101 Essays That Will Change The Way You Think

you are with 
A DECISION, 
the less you
NEED OTHER 
PEOPLE TO BE, 
and 11 other things
TRULY FULFILLED 
PEOPLE KNOW
Fulfillment may seem like the elusive desire that’s driving an entire
consumerist market, but that’s only because some smart people are
capitalizing on something inherent of us all (or at least, inherent of us
by the millions): We all have an aching desire to live a meaningful
life, and yet none of us seems to know how.
Somewhere along the line, we confused happiness for what we
have as opposed to what we do. We thought that the solution to an
incomprehensible emptiness was to fill everything else around us.
Needless to say, this has mostly, if not entirely, failed.
To be truly fulfilled is to be happy because of your own self-
realization. It is to come to such a genuine understanding of what
you want that not doing it isn’t an option anymore. It’s seeing beyond
the mindsets you adopted, or the ideals that are not inherently your
own. It is the humble simplicity of what you want to offer the world
each day, and it is the love you awaken as you do it.
01. Success is falling in love with the process, not the outcome.
It’s making your dreams about the journey, about the “doing,”
about the day-in-day-out routine and minutiae. The life you
want is within the simplicity of your everyday tasks. You can’t
only focus on writing the synopsis and then wonder why you
don’t have a book yet.

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02. Only some happiness is valued in society.
Not everybody will applaud that you left your job to work at a
coffee shop because it’s what you love. There is really only
one kind of happiness that society values, and that’s the kind
that society is comfortable with: the kind that is far enough
removed from genuine contentment that nobody feels
pressured to consider how unfulfilling their own lives are. Do
not let other people’s demons decide what your happiness is.
Do not let other people’s fear of them make you afraid, too.
03. Love and success are not expendable. They’re not non-
renewable resources. Someone else’s doesn’t take away
from your own.
This belief registers for most people in elementary school: We
see that some people are popular, and some people aren’t.
Some people can be happy, some can’t. This is often what
begins the lifelong competition that only ever exists in our
heads. Someone else’s success doesn’t make you less
successful. Someone else receiving love or praise doesn’t
mean you aren’t love or praiseworthy. You are not only as
good as you are better than someone else.
04. The happier you are with a decision, the less you need other
people to be.
The happier you are with what you do, the less you need
other people to support you. Ironically, it’s also in being
happier with what you do that you’ll find the support you were
looking for before you knew how to give it to yourself.
05. The end goal is to see how the simplest things are the most
extraordinary.
When the end goal is to have something tangible, the “end
goal” has not actually been identified yet. Tangible goals—
money, books, job titles, and so on—are mile markers. They
are the products of your life, not the goals of your life. The
goals are to be truly fulfilled. The book you write to do that is
not your fulfillment, it’s one expression of it. Don’t confuse the
radio for the sound wave.
06. You don’t “have” to, you “get” to.

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This is one of the simplest changes in perception, and yet
also something truly fulfilled people master: the knowing that
everything is an opportunity to experience. You don’t have to
go to work; you get to go to work. You don’t have to wake up
early; you get to wake up early. When you start considering
things not as obligations but as opportunities, you start taking
advantage of them rather than trying to avoid them.
07. Easy does it, and does it well.
It’s a phrase used so frequently and yet rarely ever with
understanding: Anything that is genuine and wonderful and
most probably successful is effortless. The state you’re in
when you’re creating will be what the outcome is. The more
ease and love you put into it, the more other people will get
out of it.
08. Anything that exists in your life exists because you created it.
Anything that persists does so because you are feeding it.
Consider this: Every one of your actions feeds something
within you. It feeds your desire for control, your love for your
job, your spitefulness toward your sister, your complacency
with your marriage. Every action creates and compounds
upon something that already exists. With this in mind, ask
yourself what it is you feed each day…your life will make
more sense if you do.
09. It’s not about whether or not you listen to yourself; it’s about
what part of yourself you listen to.
Most people find it almost impossible to listen to their instincts
because they don’t know what they’re saying. Or, worse,
they’ve listened to them before and they’ve been destructively
incorrect or shortsighted. That’s because at any given time,
there will be many different “voices” that drive you to different
outcomes. Your immediate instincts may be geared more
toward protecting you rather than expanding you. They could
be speaking out of a place of lack or fear. You have to ask
yourself: What is the root of this reaction, where does it come
from, and what is its outcome in the long-term?

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10. Even when you justify your judgment of people by how right
you are, you’re still wrong.
It doesn’t matter how awful someone is being or how correct
you are in your takedown of their mental-emotional state,
you’re still wrong for doing it. It’s not your job to police for the
universe; it’s your job to take care of why you feel more
comfortable attacking assumptions you make about others
rather than the assumptions you fear they’re making about
you.
11. Your soul knows what to do to heal itself; the challenge is just
to let it.
Most mental and emotional healing comes from first
completely addressing the problem. You’ll find that,
throughout your life, you’ll create situations again and again
that all but force you to address some long-standing issue.
That’s because you necessarily want to torture yourself, but
that you want to address it and bring it to your conscious
awareness so you can deal with it and let it go. Trust in your
nature. It knows more than your physical mind.
12. You probably can’t be whatever you want, but if you’re really
lucky and you work really hard, you can be exactly who you
are.
…Which is all most people ever want, anyway. Grandiose visions of
being something spectacular—and spectacularly removed from
someone’s skill set and personality, etc.—can be measured in
proportion to how much they feel they are lacking. The funny reality
is that people who accomplish incredible things never think of them
as incredible; they think of them as normal. It’s that integration into
“normalcy” that makes it a pattern, which makes it a routine, which
makes it a habit, which ultimately makes it a product. That drive and
consistency is born of one thing and one thing only: doing something
in alignment with who you truly are. It is a privilege, albeit an
extraordinary challenge, to awaken to yourself. Even more so is to
have someone who loves that person, a job that utilizes that person,

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and a life that fully realizes that person, even if you denied them
along the way.

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69
WHAT PEOPLE