Everything I Need

I've been toying around with an idea for a while now. The idea is that in order for each individual person to live a fulfilled life we must act in the present as if we already have everything we need. Notice I used the word, "fulfilled" and not "complete" or "happy." I mean that if we are to achieve a sense of peace and fulfillment in the here and now, then we need to act this way. Finding happiness and completeness require different mentalities...(at least I imagine that to be the case) Back to fulfillment.

I believe I am a person subject to a "grass is always greener" mindset. When things are going well I feel a sense of fulfillment and peace, but when things start getting rocky, rather then deepening my sense of fulfillment and peace I find myself scrambling to come up with what is invariably missing and therefore responsible for my lack of fulfillment and peace. Wow, that was a complex sentence! I'm not even sure it made any sense!! Let's see if I can break it down any...

When I am feeling fulfilled, I think deep down I believe that it is because I have everything I need--meaning possessions. When I stop feeling fulfilled, I try to remedy that situation by finding some possession that will bring back my sense of fulfillment. So, basically, I have started and ended with a completely false premise. The premise being that fulfillment comes from the possessions we have or don't have.

If we flip that premise on its head and decide that God knows what we need and will make sure we get it, then fulfillment becomes something we choose to accept or not depending on our level of faith and not on what we actually have or don't have. This isn't to say that we just sit back and wait for God to bring us what we need. I still think that our own initiative and choice is very much involved in the process. However, it is our state of fulfillment that shouldn't be changing with the wind, so to speak.

Another idea...God will bring us what we truly need only when we have decided that we have everything we need. If this is true, then our state of mind is critically important. And we're back to the beginning. We must act as though we have everything we need. Once we accomplish this then our sense of fulfillment and peace deepens. As our fulfillment becomes more settled, God brings us something new and wonderful--what we truly need. Which invariably brings us to another period of feeling unfulfilled (aka uncomfortable simply because it is something new and most often unexpected) and then we must push ourselves once again to believe that God has given us all that we need. And the circle continues with us hopefully growing stronger and stronger in our faith and deeper in a sense of peace and fulfillment.

I have everything I need.