NOT everyone who lives a comfortable life is contented and not all who are satisfied with their jobs feel fulfilled. If you feel a certain emptiness in your life or your career, then perhaps there is a need for you to re-assess your carrier path or at least check how you do what you do.
The trick here is to achieve comfort, satisfaction, contentment and fulfillment rolled into one in whatever you do. But the questions are whether you can have them all through one single profession or should you need to open yourself to venture into other career paths as you try to keep your day job?
Good thing there is a formula for getting what I just mentioned; I learned them in one of the seminars I attended a few years back. Here they are:
1. On Satisfaction – satisfaction is achieved when you have a career or a profession, that is, when you get paid for what you do well. You see there are a lot of people who are so good at certain things yet are not paid or are quite underpaid for what they do and so they do not experience the satisfaction they desire. This could either be because their expertise is not yet that good or their break has not yet come and they are not yet noticed. If it's satisfaction you seek in life then perhaps you have to master more your craft, continue learning your trade and show more how well you do what you do best so that you can have a bright carrier ahead of you whatever that is you are doing.
2. On Contentment – contentment could be achieved if you embrace your vocation, that is, when the world needs exactly what you love to do. There are so many things that you can do and you can be if you put your mind into them. Your possibilities are infinite; you can be a lawyer, a doctor, an artist or an engineer. Yet almost always there is always this one thing that you would love doing more than the rest of your choices. And when that thing that you love to do is also what your community needs then we call that a calling or a vocation. To embrace it would surely assure you of a sense of contentment. Ironically, vocations are not quite financially rewarding yet this is compensated by the sense of contentment you get from responding to such call.
3. On comfort – comfort of course is achieved when you get paid high for what you do. People are usually paid high when their services are what the world or their community greatly needs. It is called charity when what you do is what the world needs from you. It does not necessarily mean that you love doing it, it's just that it is what is in demand at this time. This explains why at certain point almost every student took nursing and special education, their goal was to be comfortable once they get a job outside of our country regardless of whether they like it or not.
4. On fulfillment – fulfillment is a product of your passion, that is, when you do well what you love doing. Passion for certain things such as sports or a cause is what usually drives a person to perfect his craft. And when you are given the break to do what you love then you will surely be fulfilled.
Again, the trick is to achieve all four. For some of us, our present job provides us all these (the lucky ones) but for others we barely even have one. What I do is that I have a day job that gives me contentment and fulfillment, but I also venture into two other jobs that give me comfort and satisfaction.
