This Episode is bought to you by the Tour de Pants, Innerwealth, Red Bull No Bull and Toblerone Chocolate on a wet Sunday afternoon. Today we discuss “Doing what you love is the key to fulfilment.”

Would you rather be fulfilled or wealthy?

Four guys came across a gene and rubbed the lamp. They each got a wish. The first asked for 10 cases of beer. Inspired by this, the second guy asked for a brewery. Inspired by this the third guy asked for all the beer in the world and the fourth guy asked for a lack of interest in alcohol including beer. Hmmmm seems the fourth guy was seeking a different way to get full – fulfilled.

Another guy drowned and went to heaven. At the pearly gates he was interviewed. The guy complained. What have you ever done for me. I fell into a raging river and cried for help. I nearly get smashed into rocks. then hit by a floating log and finally died, when I get bumped by a floating tyre. The judge at the pearly gates looked up the workbook and said, “ahh, seems we have you here, yes, we heard your cry, we sent you a toward some rocks, gave you a log to hang onto and then a tyre to float you. Seems the guy’s expectations blocked is observations.

A guy looking out his hotel window in Mexico on the beach saw a fisherman come in and lazily take his boat to the beach, take out of the boat the catch of the day, clean it and wonder off home. The guy in his hotel worked for McKinsey and Co and decided to help the poor fisherman. He went and proposed that the fisherman could hire a few people. They could take the boat out and bring it back. Then they could clean the fish. And the fisherman could sell the fish and buy another boat. Then he could get twice the amount of fish and make more money and get more boats and eventually a fleet of boats and then they would list on the stock exchange and the fisherman could be really really wealthy and retire. Then he could find a nice sandy beach, get himself a simple boat and go out fishing every day…..

How do robot voices laugh? ha ha ha ha ha ha hah aha haha haha hahaah

There is an old buddhist saying “strange how people always want what they haven’t got when the secret to happiness is to want what you’ve got.

When we want what we haven’t got we become unfulfilled, which in the economics of capitalism and consumerism, is the motivating forces Henry Ford needed to drive production. Get people to want what they haven’t got. It’s also the secret to good marketing isn’t it. But it also drives us nuts. Working our arse off to be stressed to get what we don’t need and then die from the stress of it all.

Self help falls into the same trap. If you are not happy with who you are, you never will be. Because if you are not perfect, the motivation to. become perfect always stops you from being perfect because you always want to be perfect, and believe just one more bench press, or one more game of soccer or one more pay rise with provide that perfect. But you get on a treadmill where one goal achieved creates two more goals of possibility. Achievement doesn’t breed satisfaction, it breeds the appetite for more.

I don’t wish my dad taught me that “Doing what you love is the key to fulfilment.” because I was always doing what I loved and wasn’t fulfilled. Fulfilment is a myth. Like the storm we have in Bondi today, the turbulence of the storm will go and calm will be restored. Fulfilment is the balance of turbulence. “Doing what you love is the key to turbulence too”

What I would love to have learnt instead is that I should never throw my whole body weight into something. I need to keep 10% back. That 10% is the inner truth that I am already happy, already fulfilled. Very Zen. And the 90% is good to go after, but not boots and all. That’s the root of crazy.

Thank you. End of today’s episode.

With Spirit

Chris