Finding Success and Fulfillment in Your Relationships

Success and fulfillment come from finding the “flow” of your work, having a best friend in the office, and connecting with others. If you’re the boss, being in touch with your staff members’ conce
s, authentically felt, will make your team more successful. Otherwise, success means finding the resources available for support. Ultimately, it means basic understanding of and conce
for others. In other words, show me the people, not the money.

Negative experiences that damage our self-concept can slow the process of awareness. In turn, that can make us defensive and block our awareness entirely. But those who are more open and less defensive will succeed; they’re flexible enough to “slide” into those opportunities that come along and fit their particular skills. “Luck” is just another word for no ego left to lose.
Finally, what part does money, in terms of wages earned, play in the complexity of meaning fulfillment? If you haven’t yet heard, not as much as we thought. More important are factors such as personal relationships, the meaning of one’s efforts in the bigger picture, and authentically being of service to others.

No matter how much you make, there’s always someone to compare yourself to who’s doing somewhat better. “Reference anxiety” is how psychologists refer to the fact that you’re always prone to comparing yourself to those around you-the old “keeping up with the Joneses”. And it’s so easy to see richer people around you-just turn on your TV. We sometimes ignore those suffering from poverty while we busy ourselves with comparisons to Donald Trump or Oprah Winfrey or whoever is gracing our televisions on a particular evening. But meaning and fulfillment have less to do with money, and a lot more to do with how we use our time with others.

At the end of the day, enjoying productive relationships is good not only for the bottom lines of success but for our mental attitude as well. According to an analysis of 1,130 Australians over an eight-year period, those who enjoy their jobs become more extroverted and less neurotic over time. And, according to a new study, those executives who possessed higher levels of self-regard and other aspects of the Awareness Factor are more likely to give way higher profits in their organizations.