Recently, I spent a weekend away in the Lake District in the north of England with some new friends of mine.

We made the most of the time despite the horizontal rain and grey skies, going cliff jumping and cold-water plunging, talking business and life at large in our caravan during the evenings.

It’s in everyone’s interest to become as fulfilled and as self-actualized as possible during their lifetime, and I noticed and defined the three things that help the most with this, based on my experience, especially of the past few days.

They can be quite widely interpreted, but these are the things that will help you make the most of your life…

Give more than you take

There are many examples where you can give back to the people in your life, or even people you don’t know:

  • Charity work/donation
  • Creating content online to share knowledge
  • General generosity

What you ‘give’ to people is also open for interpretation — it can be money, but more often it’s other things. Time, attention, ideas and wisdom are all valuable, and giving them to other people fulfils you when you see the impact that you make on the other person.

Call someone you care about but haven’t seen for a long time. Give the last slice of pizza to someone else. Spend some time helping someone achieve their goals instead of your own goals.

It’s true that when you look to radiate generosity outwards, over time you’re recognised and this generosity returns to you. It’s a fulfilling cycle of uplifting the people you’re around and being uplifted in return.

Giving more than you take means that very often you’re going to be interacting with people, so it comes hand in hand with the next step…

Be around others

Self-proclaimed lone wolves out there won’t want to listen to this one…

Humans are tribal creatures. We’ve lived in groups or communities since the start of our species’ history.

Why?

It’s better for everyone involved.

More strength and protection, combined intellect and cooperation leads to an increase in survival and although we’re not constantly facing the same circumstances as these early humans, the same still applies.

You will achieve more of what you want to achieve if you do it with a group of people.

This became clear to me on last weekend’s trip, especially when we took turns explaining our businesses and discussing the next steps to take. Having eight others sit around picking apart the flaws in our businesses allowed the ego to dissolve into acceptance, learning and growth in a way that is nearly impossible to do in your own head when alone.

Having people around you makes it easier to do the other two things on this list too.

True companions call you out when you’re not trying hard enough, or when you’re letting emotion or ego get in the way of progress. They make sure that you’re not slacking, whilst uplifting you and encouraging you when you feel down.

On the flip side, these people are those you can give to. You can share knowledge, kindness, time and attention with them like we did when discussing businesses, which is going to allow everyone to push on and improve in the future.

When all you’ve got is your own thoughts, you can find it hard to test yourself, becoming complacent, and that’s the last thing you want in terms of trying to become fulfilled…

Challenge yourself and delay gratification

This is the only way you get better at something, because improvement can only come through failure.

If you fail at something in your life, you receive the knowledge and feedback to figure out how you could have succeeded, and the pain of failure that motivates you to try again.

Logically, if you don’t fail, you don’t see a reason to improve, meaning you don’t improve.

This is why it’s important to consciously challenge yourself by delaying gratification. We’ve lost the imminent threat of death that our ancestors faced, so we have to manufacture hard situations for ourselves.

(Hence the cliff-jumping and cold water plunge in the driving rain!)

You were motivated and wrote four articles in a day? Now write four articles in a day when you’re feeling down. Make it your baseline. Four pieces in a day, or you’ve failed.

This is how you improve. Because even if four articles a day doesn’t happen, now you might be writing two or three instead of one. A ‘Shoot for the stars so that if you fall you land on a cloud’ mentality.

Successful people vouch for delaying gratification and making your life difficult in order to grow. Dr Jordan Peterson talks about walking the line between chaos and order in his book “12 Rules for Life” — Push yourself to the point where, if anything else is taken on, chaos shortly follows. This is where you feel the most fulfilled and alive.

Similarly, David Deida talks about operating at your ‘edge’ — a place where you’re at the so-called edge of your capabilities. Leaving anything on the table is living unfulfilled because you’re not tapping into this potential to be great.

This is why surrounding yourself with people is so important. Well-intentioned companions call you out when you fall too far into the orderly and comfortable, and they can drag you out of chaos by bearing some of the load for you when times become too much.

A life without challenge is a life without progress. This is the most important point of the three for reaching fulfilment.

Delay gratification, build something great.

It’s worth pointing out that business and earning money to make yourself free in life are not on this list of fulfilling activities, even though I find the practice of building a business to be extremely fulfilling (probably because I’m giving value).

This is because these above points are more of a foundation for living a fulfilling life. If you take them and apply them with a business mindset, you can earn money. You can make friends if you take them and apply them to your social life. If you take them and apply them to health, you’ll live longer. Rather than the actual building blocks of whatever you want to achieve, they’re the prerequisites behind them.

I hope that you enjoyed reading this piece, and learning something from it that you perhaps didn’t know before. As always, thanks for reading!