Quotes About Fulfillment

I believe I'm very happy.

Recall that whatever lofty things you might accomplish today, you will do them only because you first ate something that grew out of dirt.

they'd shared an exuberance that eventually suffocated under tenure applications and mortgages. This was not a new story. Maybe Iano still had access to that kind of joy, but she'd surrendered it as her half of the marital bargain.

But don't you want lots of money? Beene, I spent many years working for the Belgians in the rubber plantation at Coquilhatville, and I saw rich men there. They were always unhappy and had very few children.

I read what Hallie said about not wanting to save the world, that you didn't choose your road for the reward at the end, but for the way it felt as you went along.

realized that I had come to my own terms with the desert, but my soul was thirsty.

Sometimes I still have American dreams. I mean literally. I see microwave ovens and exercise machines and grocery-store shelves with thirty brands of shampoo, and I look at these things oddly, in my dream. I stand and I think, 'What is all this for? What is the hunger that drives this need?' I think it's fear.

why would it? He had won, and

There aren't many things we humans need to do. We need to eat, we need to drink, we need to make love. And the French attitude is, okay, we should do those things very well.

fait accompli

To Love Is To Be Happy With

people with high maximization scores experienced less satisfaction with life, were less happy, were less optimistic, and were more depressed than people with low maximization scores.

On the contrary, it's a way to make sure that you can continue to experience pleasure. What's the point of great meals, great wines, and great blouses if they don't make you feel great?

If society asks more of us, and arranges its social institutions appropriately, it will get more.

no matter how much a person has, it may not be enough.

to be satisfied with our work, we typically need a belief in the purpose of what we do. Amy

Clearly, the cumulative opportunity cost of adding options to one's choice set can reduce satisfaction. It may even make a person miserable.

human possibility, awash in material abundance. As a society, we have achieved what our ancestors could, at most, only dream about, but it has come at a great price.

you seek and accept only the best, you are a maximizer.

it's impossible to be a maximizer about everything. The trick is to learn to embrace and appreciate satisficing, to cultivate it in more and more aspects of life, rather than merely being resigned to it. Becoming a conscious, intentional satisficer makes comparison with how other people are doing less important. It makes regret less likely. In the complex, choice-saturated world we live in, it makes peace of mind possible.

I believe that many modern Americans are feeling less and less satisfied even as their freedom of choice expands. This book is intended to explain why this is so and suggest what can be done about it.

Following the other suggestions I've made may sometimes mean that when judged by an absolute standard, the results of decisions will be less good than they might otherwise have been—all the more reason to fight the tendency to make social comparisons. So: Remember that "He who dies with the most toys wins" is a bumper sticker, not wisdom. Focus on what makes you happy, and what gives meaning to your life.

To these three comparisons I have added a fourth: the gap between what one has and what one expects.

If we design workplaces that permit people to find meaning in their work, we will be designing a human nature that values work