The Inspirational Secret to Achieving True Personal Growth, Happiness & Fulfillment

Because today we're diving into how you can design a life that not only lights you up at the moment, but fuels you for the long haul.

So if you, my friend, are ready for a life of happiness and fulfillment, well, then you've come to the right place.

It's episode 368.

And hey, if you want to take things to the next level, be sure you grab today's free resource called 14 Nuggets of Wisdom for a Better Life.

You want a better life?

Combine a little happinessful with these 14 nuggets of gold.

Well, my friend, you are gonna be well on your way to the best year ever.

Be sure to check out the link at the top of today's show notes or head on over to the website gritgraceinspiration.com to grab that free resource right now.

And with that, I turn it over to today's episode.

I hope you enjoy.

Hey, I'm your host, Kevin Lowe, and you are listening to Grit, Grace, and Inspiration.

To be sure that we are both on the same page when talking about both happiness and fulfillment, it might seem like an odd place to start, but today we're gonna start off in the garden.

So if you can just play along, I want you to envision a garden in your mind.

Whether it's full of vegetables, flowers, or maybe both, I want you to think of this garden as your life.

So now, with the garden in your mind, when we think about happiness, happiness is the colorful flowers.

It's the butterflies flying around in the garden.

All it takes is just one glance at all those beautiful flowers, all the magnificent colors, and you're filled with happiness, with joy.

But now, what about fulfillment?

Fulfillment, it's the thing that's not so flashy, and yet it's vital.

It's the roots, the soil, the stuff that is not seen so easily, but in fact, it's the stuff that makes happiness possible.

The roots, they're what ground you, they're what gives you stability.

They are what gives everything else the ability to flourish.

So now that we have an understanding of what both happiness looks like in this garden of life paired with what fulfillment looks like in this garden of your life, why don't we dive a little bit deeper into this idea?

And we're gonna divide your garden up into four sections.

Uh, basically think of it like four quadrants, I believe is the correct terminology.

The reason we're dividing it into four sections is well, we're gonna see where you're at right now in life.

What section of the garden are you in?

And maybe even more importantly, what part of the garden do you want to be in?

In one of the sections of your garden is the area that we're gonna call low happiness and low fulfillment.

So basically, I want you to imagine this section of the garden that has been forgotten about.

The weeds have overtaken everything.

Some of the plants, well, most of the plants are dead or dying.

There's not much happening here.

This, my friend, is the danger zone where both joy and happiness, fulfillment, they're all lacking.

They're all missing.

That is the sad part of the garden.

Now let's move to the next quadrant.

This is where we have high happiness, but low fulfillment.

This section, oh my gosh, it looks amazing.

You think to yourself, man, this is the section of my garden I want to be in.

The flowers are blooming, the vegetables are bursting, but the roots are shallow, the soil isn't strong, and all it takes is a gust of wind, and everything can be blown over.

This is a section with happiness, but lacking fulfillment.

Now, if we keep walking through the garden and we go to the next section, we reach low happiness, but with high fulfillment.

Now, this is the quiet part of your garden, the section that might not be bursting full of color, but you know that it's doing well, you know it's growing strong.

Because, well, maybe here it's more seasonal.

You know it's not the right season for the flowers to be blooming.

And yeah, you can just tell when you reach down into the soil that the soil is good.

They have water, the soil is moist, the roots are growing, the stalks of your plant are alive and well.

So here, there's a powerful sense of its potential, its purpose.

You know that it's doing okay.

Finally, I want you to walk into the fourth and final section of your garden.

This is where everything has finally come together.

We're talking about high levels of happiness and high levels of fulfillment.

This is where the garden is flourishing, the flowers are blooming, the vegetables are growing because the roots are strong, the soil is pristine, everything here is just working beautifully.

This, my friend, is the sweet spot.

It's the part of life where both happiness and fulfillment meet.

It's where everything comes together.

It's the place in our lives that we all want to be, where both happiness and fulfillment coexist with one another.

Whether you need to rewind and listen back, I hope that you can picture this garden in your mind and you can understand where you are right now.

Do you have a life full of happiness?

Or maybe is happiness lacking?

Do you feel fulfilled in what you're doing, or do you not?

Figure out where in the garden you are.

Well, then we can begin to chart a direction to get you to the part of the garden where you want to be, where it's both levels of high fulfillment and happiness.

Okay, now we're gonna begin to shift gears because there's another element to this idea of finding this balance between happiness and fulfillment.

So we're gonna get out of this metaphor of the garden and we're gonna get to a little bit more exciting stuff about the ride of life.

I'm talking about the ride of life, the moments that excite us, the moments that make us feel alive.

It's like you're on a roller coaster.

You're going through the double loops.

You are out of your mind excited.

You're screaming, but it's out of joy and pure happiness.

This is thrilling, it's unpredictable, but you know it's not long-lasting.

You know it's not forever, it's just for a moment.

Now, instead, I want you to envision instead of on a roller coaster, you're on a train, chugging away, going down the tracks.

It's not all that fast, but it's slow and steady.

This is fulfillment.

This is a dependable force that's driven by your principles, your morals, your long-term dreams and goals.

It might not have the excitement and the adrenaline of the roller coaster, but what it does have is the ability to build resilience, the ability to keep you growing stronger as you chug away, going down the tracks.

But now here's the part that I want you to understand.

We're not here to choose.

Well, let me rephrase that.

I don't want you to choose one or the other.

I don't want you to choose to be on a roller coaster or to be on the slow train ride.

I want you to have it all in this life.

So the question we ask is: well, how do we achieve that balance?

How do we keep the balance?

Even if we think we might have both happiness and fulfillment, how are we sure that it sticks around?

Well, I have a couple of tips and ideas to get you started.

First and foremost, get clear on what is important to you, what matters in your life, your principles, your morals, the things that are the bedrock to your existence.

When you can get clear on this and you can be sure that everything you do is in alignment with who you really and truly are, that, my friend, is fulfillment.

My second tip is to set meaningful goals, stuff that really and truly matters to you.

Maybe it's not flashy, maybe it's nothing that you're gonna be posting on social media about, but it's important to you.

And when you have that set, I want you to be sure that you align your daily actions with whatever this goal is.

And when you align these daily actions with your values, with your principles, it's absolutely sure to create a sense of purpose in your life.

It's fulfillment and happiness coexisting in one.

Now, if we've got enough fulfillment cranking down, what about happiness?

Well, my tip for you to be sure that you're having happiness in your life is to celebrate the little things.

I want you to begin to celebrate all the little wins that happen throughout the day.

And you can combine this with just an overall sense of gratitude.

One of the most powerful ways that you can ever start your day is to wake up with gratitude.

I start every day with a simple prayer.

I thank God for the blessings I have.

Now, some days it might just be as simple as me thanking God for the home that I have, for the bed that I slept in, for the air conditioner that's running that kept me cool at night.

But maybe sometimes it goes deeper than that.

It's me thanking God for my family, for the dreams and the goals that I have, for this desire to do more with my life.

I encourage you to fill your heart, your soul with gratitude, to be grateful for the things that you have, be grateful for the dreams that you hope to come true.

So if you can combine both gratitude with this idea of celebrating the little stuff and the big stuff, my friend, happiness is sure to fill your life.

My fourth tip, which I have a total of five, so we're almost through, but tip number four is tougher than any of the others.

And that is to begin to view challenges from a different angle.

I want you to understand that growth oftentimes comes through the challenging parts of life.

If you want to go back to our garden metaphor, every challenge you're put through, every storm that you endure helps your roots to become stronger, to grow a little deeper, to keep you grounded because you know things are tough.

As I said, the challenges in life, none of us want them to happen.

But at the end of the day, in this life, I found challenges are all but certain.

We're all gonna face adversity in one way, shape, or another.

And so the thing that we can do is begin to understand that even though it hurts in the moment, in the long run, it's building us into bigger and better, stronger versions of ourselves.

My fifth and final tip is connections.

I want you to begin to invest in relationships that nourish your soul, that bring out the best version of you.

You know, there's some relationships we have with people who they bring us down.

They maybe bring out the worst in us.

No, we don't want relationships like that.

We want relationships that bring out the best in us, that better us, that have us living to a higher version that we even thought possible.

This, my friend, is another amazing key to you achieving both happiness and fulfillment, is when you can surround yourself with people who build you up, who remind you how amazing you are, who have you striving to create your best life possible.

Bringing it all together, I want you to understand this.

Those little moments of joy, yeah, they might light up your day.

But you have to understand that it's the steady feeling of fulfillment that will anchor your soul, that will get you through the toughest times in life.

When you are able to combine both happiness and fulfillment, you create a garden where the beautiful flowers have roots that dig deep, that keep them strong, that even in the mightiest of winds, they are strong as can be.

They're not blown over because they have both happiness and fulfillment on their side.

So I guess I would love to turn the table on you and ask you a question.

What are you chasing in your life?

Are you just chasing after the highs of happiness?

Or are you pursuing a life of fulfillment, looking at the long-term goal, the bigger picture of it all?

If we go back to the happiness and fulfillment garden, where are you standing?

What quadrant are you in?

Here's the thing that I want to remind you before I end is that if you haven't had anybody tell you this, I want you to know that I believe in you.

Because you're here today, listening to this very podcast episode, because you've made it all the way to the end, I know that you're they are wanting to create a better life.

You want to show up as your best self for not only just yourself, but for your family, for your friends, for your community.

And that's what I want for you as well.

And I have to believe that it all starts by us getting clear on being sure that we're living a life full of both happiness and fulfillment.

If today's episode resonated, if it made you think of someone, it would mean the world to me for you to share today's episode with them.

Because, well, if we can have a world that we live in where more of us are pursuing both happiness and fulfillment, well, my friend, that's the world I want to live in.

Until next time, I'm your host, Kevin Below, and this, of course, was another episode of Grit Grace and Inspirate.