{"id":8125,"date":"2025-06-08T15:49:41","date_gmt":"2025-06-08T14:49:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.boosst.financial\/insights\/?p=8125"},"modified":"2025-07-15T16:38:29","modified_gmt":"2025-07-15T15:38:29","slug":"forget-happiness-were-aiming-for-fulfilment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.boosst.financial\/insights\/forget-happiness-were-aiming-for-fulfilment\/","title":{"rendered":"Forget happiness. We’re aiming for fulfilment!"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Happiness is fleeting.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/div>\n
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We frequently speak to friends, wider family and clients who describe something along the lines of being unhappy with their work or personal life. Often, they may look back on a particular period of time in their life, like the day they got married or when they graduated from University, as a moment of complete happiness. The moment in time they describe has become a bookmark in their memories, or a high water mark for happiness.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u201cIf I could just feel that way again, I would be happy\u201d<\/em><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

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The problem of course with this approach is that happiness is an emotion, not a state of being. Emotions like happiness and sadness aren\u2019t supposed to last. They come and go. Seeking happiness as the ultimate goal is like chasing rainbows. Happiness is a moving target and we may feel even less happy because unrealistic expectations have been set. Your happiness water level won’t always keep rising to the previous high-water mark. We can often see this being the case for high-level executives who have enjoyed their rise through corporate world but struggle to adapt to the slower pace of life that retirement brings.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Unlike happiness, fulfillment is a state of being. It is achieved when you accept who you are, make the most of what you have and are optimistic about the future.\u00a0The psychiatrist and author Victor Frankl (who inspired this insight) noted that as he witnessed patients die, he noticed that despite age or diagnosis, some seemed to be more at peace than others. He began a quest to understand how some people in their final weeks could still be okay.\u00a0He concluded that fulfillment was the answer. Patients who were fulfilled could reflect fondly on their life and relationships, have gratitude (sometimes that just meant being grateful for having a few hours without physical pain) and remain optimistic (in some cases, in the promise of an afterlife).<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Our Discovery Meeting is the first key meeting in the process for becoming an Individual Client<\/a><\/span><\/span>. We spend a fraction of our time exchanging pleasantries before diving into the big (and small!) question to understand the goals, motives and values of the prospective client. We ask questions that explore the individual or couples \u00a0‘ideal lifestyle’, their deepest desires, their past relationship with money, what the hope to achieve and how they want to be remembered. What we really want to know is: what might a fulfilled life look like to these people?<\/span><\/div>\n
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It’s very rare for us to sit at a Discovery Meeting and listen to a client define a lifestyle which is unattainable<\/strong>.<\/span><\/p>\n

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A couple will typically come to boosst for much-needed guidance as they approach retirement. Often, they haven’t really thought about what a fulfilling life might look like and certainly haven’t mapped out what it might cost to fund it. Our first job is to help discover their own definition of fulfilment. This of course is very personal, as we all have our own sense of purpose and find different things fulfilling. Hopefully you and your partner have a similar description of a fulfilling lifestyle, or this can cause bumps in the road! Usually, couples going through this process find that they are more aligned with each other than they remember being, especially after many years of marriage!<\/span><\/p>\n

Even clients who have lost children or been widowed at a young age can go on to find fulfilment.<\/span><\/p>\n

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The road to fulfilment:<\/span><\/h4>\n
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Don\u2019t overreact to highs or lows<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/div>\n
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People who are fulfilled don\u2019t overreact to emotional highs or lows. They are able to appreciate that just as the seasons come and go, so do our emotions. There are all kinds of clever ways to keep feelings in check, even in a modern world which seems to heighten and dump our emotions up and down on a regular basis. Investing in equity markets is one very obvious part of life that throws our feelings up and down the spectrum. It was much simpler 50 years ago, when share prices weren’t available on every device or flashed along the bottom of TV screens.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Focus on the things that really matter. Ask yourself: Am I hungry, angry, lonely or tired?\u00a0<\/span>If you are any or many of those things, Victor Frankl suggests that you take one of these steps to level out your high or low:<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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