Many persons try to succeed by using values, attitudes, expectations, and skills they chanced on in childhood. Unfortunately, in this age of relentless change, when power and authority are shared by more and more people, to depend on what you picked up as a youngster is a poor way to shape your life into a successful affair. In our conventional behavioral patterns many mistakes have been handed down from generation to generation. At home you were probably socialized not to ask embarrassing questions of your elders. At school you were expected to memorize correct answers. And if you are like most people, you are still waiting for someone to ask right questions so you can show what a good student you were. Unfortunately for your welfare, no one is ever going to ask them, since most of answers you learned in school are no longer appropriate. Yet -- millions of men and women who would never imagine crossing country by covered wagon instead of jet aircraft, who would never take some medicine man's snake-oil cure, try to succeed in life by using methods that were outdated a century ago. And then can’t understand why they aren't among successful achievers.

Today, men and women are having to cope with complex events that are affecting their lives in many crucial ways. Medicine, personal behavior, education, entertainment, sexual customs, engineering and business methods are all changing more rapidly than at any time in history. We no sooner get comfortable than life rolls over once again, forcing us to learn an entirely new set of attitudes, activities and relationships!

And yet, not one of changes sweeping over us like Pacific waves crashing onto a reef, has such critical implications when making one’s life count for something satisfying as attitudes that people now hold toward power and control.

The John Wayne or John Rambo mystique (Tell jerks what to do!) doesn't motivate competent persons any more. If it ever did! For example, since disasters caused by fighting wrong people, in wrong place, at wrong time -- during America’s shameful wars against poor, dark-skinned Third World nations such as Vietnam, Libya, Panama, Granada, Lebanon, Somalia and others, many perceptive women and men have lost faith in our institutions. We see Congress and state Legislatures consistently selling out to highest bidder, business organizations disposing of faithful employees who do their best work at drop of a point on Wall Street, criminal justice system with trigger-happy cops and politically ambitious district attorneys regularly convicting and legally murdering unfortunate, mostly poor, minority men who couldn’t possibly have committed crimes for which they are being executed. The very flexible morality of primitive politicians, greedy business executives, powerful governmental officials and existentially enraged citizens who feel execution of any minority man whether guilty or not is a good day’s work -- is a weak reed upon which to lean.

Every person with a smattering of intelligence realizes he or she is out there on bubble -- pretty much alone -- on his or her own, much of time. Few of us without support of government or great wealth have power needed to demand cooperation from others. Not long ago a middle-aged local realtor told me of an experience he had with his youthful secretary. Dan said that Dianne was a hardworking, high-spirited employee who was competent and loyal enough to become his administrative assistant. He said, she reminded him of flippant young secretary in T V series THE PRACTICE. But he began to notice, to his middle age displeasure, that she was dressing more and more casually, as if she were going to a picnic rather than to a business operation. So, he called her into his office and tactfully asked her to dress according to his code -- long accepted business code set by such giants as I B M, General Motors and Honeywell. The young woman sat silently as he spoke, but when he finished, she stood up and said quite pointedly;

Who needs this crap in an informal business such as this?

Then she walked out of his office, returned to her desk, and continued to work harder and smarter for his small company than any assistant he had ever employed. As he related story, Dan sighed deeply and said there was little he could do about her impertinence, unless he wanted to cut off his nose to spite his face. He could protect his ego against an outspoken girl -- could fire her of course, and really teach her a lesson, forcing her to take unemployment pay, a month or two of subsidized vacation, and get a job with a company that would not be so stuffy about way she dressed. But, he would be real loser. He would spend a month trying to find a suitable replacement, another three or four months trying to help newcomer learn job, and another six months blaming himself for letting his ego cost him a year's efficiency in his office. He kept his mouth shut and retained a great assistant -- for he lacked power to make her comply with his requirements. Indeed life does go on and we must adapt, must cope with reality in order to succeed, even if doing so makes us suspect that world is going to hell in a handcart, because humans hate change inordinately and yearn to freeze life as it was when we were learning it. Even when doing so costs us a bundle. Many people do just that because personal prestige is more important to themselves than performance or profits, but it quickly leads to dysfunctional families, schools, companies, churches and communities.

Please visit our website at http://www.fulfillmentforum.com for more information about this E-Book and Free E-Book downloads.

Fortunately, life can become deeply meaningful for loving persons who are maturing, who are meeting needs of their spiritual unconscious that Frankl wrote about -- which is as vital to satisfaction as our psychological unconscious that Freud discussed. It is this spiritual unconscious that is so often neglected by persons who live with secular values and too pragmatic choices -- which is why we combine psychological and philosophical in our books and articles. After all, every society from primitive clans with be-feathered shamans chanting spells around campfires, to building mysterious Stonehenge, to completing towering European cathedrals, and even attending Billy Graham’s relational campaigns, has been trying to meet spiritual yearnings throbbing within every human soul. These hungers are universal and repressing or neglecting them causes spiritual bankruptcy or what Frankl called existential frustration.

We have researched emotional and spiritual aspects of satisfaction for half a century, drawing from brilliant existential philosophers, theologians and psychologists of whom Soren Kierkegaard, Carl Jung, Karen Horney, Tielhard de Chardin, Otto Rank, Melanie Klein, Paul Tillich, Viktor Frankl, H. Orton Wiley, Laura Perls, Rollo May and Carl Rogers are representative. Wayne Dyer, who remains a contemporary existential seminar leader on Public Television, has an excellent approach for improving spiritual health. We have learned beyond a shadow of a doubt, that fulfillment is never won directly but always by product of a maturing life-style. We didn’t stop with concepts, however, but hammered issues of life out in real world, getting down into mud and blood of existence with people experiencing differing degrees of emotional and spiritual failures. We have also discovered that human existence can indeed be filled with purpose and permanence for perceptive women and men. However, there is a major Catch - 22 in search for consistent satisfaction. There is nothing automatic or universal about succeeding in our quest. There is no single approach to Fulfillment with a capital F that meets every person’s needs. Each one of us has to open personal channels by applying our own powers along lines of excellence. We must move beyond theoretical to practical.

Despite assumptions of so many persons, our search can seldom be for happiness per se. Happiness is a fleeting emotion that will always fade and eventually vanish. We all need times of joy, obviously, but it is far more satisfying to create lasting sources of meaning in our lives -- in those places of heart where we belong, connected to persons with whom we share love, acceptance and support.

We all hold values, attitudes, expectations and beliefs and make choices that are relevant to our lives. These key aspects of life affect us according to our inherited traits, environmental experiences and formative choices. Naturally, not one of us is exempt from civilization’s pressures. All men and women inherit homosapien angst and rage, resist childhood socialization, and struggle to break apron strings during adolescence and to remove emotional scar tissue in unconscious aspects of our minds. We are indeed forced to deal with tragic elements of suffering, guilt, rage and death. It doesn’t end there, fortunately. We are pleased to report that despite many existential frustrations, spiritually-minded persons who convert their earthly meanderings into purposeful, love-filled quests can enjoy consistent fulfillment. Women and men who cultivate faith, hope and love do find joy even as waves of complex change batter society relentlessly.

We recently had this approach confirmed by an unlikely source in an entirely unexpected setting. The carnival barker on Minnesota State Fair Midway didn't look like a philosopher. His fingernails were ragged and dirty and a broken tooth gave him a cynical and somewhat sinister leer. Tough-Tony Gallo seemed too rough-hewn a man from whom to learn much about a meaningful life. Nevertheless, Tony went right to a major aspect of fulfillment when he said;

Life’s sorta like ridin’ a bicycle uphill. Ya gotta keep pedalin’ along or ya gotta stop and get off. There ain’t no reverse gear and ya gotta keep yer balance.

How marvelously well expressed! There you have it -- much knowledge and wisdom in a nutshell! Tough Tony had just relieved Jard of six dollars in a futile attempt to win a stuffed panda for a granddaughter at his milk bottle-toss game. Neither Jard's arm nor his aim is what either was in his youth but he was delighted with transaction. After all, in these days of expensive therapy, that was a bargain price for such excellent counsel about living successfully. As our philosophical friend with dirty nails so succinctly said, a satisfying life has an ongoing flow that must be embraced if we are to find consistent meaning and belonging with powers God through nature has given us to invest in spiritual growth. To sum this up even more succinctly than Tony did, we use this simple equation;

PERSONAL FULFILLMENT = f (Heredity x Environment x Choices)

Everything we inherit from all of our ancestors is acted on by our environment whether it is good or bad. And that product is multiplied by excellent, mediocre or disastrous choices we make about life and our place in it.

Through these articles, we use word existential to mean that something relates to cultural and personal life-style humans choose to follow or have thrust upon them by society. It has nothing to do with grim European philosophy of Existentialism taught by Sartre, Camus and others in desperate decades of World Wars, murderous Holocaust and long, debilitating Cold War. To us, existential just means that something being discussed is related to life-style we follow.

Please visit http://www.fulfillmentforum.com

Discover how to fill your life with meaning in places of heart where you belong with ones you love with our Ebook Courses.