The Search for Personal Fulfillment

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In the end, what we are all striving to achieve everyday is the successful completion of our life mission, however we envision it. To feel filled in our hearts and minds with a sense of achievement. Something done well.

When we achieve something we have set out to do, we feel a sense of personal power and worth. Call it pride, self-esteem or self-satisfaction as you like. Feelings are powerful. They drive us.

It does not take a rocket scientist to understand the emotion expressed on the face of a toddler, that arises from their own recognition, and from others when they achieve something.

Whether it is taking their first steps, or clicking the buckle into their highchair harness, they will practice it over and over again to get that emotional ‘success rush’ each time they accomplish the task successfully.

They intuitively set out to accomplish something (i.e.) setting a near term goal, and through practice progressively acquire the ability to reproduce the behavior/action resulting in the desired outcome.

Depending on how well they perform the task (skill performance), the result can either be a state of self-satisfaction expressed as happiness, energizing them to attempt the task again and again, or they experience a state of frustration often displayed as crying and whining from the inability to ‘get it right’ (performance flow) the majority of attempts.

If they experience failure too often, they will avoid or abandon any further attempts to achieve the task through self-motivation. They will have to be ‘influenced’ by an external force to push through. The effect can be emotionally positive or negative depending on the skill of the person(s) applying the external force.

What is clear is it appears we are naturally hard-wired to respond positively to our own successful achievement of something we endeavor to complete. We are naturally capable of positively charging our emotional state in total privacy. No one has to be there to praise us. We are able to be proud of ourselves by ourselves.

We Our Proud of Our Skills

Stop the world for a moment. Stop talking to yourself. Stop listening to others. Reflect on this; consciously recall an image/memory of something you have done or do now successfully. By this I mean something completed. Something accomplished. Something fulfilled.

Place ‘it’ on the workbench of your mind and examine it for a moment. Be sure the memory/object you have chosen is something you had to work at to achieve using an applied recipe or process, learned over time and repeatable such that you can do it again successfully.

Now examine the sensation within yourself when you successfully completed it. Did it feel good? Did it give you energy? Did you feel a sense of power? Were/are you proud of it? Would you like to feel that same sense of accomplishment/fulfillment again?

If the memory/object you chose was something you did that others also experienced, did they express a sense acknowledgement of your performance like ‘good work’, or ‘well done’. Did it make you feel proud?

The likely answer to all or most of these questions is yes, it did make you feel good about yourself. You experienced a positive state. Fix that ‘state’ in your mind as an object unto itself, as a result or ‘work product’ of this exercise. You can use it again as a tool in the future.

The Fulfillment Rush

Accomplishment through skillful action acquired through learning and practice is a central driver of all human performance. The ‘fulfillment rush’ (aka) exhilaration we get from accomplishment is addicting. It is what makes us climb mountains and look for higher ones to climb. It is what drives us, pushes, and pulls us to achieve in almost every endeavor human beings have imagined from the beginning of time.

At the core of our most primal nature is a singular, universally human attribute that influences every other need; pride in our individual performance. This ‘pride’ or self-esteem is a central pillar in the construction of our own self-image, and a critical factor influencing our impact on the families and communities we belong to.

Is Pride Its Own Purpose?

There is an enormous body of content in the world of personal development regarding the search for, and fulfillment of one’s life purpose. So much so that many of us have become locked into that mission as our primary or perhaps only reason for existence.

Such that for some, if one does not have a stated purpose one does not have a reason for being alive. This idea goes way back in human history embedded in the myths we live by.

But what if there were another narrative that focused our attention on recognizing and developing that sensation we experienced very early in our lives. That which made us proud of ourselves.

And our natural life-mission was to cultivate our self-esteem, derived from our growing ability to perform something well; that is skillfully.

Again, let’s look at the toddler stage of our lives. A key characteristic we see is something we call curiosity. It is the natural behavior that automatically directs our attention (aka focus) toward something that attracts us.

Instinctively we move toward it. We pick it up, put it in our mouths, examine it with our eyes and either fixate on it, or toss it and move on to the next thing.

Over time, patterns appear defining those ‘things’ we naturally move toward. Ask young parents and they will tell you how they watch to see whether and when their young children begin to exhibit interest and preferences for certain things, and whether they exhibit signs of a ‘natural talent’ in the manner they interact with those things, and further, whether the child exhibits a positive state of happiness during the encounter.

If you ask the child the purpose of what they are doing, they will likely stare blankly back at you. Ask them whether they like interacting with the ‘thing’, and whether they are happy when they do ‘it’ well, and feel frustrated (unhappy) when it does not ‘work right’, they will likely understand the question on some level and answer ‘yes’, it makes them feel good about themselves especially when accompanied by smiles and ‘good job’ comments from their parents. They are experiencing a sense of pride (aka) self-esteem.

The Pursuit of Pride

So ‘why’ we might ask, isn’t the pursuit of pride in oneself, (i.e.) self recognition of one’s accomplishments and growing ability/skill in one ‘thing’ or another, not a ‘life purpose’ in itself, and that we are born with it?

And what if our life purpose is to cultivate the naturally arising pride or self-esteem that manifests when we repeatedly engage with those things that interest us, improve our ability to perform well, and accomplish an end result we envision. This approach to personal development through skillful execution, is a foundational teaching in the practice of craftsmanship across the world.

Contrast this with the idea that one must search for one’s life purpose as something we do not yet possess, then undergo a challenge or struggle to identify the ‘purpose’, and strive to acquire ‘it’. This approach to personal development places ‘purpose’ outside ourselves as something we have yet to experience. Something we are lacking or do not possess until we find it.

This particular worldview can lead to some lonely, unhappy years in our lives in search of our life purpose as existing outside of ourselves. If our teachers lived by this worldview, it is likely we have been taught the same and follow this recipe ourselves. However, there are other worldviews to consider and pursue.

The Pursuit of Craftsmanship

It has long been an established axiom; a universally accepted principle or rule observed in the transmission of knowledge to those learning a particular trade, occupation, or profession, that craftsmanship is concerned not only with the effect one’s work has upon oneself (i.e.) increasing pride or self-esteem in the quality of one’s own work, but equally the effect or impact; the usefulness of one’s work upon the society touched by it.

This outward looking, social ‘impact and reaction’ principal of craftsmanship is similar to the shared experience of the toddler and their parents when something is skillfully accomplished. Both parties experience a positive effect as a result of the skillfully accomplished work.

This duality of purpose taught as the ‘pursuit of craftsmanship’, has at its core the uplifting of the individual, and the society within which the individual exists. Both flourish when the aim or purpose of the individual is to continuously improve the skillful execution of whatever endeavor they seek to undertake resulting in building self-esteem, and equally benefiting those around them resulting in social well-being from the finished work they deliver.

Taken in this light, we are all then essentially born with a built-in natural purpose; to develop pride/self-esteem in oneself through skillful execution of our work, and continuous development of one’s skills, benefiting ourselves, and the world around us.

Which work one chooses and practices over one’s lifetime does indeed lay outside our immediate experience, and is to be discovered. For some, this will be a quest. For others, it will be an intuitive attraction, or perhaps a decision required by circumstances. And what one works at often changes throughout ones lifetime.

But in The Way of Craftsmanship, work changes as they may occur, do not change one’s life purpose if it is already known; to build your self-esteem/pride through demonstrated excellence in your work, and continually shape the unique masterpiece that is your life.