I have read a couple of quotes and articles about happiness, and most of them say that fulfilment is one of the sources of happiness that comes from helping others. Various other sources suggest that finding your meaning of life, your whys, and the objective of life makes you fulfilled and happy. Since humans feel joy in helping others, they think that if they are useful to others, they may be happy for life.

But it is mostly never the case. Why so?

Because,

“True fulfilment comes from helping others, especially when they are not directly asking for it”

Looks simple but strange…right?

Let me repeat

True fulfilment comes from helping others, especially when they are not directly asking for it. Let me explain,

Suppose you got the salary hike, and you feel like taking out some money for charity. You have a substantial amount, which you feel is enough to pay the school fee of one student for a year, so you approach an NGO and adopt an orphan kid for his education.

You felt the joy and patted your back for doing such a wonderful thing. You are excited for the next time, and looking forward to repeating such a generous act, as soon as the next hike in money hits your bank account. In your mind, it may be paying for another child’s education or sending that money for any medical aid that has been provided in some affected areas, or something else.

But now, these NGO(s) have started calling you for another child who has recently been brought in and needs someone who can adopt him. This time you may not feel as excited as for the first time, and you may say to yourself, “Well, it’s fine, I was anyway planning to do so”.

And the next time you again get a call, you definitely wouldn’t feel good about this whole process.

What has changed?

Just “You have been ASKED”. And when someone asks, the fulfilment that comes from the doing without asking or without feeling obligated goes away.

If the concept of fulfilment was to just be useful to others, then all public service workers such as civil servants, police, cleaning workers, teachers, doctors, millitary personal, etc. would have been the most fulfilled and happiest people on the earth. Mostly they are not. And the reason is, they are not doing it without people asking for it, but they are obligated to do that job as bound by their working terms.

So we find fulfilment in doing what we believe is important to others, but only when we do it freely, without being asked or forced.

When it becomes our job, we stop loving it.

An analogy that fits almost all parts of my life: My father wants to give me his savings, but I don’t want it. The more I decline his offer, the more he wants to give me. He feels good about the act because it is not an expectation from me at all (genuinely, not just to show him); hence, he pushes it very hard. But if I start ASKING him for his money, he may be fine for a couple of times, but later I am sure he will not enjoy this.

This is the very reason entrepreneurs with ideas to change the world feel fulfilled by the products they launch, compared to their employees who are actually developing those products. The simple reason is that founders do it without any force, but employees have been ASKED to work for it, and they do it for their livelihood. The action of both is the same, but the motivation is different, and that makes all the difference.

How to keep ourself fulfiled for what we started?

The message here is that helping others feels good until it is forced on us. And this force comes from the feedback from the recipients.

Some years ago I had read a book about gratitude; it changed me as a person, and I started to feel more grounded and felt more grateful to people around me. If anyone would do anything for me, I would smile at them and thank them by showing them my full set of 32 teeth. Some people didn’t even react, some replied with a strange face, and very few responded similarly. This behaviour would hurt me.

But the books were saying you must be grateful; when I am being grateful, why am I not feeling good from the bottom of my heart?

Since I started feeling more and more grateful, I started expecting similar behaviour from people.

I got the answer from a movie trailer; when I heard this,

Original (Hindi) version: “अपनी ही ड्यूटी करने के लिए तुम चाहते हो कि लोग तुम्हें ‘थैंक यू’ बोलें?”

English version: “You want to be thanked for merely doing your duty”. Courtesy — Newton (Indian Hindi movie, launched in 2017)

I understood this in merely a second, and then I knew what to do next.

The problem was, I was doing something which I believed was useful and then waiting for the validation from others that yes, I was right, and this world needs me. This was the fulfilment killer.

Now, I had two choices,

Either, whatever I am doing for others, make it my duty and make it too small a thing to worry about.

Or

If I cannot make it small then do it wholeheartedly and close my connections for receiving the feedback.

The result must be independent of the action, or the action itself should be the reward.

And we must do it because we have said to ourselves to do so, not for the results. That’s it, end of the story.

And since we don’t listen to others, we don’t feel obligated. It is still a duty for us that we have given to ourselves without anyone’s force.

Isolating the work from the results brings fulfilment because it comes from the experience of the blood and sweat that has gone into the work without telling anyone. This fulfilment brings value, and value brings HAPPINESS.