Fulfillment Maxxing: Why Offline Is The New Online & How to Feel Alive Again

**Rich Roll** (0:00)
Eating well rarely falls apart because of one big failure. It's the daily question that wears you down, like, what am I actually gonna make tonight? What's in the fridge? And it's exactly why we built the Plant Power Meal Planner. It's a personalized plant-based meal planning program that matches you with recipes based on your taste, your allergies, your cooking skills, and how much time you actually have. You build, through this program, a balanced, nutrient-dense plan for your entire household in a few minutes. Then, it generates a grocery list for you with one click that plugs right into our delivery partners. All the recipes in the program are built by dietitians with culinary training. Plus, you get your own food coach to help you problem-solve along the way. It's kind of an amazing thing. For listeners of the show, all you special people, we're offering an exclusive $20 off, an annual subscription right now. To get it, go to meals.richroll.com, take your quick personalization quiz, and enter promo code Rich Roll 20 at checkout.
We seem to be suffering from a fatal case of self-optimization obsession. Everywhere you look, you see it. They enhance games, looks maxing, your morning protocol. We are in this cycle of surface-level gratification maxing. And what we should be doing is fulfillment maxing.
I want to start by talking about what's happening in modern society right now. It's basically just hard to be alive. We're all daunted by our responsibilities, just getting through the day, meeting our obligations. This is driving a sense of malaise and anxiety that I think is pervasive. Meanwhile, we're being sold this book of lies that all of the happiness and fulfillment and the lasting satisfaction that we're seeking is on the other side of the next purchase, the next comfort that is just outside of our reach, the next luxury good, the next premium experience, all of which, of course, promises to fill that hole in our spirit. And we're happy to be happy consumers and chase those things, the modern conveniences, thinking that if we can make our life a little bit more comfortable, a little bit more convenient by dint of mobile apps or premium goods, that finally we will feel a sense of satisfaction and lasting happiness. Of course, this never works. At the same time, we're also deluded that the hyper-connected world that we live in is going to deliver a sense of connection. We've all experienced that it's quite the opposite. The more tethered to our devices we are, the more engaged in our doom-scrolling that we become, the more lonely, alienated, and isolated we feel. And yet we continue to return to this well because these devices are very scientifically designed to light up our dopamine sensors and activate an addictive compulsive response that keeps us online so that our technological overlords can continue to profit off of farming our data in the growing attention economy. Meanwhile, there's a widening of the socio-economic gap, meaning that opportunities are more scarce than they have been in the past. And then of course, our fears are impulsed by our social media feeds that then lead us to even trust our relationships less, drive us further apart as this increasing divide and division around our various opinions continues to escalate and metastasize. While third spaces are continuing to disappear, meaning that not only do we not know our neighbors anymore, we actually don't really want to. And so within that, our community-oriented spirit that has always been part and parcel of the American experiment seems to be degrading quite precipitously. And with that, we become more and more focused on ourselves. What's important is what I want and how to get it. And this self-obsession, well, packaged in a way that makes us feel like pursuing it is going to purchase the happiness, the real thing that we want, the meaning, the satisfaction, the sense of our lives holding meaning.
All of this self-obsession is actually antagonizing that goal, the real goal, finding true meaning and lasting happiness and satisfaction. And the bottom line is that all of this self-optimization, this enhancement maxing, all of this looks maxing, these things are proxies for our self-obsession, these indulgences of self-gratification that operate only on a surface level. We tell ourselves that these are the things that are going to move our lives towards the things that we might only unconsciously be aware that we actually want, which is this sense that we matter, my life has meaning, I have purpose, I have direction.
But the thing is, all of those are oriented around what Arthur Brooks calls the three Ps. We make these decisions and we engage in these behaviors because we're on the chase for either power, property, or prestige. These material pursuits that we are convinced, even though we know better, are going to get us the happiness and the satisfaction and the fulfillment that we want. Because once we get them, then we will feel like we have transcended uncertainty, the need for constant work, and pain. These are the three truths that Phil Stutz talks about. Unfortunately, it never works. We know this. We keep doing it anyway. What does actually work is disabusing ourselves of this delusion that the pursuit of these three Ps is going to get us to the place that we really want to be. The first thing we need to do is to realize that all of this me, me, me is antagonizing our goal. And what we need to do is pursue another P, and that P is purpose.