Wisdom when spoken aloud, always sounds a little bit foolish.
~ Herman Hesse

We’ve been socially programmed that more is better. It’s not. At least not always. Chocolate is enjoyable in moderate quantities, at some point when overindulged chocolate makes you sick.

Lifting more weights without enough rest and recuperation causes you to be over trained and tired.

Furthermore, social programming has taught us that victory is not just to have more but just to have period. We fool ourselves into thinking that if we just have a better body, better job, better business, better mate, then life will be better.

Not true either.

Happiness and fulfillment are almost impossible to experience when we’re caught in an endless pursuit to get more versus having gratitude for what is.

I know the above might seem a bit too spiritual for some who consider themselves hard-core practical, but I can assure you that it’s extremely pragmatic.

Studies in the relatively new field of positive psychology prove that gratitude and appreciation are two of the most powerful emotional states we can experience.

I submit you can experience fulfillment even when happiness is absent.

Now there’s a game changer.

Fulfillment is beyond happiness and completely independent.
You can experience fulfillment even in the lack of happiness.

So how do we find fulfillment in a disruptive world? Read more about fulfillment here.

To understand this we must once again go back to our conditioning.

To recap, we’ve been conditioned to attach our happiness, victory and fulfillment to a certain ownership or acquisition. The more the better.

We’ve also been conditioned to believe that happiness only exists in the absence of suffering.

This is a catch 22 because realistically the more we acquire, the more we make ourselves vulnerable to suffering.

The more you have, the more opportunities you have…
to lose it.

This is what psychologists call “risk aversion.” And the only people more worried about money and things than the poor are the rich. For they obviously have more to lose.

Work like there’s someone working 24 hours a day to take it all away from you.
~ Mark Cuban

So if victory is not something that comes with “more;”

And it’s not something that comes through an acquisition or state of accomplishment;

How the hell are we to ever be victorious? Much less fulfilled?

True victory and fulfillment are not an external acquisition but rather an internal realization.

Victory is not over others, nor is it any type of achievement per se. True victory is overcoming and utilizing the challenges and obstacles that inevitably confront us in our life and business. Please read that again.

Let’s face it, these challenges and obstacles never end. Never.

And the greatest obstacles are not outside us but within us. For we inevitably are quick to believe that we don’t have the ability and fortitude to overcome them and be victorious.

We do.

You do.

The greatest obstacle you face is not the obstacle outside of you
it’s the obstacle inside of you.

To get up day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, decade after decade—over the course of an entire lifetime—and forge forward against the obstacles we face is the greatest victory of all.

To always remember that the only time we’re truly defeated is when we give up. Not until.

The only time you’re ever defeated or truly fail is when you give up.

The undefeated mind is the true victory; and while it may change the course to achieve its outcomes numerous times, it never quits.

Once we adopt this philosophy we can experience fulfillment even in the midst of great challenge, obstacles and yes even suffering.

This is the greatest and grandest of victories.

When we are no longer able to change a situation,
we are challenged to change ourselves.
~ Viktor Frankl

Forge on.

Be victorious.

And experience the complete fulfillment that comes with it.

Stay Awake, Love Life and Be Epic!

James