I love asking people I meet how they set up to win and how this correlates with personal fulfillment. The responses vary. The reasons vary. How we approach living is a very personal perspective.
At home and work, we interact daily with a variety of people. Some we would choose to have in our lives, others we may not. Understanding what fulfills us is an important step to determining what setting up to win means to us. How we live and how we lead our lives is a topic studied extensively by Dr. D Quinn Mills, Ph.D.
Dr. Mills has served Professor at the Harvard Business School for over twenty years teaching Leadership, Strategy, Human Resources, and Personal Development. Dr. Mills consults with major corporations and teaches at Harvard on subjects of leadership, strategy, and financial investments.
Dr. Mills wrote a book, “Leadership: How to Lead, How to Live” that considers the question of work-life balance and personal fulfillment. This is an excerpt from the book that may be useful for you to explore for yourself.
“What Defines Personal Fulfillment?
Leadership can be many things, but it is always involves a very high commitment of attention and time. To some people it is primarily an opportunity to serve others. To other people it is primarily a route to success. So in determining where leadership fits into our lives, we need to consider the many conceptions people have of what constitutes personal fulfillment. What, we ask, is most important in a person’s life?
Family: For a great many of us, fulfillment in life is sought in relationships with our families. The satisfaction of having a loving relationship, of raising children, of time spent with relatives—these are the key elements in our lives.
Career Accomplishment: Others of us may focus on what we’ve accomplished in our careers, often as leaders. We see the meaning of life in pride in what we’ve accomplished; in our impact on the world. We may ask: who turns to me for advice; who is interested in my views: have I made an important contribution to others? If so, then my life is successful and I’m fulfilled by it.
Widening Opportunities: Others of us see life less as a goal-directed enterprise than as a journey that continues throughout our lives. What is important to us is that the journey steadily opens wider horizons for ourselves (for example, higher positions in business, perhaps chances for government service). In this view, successful people must make difficult and conflicted decisions that are best made by prioritizing the opportunities we face. Our goal is to broaden our choice of opportunities. This is why many of us go to college and some on to advanced degrees—to widen the opportunities we have in life.
A Life Balanced Between Career and Family: Many of us seek a balanced life, what we might call a “full” life, focused on career and family. In the previous chapter we discussed balance as necessary to preserving our leadership for the long term in our lives—but here it becomes an objective in itself. Balance is thought the key to personal fulfillment in life. Those of us who take this view are willing to sacrifice some career advancement for a good home life, and vice versa. The notion is akin to the golden mean advocated by ancient Greek philosophers—that everything should be in moderation.
Comfort: Some of us are satisfied to be comfortable, to enjoy life; often this doesn’t mean extravagant living, but instead a moderate lifestyle. We want to have enough money to show our children the world—to visit our family members wherever they may be living—and to be able to splurge on professional sports and nice dinners.
Satisfaction and Lack of Regrets: Others of us look with satisfaction on decisions we’ve made as central to our conception of life. We wish to avoid regrets of the type we’ve seen people express in this book. We want to look forward to each tomorrow as bringing as much joy as we experienced yesterday. We want our friends and family close by. We lead because of a desire to do so—and find satisfaction in helping others to succeed on their life journeys.
Service to God: Many of us have deep faith in a higher being and seek personal fulfillment in attaining the larger purpose in life. People are thought to be on earth for a reason, and finding and fulfilling our role in the divine plan is what most concerns us. God’s intention for each of our lives can be very different—it is the fate of some to be successful in the world’s view, and of others not to be. Personal fulfillment lies in understanding and accepting God’s will for us in the faith that more important things lie beyond. Some of us have particular conceptions of God’s design of our lives. Some believe that people are born incredibly selfish and are challenged in the rest of our lives to become completely selfless. This leads those of us who think this way to define success by the measure of the selflessness of our actions.
Service for the Good of Others: Some of us motivated by religious or humanistic convictions devote our lives to the service of others. We derive fulfillment from such a commitment. People in the helping professions such as health care and teaching are often especially motivated in this way. But service for the good of others is not limited to the helping professions. In business, it takes the form of steward or servant leadership in which executives seek to run the company for the good of investors, employees, customers and the community—who are said to be stakeholders of a firm.
Love: There are those of us who believe that ultimately love is the only thing in this world that is worth seeking. This leads us to judge our actions by the standard of whether or not they express love, and to receive love as the greatest of gifts.
Happiness: For many of us happiness is the very essence of personal fulfillment. We may define it as simply as this: when we wake in the morning, we are excited and interested in what our day has in store for us. We make our decisions on the basis of what will make us happy.
Building Character: For some of us life is a quest for personal growth. It is a personal journey toward building a strong character. The objective is to grow not what we have, nor what we do, but what we are. Personal tragedies and career setbacks, which we never seek but which happen anyway, are challenges that if we confront them properly add to our personal growth. The leadership we exercise is seen as a reflection of our personal development. Our ability to lead others is enhanced as we grow and our character deepens. By growing as a person we become more effective leaders and can help others grow. This view is furthest away from what is often offered us—a “recipe” for success, a list of strategies, skills, tactics—that we often instinctively look for from others. These things are valuable in themselves, but are inevitably limited in value unless we can provide the personal growth that will make us acceptable to others because we bring something special to our leadership.”
Living your life involves so much. Being mindful of what’s important to you as a person, a leader, a contributor matters. Having a clear view of what it means to win, to attain fulfillment can help you map out your goals and what you are willing to do to achieve them. Enjoy the journey!
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–Lynn