About Happiness and Fulfillment

During a FULFILLMENT seminar, at the University of Arizona for the Affiliated Women's Clubs, a charming and successful woman unintentionally made our point about success, satisfaction and Happiness. Catherine Hendricks spoke about several major problems that are caused by living too secular a life-style in this period of swift, destabilizing and often disconcerting change. Catherine lamented;

I'm one woman who did everything well. I stayed out of trouble in school, married the right guy and joined a great company when it started taking women seriously. I've made sound Business decisions along the way and shall surely become a V P before I'm forty. I live in a Home my parents think a mansion and have two beautiful children. I do a job thousands envy. Obviously, I have everything. Right? Wrong! Much of my life feels incomplete and caught up in trivia. My kids are rebelling with sex and drugs and I'm almost certain my husband is having an affair with a little twerp. I feel deeply dissatisfied at the most inopportune times, as if nothing counts except for my sixty hour work weeks and paying for the house and the Mercedes. There must be more to life than this but when my therapist asks what's missing, I can't even tell her. I worry that I'm going mad to feel this way despite my accomplishments in the company and my prestige in my community. What do I do when I've won everything I've ever wanted and it isn't enough to keep me happy?

What, indeed -- and what of the many persons who fall short of her achievements, who fear life is passing them by, who feel stuck in their careers or frustrated in their relationships? They are not mentally ill but virtually always spiritually maladjusted through secular values, negative attitudes, low expectations, immature beliefs and often irresponsible choices. They are left wondering how they can find consistent satisfaction. Our work answers Catherine's troubling question along with a great many more. Our emphasis is on joyful living through spiritual values (or ethical virtues), positive attitudes, high expectations, mature beliefs and responsible choices. We have learned as Viktor Frankl, Karen Horney, Karl Jung and many others taught, that the unfortunate souls who are suffering from neurotic ailments and existential alienation, are those persons who have failed to find a consistent sense of meaning that assures their satisfaction through life's several stages. We have also learned that few persons are going to simply get lucky and have fulfillment handed to them on a solver platter. Life is filled with many quid-pro-quos in which we must do our part wisely and well to have life become consistently satisfying as a by-product of our responsible choices.

Obviously this means that those persons doing the best they can -- while still feeling stuck in their careers, dissatisfied with their love relationships and anxious that life is passing them by, must learn better ways of managing their existence. Of course, that is what this book is all about!

This approach was first conceived when Jard was psychology professor and convocations chairman at Olivet college. He had Viktor Frankl flown from Vienna to the campus to lecture and counsel about his approach to psychospiritual healing. Viktor had written several outstanding books, including MAN'S SEARCH FOR MEANING, PSYCHOTHERAPY AND EXISTENTIALISM and THE DOCTOR AND THE SOUL. The Viennese psychiatrist and psychologist called his approach Logotherapy -- which means spirit healing -- for existentially frustrated or spiritually bankrupt souls. Viktor, who spent more than three years in Nazi Germany's brutal death camps, was spiritually transformed by his covenant