Keep Your Glass Full

Cincinnati is the third place I have moved to since leaving my hometown of Pasadena, California, for college. It’s the second city I’ve moved to for my job. It’s hard not to put a lot of importance on your career when you are constantly changing your life for it. However, I have found when I do put all my worth in my career I feel unfulfilled. (I blogged about it a few months ago, “What do you do?”)

All of us want to feel like we have worth, though we all get that fulfillment in different ways. Maybe it’s the role you play as a mother, or your job as a teacher, or as a friend. Whatever the role is it keeps us full. When you put all your worth into only one of these roles though, it’s easy to become unsatisfied quickly.

I put together this SUPER high budget video to better depict this. Think of yourself as the glass. Our goal is to fill the glass full, that’s when our feeling of worth is at its maximum capacity. When we use one source to fill our glass it can lead to danger quickly. What if something happens to that source, preventing it from filling us? Our ability to be fulfilled becomes stagnant. If you add more sources to fill your glass you are able to become full more quickly. Also, if one of those sources stops, you still have other resources that are filling you.

Moving is hard. You literally have to rebuild an entirely new life in an unfamiliar place. I have noticed a pattern in my feelings of fulfillment as I have made my moves across the country. First, I am at the top of the rollercoaster with my hands up in the air, screaming ecstatically. Everything is new; the places, the people, the scenery, and more importantly as a career driven person, my job. Then, things get tough at work. The learning curve of having a new job gets to me and the water filling my cup abruptly shuts off. Then “new stuff” starts to lose its shine. The rollercoaster starts bringing me down lower and lower.

It’s not until I start settling into my new life that I start feeling full again. Today I am happy to say I am comfortable at work to the point where it is once again a source of fulfillment. However it’s not the only thing I rely on. My role as a spin instructor fills me, as do the people I have met and begun building relationships with. This blog has also become a huge source to fill my glass. Building a new life takes work, but the work is worth it to keep my glass, what I like to consider, overflowing.

#fulfillment #worth #selfworth