Fulfillment is the deep satisfaction you feel when you achieve important goals or live in a way that matches your values. In business, it can also mean the process of completing and delivering orders.
“Fulfillment” comes from “fulfill,” formed from Old English “full” and “fyllan,” meaning “to fill.” It originally meant “to carry out completely” and later grew to include emotional and life satisfaction.
Many people chase happiness but actually want fulfillment, which is slower, deeper, and often involves hard work and responsibility. You can be temporarily happy watching a funny video, but you feel fulfilled after finishing a big project that mattered to you.
Discourses of “fulfillment” have often been gendered, with women historically told their fulfillment lies primarily in domestic roles, while men were associated with fulfillment through career and public life. This framing has constrained how different genders are allowed to imagine meaningful lives.
Use “fulfillment” in ways that allow for diverse life paths across genders, and avoid implying that any single role (parenthood, career, partnership) is the ‘natural’ route to fulfillment for a given gender.
["sense of meaning","satisfaction","purpose"]
When discussing life fulfillment, recognize women’s and gender-diverse people’s achievements across all domains, not only in stereotyped roles.
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