On Fulfillment

The past year, I haven't been feeling very fulfilled and I'm becoming more like a robot on auto-pilot. I've been thinking a lot about my life, personal values, and fulfillment. It makes me ask a few questions to myself. Have I always been a robot? If not, when did I start transitioning into becoming a robot? What really makes me fulfilled and happy?

I'm very grateful to be in the situation I am currently and there are a lot of things I wouldn't change. For example, I got excellent friends, I got an extremely well paying job, I got great work-life balance, I got a supportive family, I got a supportive girlfriend, and I got hobbies I really enjoy practicing. Yet, there's something missing that I can't point a finger on and it gives me anxiety. It feels as if I'm not being honest to myself - I'm appealing to false values instead of appealing to my inner self.

This year is 2020 and I want to get a 20/20 vision of my life (as well as maybe literally 20/20 in my vision through Lasik) and solve this problem. Jokes aside, I'm still too young and it's probably impossible to acquire that level of wisdom at this age.

Instead, I'm going try to take a shortcut and statistical approach - talk to as many people that went through or are going through this phase as I can. Through listening to peoples' stories, hopefully, I'll be able to identify similarities in my situation and apply other peoples' learning to my own life. I want to dissect my life and put every aspect under a microscope to truly understand my values.

I'm sure this is not a problem unique to me. I think most people faced this problem sometime in their life or are currently facing this problem, whether they are successful (by society standards) or not. After I have a better understanding of the answer for me, I'll write a follow-up post which hopefully would be helpful for some people!