Everyone desires fulfillment. Everyone seeks to live a meaningful life. Everyone wants to have a purpose. However, these things don’t just come to us, and they aren’t just things we can decide we have and then move forward with our lives. People live in search of happiness and in hopes that at the end of the day, the things we do and the accomplishments we achieve will make us happy.

Having goals and striving to better ourselves is a great way to live, but the mindset that “once I do ____ I’ll be happy” puts us in a rut of always needing more. Once we achieve those things that we thought would make us happy, there’s always something else we find we need. Happiness is not something that we can achieve and then have forever.

Happiness is not a destination but rather, the side effect of living a meaningful life.

Meaning and purpose are found, not by looking for them, but by deciding how we want to our lives to be lived and taking steps to actively practice those things.

Instead of searching for an end-result, let’s stop and ask ourselves what’s important to us. For me, this means values. Having a firm set of values is the starting point to clarity. Values give us direction and a focus, and hopefully, in the end, you’ll find that by living out your values, you have experienced joy, happiness, fulfillment and purpose.

You may know what your top value is, but you may not. For me, it took some soul searching to figure out what it was that I truly cared about. Once I did, I was able to start making decisions, speaking and acting in a way that truly reflects what’s important to me.

My top five values are empathy, connection, trust, service and independence. Knowing this about myself has helped me begin to live a more purposeful life. I value these things in myself, and in other people. The decisions I make, the goals I pursue and the way I act are now based on my values.

I now seek to form relationships with others, to practice empathy, develop trust, be there for the people around me and not rely on other’s opinions to feel secure with myself. Nobody is perfect and no one will ever live as if they are, but having a firm set of beliefs makes it a lot easier to evaluate our lives and to make purposeful goals in moving forward.

At the end of the day, whether I accomplish everything I want to or not, I hope that by living according to the things that are meaningful to me, I will feel at peace. I hope that when I do achieve something, I’m able to share that joy with those around me.

I hope that when times are hard, I can trust in my decisions and in the relationships around me to get me through. I hope that I’m able to share the happiness, the sadness, the accomplishments, the failures, the experiences and the memories that have impacted my life and the lives of those I care about. I hope not for happiness, but for meaning.

My desire for purpose and fulfillment starts with today. So today, I will choose to live a value based life.