bottom, will they remember our work ethic or will they remember that we chose to spend our time, to invest our time wisely with love and urgency to live to the fullest?

I know what I want the answer to be for myself. Do you?