Fulfillment
“Fulfillment is not a matter of achievement, it’s a matter of alignment — when your values, actions, and inner life move as one.”— Brianna Wiest
“What fulfills you?”
This was the opening question of a five-day coaching class I took last year.
It wasn’t something I had ever consciously reflected on.
It’s a powerful question—one that requires a depth of self-inquiry that’s hard to access without intention.
It’s tempting to conflate fulfillment with happiness. But happiness is fleeting.
Fulfillment permeates. It is underpinned by our values, another piece I hadn’t spent much time considering.
Fulfillment is foundational to a life of meaning.
It’s taken nearly five decades to understand what it means to me. That journey has been long and winding.
We’re all on our own journeys—often without a compass or a guide.
Lost in the Wild
I blindly marched down the path I was conditioned to believe led to fulfillment—without ever really defining what it meant to me.
Had you asked me in my 20s what fulfilled me, I probably would’ve stared at you dumbfounded. I spent my time doing three things:
Partying with my friends
Chasing girls
Making money to party with my friends and chase girls
It was all fueled by ego. I lived life from my hedonistic head, with no awareness of—nor tools to access—my inner wisdom. My heart.
I was running on programming, not purpose. And I think most of us have some version of that story in our 20s.
in my 30s, things shifted. I got married, started a family, landed better jobs, and made more money.
I had grown up on the outside—but much of it was just appearance.
My family brought more heart into the equation, but I still operated in much the same way.
Everything was driven by external validation—the kind our culture prizes. And by most outward measures, I was a success.
Then, out of the blue, I developed psoriasis—an autoimmune disorder. A clear signal something inside was out of balance.
Not shocking, considering I had treated my body like a carnival ride over two decades of partying.
This was my first wake-up call from the universe.
Western medicine only offered treatment for the symptoms. So I began to practice meditation—an antidote to stress, which doctors did say was a likely factor.
Driven by curiosity and a passion for learning, the world of Eastern philosophy, medicine, and spirituality began to open my eyes to a new way of seeing.
A quiet, growing sense that something fundamentally important was missing began to emerge.
That’s when my path toward defining fulfillment started to take shape.
Money vs. Wealth
All my life, I equated being wealthy with having lots of money.
Money, as the principal driver of happiness, is the loudest and most consistent message Western culture offers.
But again—happiness isn’t the same as fulfillment.
I discovered author Robin Sharma’s framework for measuring wealth, and it immediately resonated.
His eight forms of wealth are: Growth, Wellness, Family, Craft, Money, Community, Adventure, and Service.
Reflecting on how much time and energy we invest in each of these eight areas offers a valuable guide. It helps us move beyond fleeting happiness into the more stable foundation of fulfillment.
More importantly, it reveals how a myopic focus on one area—especially money—can lead to imbalance.
Our obsession with money feeds the ego but starves the soul.
My core belief is that doing the work of personal growth is the key to unlocking the riches of all the other areas.
Prioritizing time to reflect on our values, our vision, and how our actions align with that inner compass—that’s the key to a life of fulfillment.
Help Lighting the Way
I feel so passionately about this work because I’ve lived the experience.
I’ve been lost in the dark woods of life’s journey. And working with my coach Dennis helped me find my way out.
He asked me questions I’d never asked myself. Questions that helped clear away the layers of conditioning that had held me back from realizing my potential.
Through that work, I began accessing deeper parts of my wisdom—parts that had been buried beneath years of mental noise.
Meditation helped me quiet that mind—so certain it had all the answers—yet only capable of seeing life through a narrow, ego-shaped keyhole.
It takes courage to question the very foundation your life is built upon. To listen to that quiet voice you sometimes hear saying, “This isn’t it.”
Even—and especially—when all the outward signs suggest otherwise.
But that discomfort? That’s where the real journey begins.
For some, it might mean a minor course correction.
For others, it might mean charting an entirely new path.
I’ve had moments of regret—feeling like I wasted years.
But I’ve come to see: they weren’t wasted.
I needed every one of those experiences to arrive where I am today and need all the ones to come to get where i want to go.
I remind myself of what Dennis said in our first conversation: “You’re right where you’re supposed to be.”
That’s always true.
Because the journey doesn’t end until our last breath.
That’s why they say the wisest people on earth understand how little they know.
There’s always more to learn, more to grow. Every experience is a teacher.
And when that last breath comes, we may smile in peace—knowing we lived lives rich in meaning and fulfillment.
We can even find that peace along the way.
It begins with reflection.
If fulfillment is the quiet sense of peace that arises from living aligned with these forms of wealth, where in your life are you most aligned—and where are you out of balance?
—Coach Kris
P.S. I encountered Sharma’s 8 forms of Wealth for the first time this week. Having written previously about connection, i loved how family wealth and community wealth were rooted in our sense of connection. I immediately appreciated the wider aperture through which he thinks about wealth in these other areas of our life.
