How to Live A Fulfilling Life

You want that sense of fulfillment, something that meshes with who you are so that by the time you're in your 30s and 40s, you feel like you're heading in the right direction. And then when you get older, like I am, you don't have any regrets. One of our fans asked, what are the key ingredients for leading a meaningful and fulfilled life? And obviously, being a social animal, our relationships with other people are extremely important. So having very high-level social skills so that you're not constantly butting up against people, you're not offending them, you know how to charm people to get into their spirit, to make them feel calm and relaxed. And it's not just being fake and playing a role, just allows you to not have so much drama in your life and to get people to relax in your presence, which gives you the power to move them in the direction that you want. You don't have so much friction in your life. So, so much of our lives are defined by our social interactions. And you don't realize that all the mistakes you make, all the miscalculations, all the misreadings, add up to a lot of pain. They create loneliness. They create tremendous amounts of anxiety. So you're always worried, did I say the right thing? Did I do the right thing here? So the ability to have empathy, to get inside the spirit of other people and to be open to them is extremely important. And it will make your life flow that much easier and you won't have all of that drama that will infect your creativity, that will affect your work, that will not make you sleep so well, et cetera. So I would say that's the number one thing, but probably just as important is discovering what I say your life's task in life. I believe that work and your career plays an extremely important role in everyone's life. And the idea that you have chosen a career path that doesn't suit you, doesn't feel right, that doesn't mesh with who you are and your natural inclinations. By the time you're in your 30s and 40s, it can be a very depressing experience where you start tuning out and you're not so involved in your work and you're not learning very deeply or very quickly because you're not so interested in the details of it. And that has a very draining effect upon us. You're not aware of it. We all know that we were very young when we're children, that there's something very powerful inside of something great. We have ambitions, we have desires. We know that we could make something special and this will contribute. And it doesn't have to be something grand. You don't have to be Napoleon. You don't have to be Vincent Van Gogh. It could be just being a good parent or it can be just being good at the particular manual, like being a great carpenter or whatever your field is. But you want that sense of fulfillment, something that meshes with who you are so that by the time you're in your 30s and 40s, you feel like you're heading in the right direction. And then when you get older, like I am, like an old guy, you don't have any regrets. You don't go, gosh, I could have been this. I could have been a great dancer or basketball player or musician or writer. And instead I went into this profession. I don't want you to have that feeling. So to have a meaningful life, being able to get along with people on a higher level, and for that, I don't mean to toot my horn, but I highly recommend The Laws of Human Nature, which is kind of a guidebook about how to navigate the social realm on a higher level. And number two, discovering your life's task, which is what mastery is about, so that you can fulfill your dreams, you can fulfill who you were meant to be, what you thought of as a child, this is what I want to accomplish in life. Those are the two most important ingredients, personally, I believe, to a meaningful life.