It has been one year since I chose to spend the month of February pausing to reflect on my daily life, writing of the things I pondered and discovered there.

Not much has changed for me in the year:

Same job, same house, same messy and hyper puppy, same struggles, same relationship status, same temptations.

Measuring my life by milestones, I feel unaccomplished, unacceptable, and slowly heading nowhere except closer to my inevitable end.

And I often still contemplate the weight of my own life and my actions within it.

Am I living my fullest life?

Yet, maybe, this question that has haunted me and hounded me for so long is not entirely fair, and while I have been searching so long for its answer, perhaps I could have been considering the question itself.

After all, how do we define “full?”

And I think that could be the root of this whole thing.

My fullest life is not in an action, a career, a move, an award, a credit, a lifestyle, a… (so many other things I’ve added to this list over the years).

My fullest life is found simply by living by my values; living led by love rather than motivated by fear.

For example, maybe (read: truly) my current job, although I often do enjoy it, is not what I would consider my life passion and maybe it’s not the thing I thought I’d be doing when I was 8-years-old and dreaming.

But how many people, in the world we live in, with its demands and restrictions and realities, can honestly say that’s true for them?

If I measure the fullness of my life by what my job is—or, rather, what my job is not—I am tempted to feel empty (and totally unrecognizing of the joy that could be found there).

But… measure it by the way I show up, work according to my character and values, allow my truest design to fit and fill the space I inhabit…

How am I not full?

A few years ago, I was journaling of this very thing: this idea of fullness that has plagued me and has gotten me over-spending and over-reaching and dissatisfied and desperate.

These words came to me then, and I wrote them hastily, and I’ve often forgotten and re-remembered them, but the truth in them always finds me where I am (and that’s hope, right?):

Living your fullest life starts simply by shedding the lie that you are empty.