Reflect on a time when you felt truly happy and fulfilled. What values were you honoring in that moment?
Contentment seems like a good word that covers both happiness and fulfillment.
I went to college full-time in my 40s, and even though I was in poverty, I was quite content. I loved what I was doing at school— the classes, the campus, and the people I met. Between financial aid and working part-time, I was able to keep myself fed and housed, which was enough.
College gave me many opportunities to exercise my values of creativity, openness, and action. I used those values both in enrolling and in getting through my coursework. I am the curious sort and love learning, too. All that contributed to my happiness.
College was the perfect amount of challenge and flexibility, with enough structure to keep me on the rails without making me feel trapped.
One thing I learned from the college experience was a certain level of self-care. I finally got on and stayed on antidepressants, which was a huge factor in finishing my degree after many failed attempts over the years. Beyond the meds, I had therapy on campus, where I learned that I am one of the people I have to extend kindness to.
I have largely been off the rails since graduation. I had intended to go to grad school immediately and had been accepted at a couple, but then I needed to work. I got a job with the state that was meaningful to me, but it had a long commute. That’s what I tell people when they ask me why I left that job, but the other problem was that it involved a lot of multitasking and following rote procedures, which are two things I am very bad at. I was very good at the social and decision making parts of the job, at least. That wasn’t good enough in a job that was a bunch of systemized multitasking processes wrapped around those skills I actually excelled at. Add 3 hours a day on the road with small kids at home, and you can see why it didn’t work out.
Since then, I have worked the most random assortment of jobs, none of which have been particularly creative or otherwise interesting, but they were at least single task jobs.
I originally decided to go back to college to get on a career path to eventually pull myself up out of poverty. While I was poor in college, I didn’t need much and my life was very fulfilling in other ways. Moreover, I believed it was a phase I was passing through on my way to something better that I was working hard for.
Poverty can be very rough, especially when there’s no sense of there ever being an end to it. The constant stress and struggle to just get by really grinds a person down.
It may or may not be obvious, but living out my values has fallen by the wayside in favor of a self-strangling pragmatism. And I have been much less happy and fulfilled, which is a different kind of poverty.
I am going turn this around!
The Mia Experiment 