Well, hello there, my friend, my name's Jonathan Doyle.
And guess what I always say at this point, I say, I am pleased.
It does my heart.
Good to know that you're here.
Thank you so much for tuning in for hitting that play button,
wherever you're listening.
It's a, it's really great to have you here and listen, if you like the video.
The content or, you know, I do a YouTube version every day.
Right.
So I do a more visual version.
Uh, visual version, you can, uh, there'll be links to that.
You can go and hit that link and come and check out the, uh, the YouTube channel.
And there'll be a bunch of other links to different places where I'm doing stuff.
But welcome aboard.
Uh, wherever you are listening.
In the gym in the car who knows?
Today.
I want to talk to you about fulfillment.
I want to talk to you about.
Really getting clear on what fulfills you.
Because too.
To lead to develop and lead a rich.
Meaningful.
Enjoyable life, not a perfect life.
Nobody gets a perfect life, but to get a life that is trending
more towards what lights you up.
What makes you happier?
What lets you be a blessing to other people?
One of the crucial things is to know what really fulfills you.
Conrad bars, BW, ARS.
And I'm looking in my studio here at the shelf, bookshelf, trying to
see if I can see the book, um, has written a whole bunch of great books.
He wrote around the end of the Sycamore war.
And he wrote a lot of stuff around people that had enjoyed great trauma in the
prison camps of the second world war.
And he, one of his books, I remember reading it and he said, This one
line that really stuck with me.
He said the people.
You know, need to learn.
How to live a life in keeping with their nature.
I really struck me because I am somebody who gets up on stage and loves to speak
and to interact with people and to.
You know, really do my best to yeah.
And if you've ever seen me live, you know, I bring a lot of energy to that.
Right.
I really go a hundred percent because every time I get on stage, I have this
sense, this feeling that I may never get to speak to this audience again.
So I want to give them everything I've got.
But when I'm not on stage by, by nature, by personality.
I am highly introverted.
I have spent time in monasteries.
I'm the kind of guy that, you know, What lights me up is to read.
And to think.
And.
To meditate.
And to pray.
And then to speak.
So my nature.
Is really quite fixed in that sense.
I really liked being around lots and lots of people, but as an
introvert, I then need to recover.
I need to kind of recharge in some, you know, exactly what I'm talking about.
So what's the purpose of me sharing this with you.
Well it's because it's taken me a long time to understand what fulfills me.
That what fulfills me is unique to me.
Whereas there's two, there's probably three people in my family.
There'd be my wife, Karen, and two of my kids that are more extroverted.
And Karen.
Karen can just go all day.
On the phone or with people just lights her up.
She's just the most beautiful soul.
And she just is such a blessing to people and she loves people.
Right.
And I'm not saying I don't, I'm just saying that she can just, she
gets jazzed by being with people.
So recently it was our 22nd wedding anniversary and I took
her on this surprise trip to Melbourne, to another city.
And secretly, I mean, she was so excited because, you know, she loves
having time, just the two of us.
And she was so excited because it was a break for us and we
hadn't been away from my kids in.
22 years.
Just saying.
And she was really stoked, but I'd also gone ahead and had organized her four
best friends to take her out to lunch, who they all lived in this other city.
And so.
You know, she was just so excited.
Like she had this squealing and screaming when they all saw each
other and they had this incredible.
Lunch together.
And you know what fulfills her is this deep connection
with so many special friends.
So.
What I want to ask you today is, are you clear on what fulfills you
and are you doing enough of it now?
There is a spectrum here, right?
There's a there's parameters because on one end is the person who never
does things that fulfill themselves.
And they're constantly.
And have you, if you're that person you'll often end up in resentment and bitterness.
Because you're constantly having to meet other people's needs and expectations.
You're giving, giving, giving, giving, giving, giving, giving.
You're sick of it.
You're like, oh my gosh, I'm just so tired of this.
And on the other end is somebody who's more.
Have a look.
Uh, you could say narcissistic in a sense is that everything is
about their own fulfillment, right?
Everything's about their own fulfillment.
So you can see those two poles.
Where you do nothing for yourself or where the other pole
where everything's about you.
So we don't want to be on either of those ends, right?
We want to be right in that sweet spot.
Where we are.
Meeting our own needs and meeting other people's needs in a balanced way.
But we also to do that must know what lights us up.
So one way to think about.
Uh, fulfillment.
In terms of a definition is one of the things that is always
going to fulfill us as humans.
Or there's two things is growth and contribution.
If you want to feel fulfilled in life.
You kind of need a couple of elements.
One is growth.
You want to feel that in some sense you are growing spiritually,
physically, relationally, intellectually humans need growth.
We don't do well.
If we are stagnating or everything seems to be getting worse all the time.
So you're going to be looking for growth in your life.
Where are you growing?
And related to that is where are you contributing?
How do you get more fulfillment?
You grow and you contribute.
All right.
You hear that growth?
So that you are doing things that lead you in important areas of your life to become.
You know, more fully yourself and contribute more.
Contribution so important, you know, because honestly I believe.
On our death beds.
That is the part that is going to matter.
Everything else is going to be taken from.
You must understand that, right?
We are a culture that hates the concept of death.
We hide it.
We don't talk about it.
It is deeply.
Resisted.
But it's going to happen.
Isn't it funny that it's something that is a culture.
We know we don't want to interact with.
And us.
Gosh, the other day I was listening to this.
I'm doing a lot of research and reading around AI at the moment.
And one of the things that just nauseates me to be honest about AI is
this new fascination with they can.
You know, That you can kind of live longer and you can have all your memories
stored and then they can map your voice against all your memories and people
can talk to you after you're dead.
And.
There's this endless sense of like, you know, The goal of life is to live forever.
It was not like.
We're not here forever.
We're not.
And we need to remind ourselves that this journey will come to an end.
And at the end.
And I said this the other day, I was speaking to about
250 people in other city.
And I said, you know, On your death bed.
You're not going to be saying to yourself if only I'd spent more time in the office.
Now that doesn't mean the office is bad.
It doesn't mean work's bad.
That's important part of life.
And you can do really meaningful work in life.
But you never going to be at the end of your life.
Wishing you'd worked more.
Well at the end of your life, what you're going to be thinking
about is the contribution that you made and your key relationships.
That is what you will be thinking about.
Why.
Because that's the thing that transcends you, what you own.
What you have in the bank, you know how you looked, all those things
are going to be gone, forgotten.
What will remain is how you've impacted other people.
You don't think about my own life and, and hopefully in some way, over
many, many years, I've been able to make some people's lives a little
bit better by encouraging them.
Like I'm trying to do with you right now.
And I look at my own kids and I think, well, well, you know,
I'm not going to be the general secretary of the United nations.
I'm not going to be.
You know, the prime minister or president of any country.
But I am going to be able to impact the future after I'm gone
by how I interacted my own kids.
And how I relate to my friends.
So you can see that fulfillment as a human person to get to
the end of your life and go.
I really grew.
I, I, there was growth in my life.
I became a better person.
Uh, Uh, kinder more integrated, more alive, more positive
human over the journey.
And it was hard and it was challenging and there were ups and downs, but in general,
I took what I was given and I made something out of it.
And also to be able to say that you contributed that you made other
people's lives a little bit better.
You know, I think if you had that on your death bed, you'd be like,
wow, that was quite a good ride.
So this episode is about fulfillment and about taking a moment in your
busy, busy life to ask yourself, what is it that fulfills you?
And that's got something to do with growth and contribution, but is it music?
Is it nature?
Is it surfing?
Is it cooking?
Do things that fulfill you do things that I've been playing guitar again lately.
I, I used to play for many, many years and I'd.
I pulled it out again recently and started jamming and on a sing a bit.
I'm not singing for you right now.
You have to ask me if you meet me at an event.
But I do in these things that just add richness and color to life.
And I think the risk in the busy-ness and intensity of our lives is that we
forget to do these sorts of things.
All right, my friend, God bless you.
That's it for me today.
Please make sure you've subscribed.
I'd love you to share this with people and go and check out all the links.
There's links to all the different things I'm doing.
You can book me to speak live at your business, your school,
your event, your conference.
Go check that out.
All right.
God bless everybody.
My name's Jonathan Doyle.
This has been the daily podcast and you and I are going to talk again tomorrow.