SPECIAL EPISODE: Lessons in Fulfilment from 27 guests and Influential Leaders

Have you ever wondered what truly defines fulfilment in life? Join us in this episode of the Everlasting Fulfillment Podcast as we distil the wisdom from 27 inspiring interviews with influential CEOs, founders, and entrepreneurs. I'll share a personal and heartfelt story about my grandmother, who endured the immense hardships of both World Wars. This poignant narrative will offer profound insights into the resilience and strength that shape our understanding of fulfilment and success, mirroring the incredible fortitude of my mother and partner. These reflections reveal the powerful impact perseverance has on our personal and professional journeys.

We also dive into the energizing experience of balancing structured planning with inspired action, a lesson I've learned through hosting this podcast while managing freelance projects. Discover the importance of embracing flow over constant striving and how deep communication and radical truthfulness can enhance personal growth. By loosening the grip on rigid plans and remaining open to the unexpected, you might uncover a deeper sense of intrigue and satisfaction in your life journey. Tune in to uncover strategies for integrating these insights into your daily life, and don't forget to subscribe, leave a five-star review, and share this episode with a friend!

Sponsored by Nico Van de Venne CommV

Chapters

• 0:04 Finding Fulfillment Through Seizing Opportunities
• 14:24 Embracing Flow Over Striving
• 19:57 Embracing Fulfillment Through Flow

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:04

Let me invite you to sit back, drop your jaw, tongue and shoulders, take a deep breath and, if you wish, close your eyes for a moment and feel the beat within. In a few seconds, you just jumped from your head to your heart and felt the beat within opening up to receive even more value and fulfillment out of your business and life. And in today's episode, welcome to the Everlasting Fulfillment Podcast with today's subject A conclusion of the interviews with the CEO, founders and entrepreneurs in the past 27 interviews. I'm your host, nico van der Venne, confidant to successful CEOs, founders and entrepreneurs striving to achieve everlasting fulfillment. Welcome to the day's episode.

Speaker 1: 1:08

What I wanted to talk to you about is what I've noticed in all the conversations that I've been having for the last six months. So the podcast has been out there for six months now and I've had 27 amazing conversations with all kinds of different entrepreneurs, people who were employees as well, ceos, founders, and one of the major conclusions about what I've been focusing on on the podcast about everlasting fulfillment is it's really actually very simple but very hard to achieve, and I was contemplating on this in my own life so recently. What I do every quarter with all the guests in the podcast is as a guest get together and one of those moments so it was really recently we had quite a great turnout and I gave a little keynote at that time and this time the keynote was about my mom's worst enemy, who I love with all my heart. So there was quite some reaction on that statement because first of all people thought that it was my wife that I was talking about, but it wasn't. It was my grandmother, because my grandmother had a, she had a name, so people called her well, the family, we called her the Colonel sometimes. And coming from her, her story, her life I got an eye opener in January when, when she was a week away from becoming 101. She passed away and my brother came in to the room with the last items that were still in her room in the care home, about 40 centimeters on 20 centimeters, with some trinkets in there, some pictures, some picture books and a few little items like that. And it kind of opened my eyes on her life as well and what she did in her life, and I have very fond memories of her. I have other memories of her as well, which were mostly related to my parents, because there was not such a good relationship between my grandma and my father or my mother, because she tried. We were very well taken care of in a lot of different ways, by providing us with amazing food or taking care of us when we were sick and our parents had to go to work, and so on. So we were lucky that way. My dad was not as lucky.

Speaker 1: 4:42

I'm not going to tell you the whole story right now, but let's keep it to the basics, where she was born, right after the Great War of the First World War, living in a country that was devastated by bombardments and by military rule from Germany. Recuperating the economy wasn't so good as well, because a lot of stuff was destroyed. But then, um, she met my grandfather and he was um. He was very well known as a, as a cyclist. In those days. The, you know, professional sports weren't really a thing, not to say not at all. But he, he had so many wins to his name that he became very well known at some point in our country, um, for those days. So it was right before the second world war that he had a lot of success with his uh, cycling wins. But then the world, the second world war, came up and he had to um away or hide from the Germans and so on, and she was left behind with the elderly to take care of and survive. So taking into account that they lived really close by by to uh the current international air airport of brussels and their farmland was really close to it as well, you can imagine that bombardments were not, you know, target oriented. They did mostly, mostly did a big spread of bombardment. So going into those fields after there was a bombardment passed by yeah, it's, it's, it was risky business. So she was in a world, in a harsh world again, you know, as a little girl and then as a uh, a lady, she had um, she had very a lot of struggles, um to go through, which, you know, leaves scars behind. So she become, she became a very harsh um executed oriented uh lady.

Speaker 1: 6:53

And then later in life, when her husband, when the war was over, her husband grandfather, was a bus driver, international bus driver. He drove um all over Europe with tourists there were Americans, english, french, a lot of international tourists where he drove from Belgium to Moscow even. We cannot imagine anymore what it was like to live in the 40s and 50s, end of the 40s and beginning of the 50s, live in the 40s and 50s end of the 40s and beginning of the 50s driving um a bus through countries where highways were non-existent. So they, they had these nationals um that he was driving on, so on, so every six months he came back home and then he was doing the farmland. So this was, this was, was their life. It was a it's a it's.

Speaker 1: 7:50

It's pretty harsh and for her, she, she raised my father on her own, uh, most of the time. And then we, when he became older, my grandfather became a bus driver, a local bus driver, and um, yeah, let's just say that a lot of things happened, um, but what I did? Um notice about what, what her, their, her life, and then, later on, I was thinking about how my mom did everything when I was young and and growing up, um, and then now these days, how I see my partner, how she handles the household and everything that goes on. It's they, they are, they were my grandmother, my mother and and my current wife. They all have this tendency of taking on what's coming in front of them. So they, they pick up opportunities right in front of them, and it's not that they strive to do things, it's something completely different, where what I noticed, on the other hand, is a lot of leaders, managers, ceos, founders or entrepreneurs a lot of us strive towards something accolades, financially or other um goals, and when I had these discussions with all the um, the beautiful people that I was, I was, I was so I'm still grateful so that I was able to interview them um is that it was at some point. They all went, went through a process where they started to learn to look at it differently. They were starting to learn to look at it more like my grandma, my mom and my wife now do is to pick up opportunities instead of working towards goals.

Speaker 1: 9:51

Big difference that's a conclusion that I can make is when switching over from accolades and financial gain and success orientation and going for the peak of the mountain, coming to the peak of the mountain, looking around and saying what else is there? When there is no peak of the mountain and there is no constant goals and constant financial gains and success and so on, and you work towards opportunities, it's a completely different story, because you come to a point where opportunities become success and financial gain and all those beautiful things. It's the other way around, and my last discussion was at this point was with Liam Naden, was at this point, was with Liam Naden, who was, a while back, a millionaire, lost everything and then regained everything by taking a completely different approach and saying, yeah, whatever, no, I will not strive anymore towards goals, I will see what comes on my, my path and I'll take on whatever comes to me, uh, on the path, and it's a, it's a. It's a beautiful conclusion that comes out of these, these interviews where I've noticed that people who switched over, exactly like he did, they're a lot more happy, they're a lot more uh in the flow, they're a lot more um fulfilled, and it's it's. It's nice to see that whatever I was thinking in the past kind of comes out of all these interviews and confirms what I was thinking is I have had so much success by taking on what comes in front of me.

Speaker 1: 11:42

I've had so many beautiful opportunities that came in front of me and I took them on, and those opportunities were actually the ones that brought me a lot of success. They brought me financial gain. They brought me a lot of success, they brought me financial gain, they brought me a lot of freedom and so on. But the funny thing is I haven't looked at them that way, I was always thinking, no, I'd need to do more, I need to do this or that or that, and then works towards that goal, that goal and that goal, and I was hanging on to those goals too much. Basically, they were, they were becoming the only thing that was was important, and that's not the idea.

Speaker 1: 12:25

The idea is what's in front of you is actually what you should be working on, because that's the opportunity that you get from nature, from the universe. However you might fill that in, and taking action on that is going to give you the well in the end, it's going to give you the rewards that you actually wanted to receive. And yeah, I think it's just it's hard to explain sometimes the feeling that I have with certain conclusions that I get, but this resonates really enormously with me, where I've been striving for a lot of things the last years and not even noticing that I was already having them. So so now at this point, I'm like, okay, I love working with people who are successful. The reason why is because they take action. Now, the difference where I want to get them to is to take inspired action in just instead of just goal oriented or accolade oriented or financially oriented um action. You go from there to inspired action, and inspired action is something completely different because it's what comes up. You take action on the things that come up, and we are so used to striving for something that we forget to just do the thing that is in front of us, and that one of the things that happens there is procrastination, because you don't pick it up, you don't take action on on the thing that is in front of you, you just push it aside. You become frustrated because you're not doing it. The ball kind of it's kind of a ping pong ball that goes from one side to another unless you pick it up and actually do something.

Speaker 1: 14:24

For me, the podcast is a perfect example. All the interviews that I've been doing have been great because they've been planned at a certain time. In the beginning I struggled with the timings because I'm still doing a freelance project, and in the evening I did a podcast. The question, of course, is always do you have enough energy to do these things, and so on. What I've noticed is, when I started doing the podcast, I noticed that it actually gives me a lot of energy. It feeds my, my energy meter to a point where, at right now I'm. I think I do two or three interviews in a week at some point, but I'm not tired. At the end of the interviews I'm actually fulfilled at the end of the at the end of the interviews, actually fulfilled at the end of the interviews. I've had a couple of interviews that I just didn't feel like, wow, it was good or anything like that. Excuse me, I had a lot of amazing interviews.

Speaker 1: 15:30

So what it comes down to, it's something that comes in front of me. And let go back. Yes, of course you plan these and yes, of course there's there's a goal to be be achieved. Of course there's always going to be something that's that's out there that you want to achieve. But the thing is it's not fixed. It's not the only thing that you want to achieve. It's what comes in front of you that tells you, in the end, what the goal is going to look like. So it's good to set something. Absolutely. You shouldn't just go with the flow and wait for everything to happen. No, you should really react on everything that comes in front of you and feel if it's okay, or think or contemplate on it and feel if it's something that you really want to do. If it's something you don't want to do, of course you don't do it. But to me, all the things that have come in front of me turned out to be amazing.

Speaker 1: 16:26

I've had several times where I had a network event that I need to go to. I know, you know you work the whole day, you come home and then you're like event that I need to go to. I know you work the whole day, you come home and then you're like, okay, I'm going to go to this network event. I don't really feel like it. I don't want to move or drive another hour to get there and blah, blah, blah. But when I end up there, every time I have a wonderful time with the people that are there. I always feel fulfilled. So these things come on my path.

Speaker 1: 16:55

It's not that I search for network events. No, no, not at all. Actually. I see something pop up, I say this looks fun, gives me a good feeling. Bam, I invite myself or I subscribe myself or whatever, and I go there and I have a wonderful time myself, or whatever, and I go there and I have a wonderful time. So it's more oriented toward inspired action instead of just taking action, action, action, action, action, because I want to receive that, that, that and that and that's one of the conclusions that I really made is changing your mindset from striving to flow. Is is something that is so fulfilling and has such a beautiful outcome that this is something that I really want to keep on pushing forward as being the step towards more fulfillment, and I still keep up the three pillars that are very important.

Speaker 1: 17:55

To also go towards that more flow is by being radically truthful to yourself, go into deep communication and and enjoy that journey, because every opportunity that comes in front of you, it's a point where you can enjoy it. If you become very much aware of what's happening every day, each moment of the day, you, you enjoy a lot more things. You become a lot more fulfilling and happy because you see the purpose of these things, you see what's going on, you understand that this is for your own good or this is getting you somewhere, even the negative things and let's be very clear there, it's not always you know rainbow and sunshine, but all these things happen to you, um, for you, not to you, but for you so that you can become a better self, better who you are, closer to your true self, and so on. So, yeah, I think it's a beautiful conclusion to put out there.

Speaker 1: 19:01

After six months of doing all these different interviews and knowing that I have another six months of even more interviews coming up, um, I am amazed how this has become such a beautiful flow of, of taking on all these conversations with all these different people, and I can assure you there's there's a lot more uh, great stuff coming your way with the podcast. So so, really, you know, don't, don't forget to subscribe and and give us a five-star review, share, share this with at least one of your friends. And that's what I, what I got for you today. So, yeah, try to orient yourself a little bit more towards flow instead of striving, and remember you set yourself goals. Absolutely right to do that.

Speaker 1: 19:57

It's necessary, it's something, it's a part of the story, absolutely. But if you want to feel more fulfilled, you know, go with the flow a little bit more. Just let things happen. I think you might find it very intriguing and very fulfilling as well. So, yeah, that's what I've got for you today, and I hope you got inspired enough to take a couple of steps based on these conclusions. Have a great one, everybody. Talk to you next time. Bye.