Bernie Borges [00:00:00]:
If you’ve ever said to yourself, I should be happier, I should feel more fulfilled than this, you are not alone and you’re not broken. The truth is, most people look for fulfillment in all the usual places. Their job, a relationship, a fresh start. I know I did. But the real shift doesn’t start out there. It starts inside. Now, if this sounds trite, stay with me, because in this episode, I’m digging into why self discovery is the starting line for a fulfilled life. Not reinvention, but uncovering who you are today.
Bernie Borges [00:00:43]:
I want you to understand why transitions, not necessarily transformations, can trigger the right questions to ask. How to spot misalignment across your life pillars, and how to start building fulfillment rather than chasing fulfillment. If you’re new to the Life Fulfilled podcast, welcome. I’m Bernie Borges, your host and founder of the Fulfilled at Work Academy, and I call myself a fulfillment architect. My purpose in this podcast is to help you unlock fulfillment in your key life pillars. Health, family, fitness, career, relationships, and legacy. And in this episode, I’m exploring a truth that might surprise you. Honestly, it’s not a truth that I ever thought I would uncover, no less produce a podcast on.
Bernie Borges [00:01:34]:
That truth is that fulfillment doesn’t start with doing more or fixing what’s broken. It starts with self discovery. That’s right, self discovery. And that’s what I’m unpacking today. Let me begin with a common mistake, and that is chasing fulfillment. Externally, you see, most people chase fulfillment by going after external achievements, changing their job, their relationships, their routine, their location, even their car. But they often overlook the most important step. As for me, I figured out that fulfillment often gets mistaken as happiness from something that’s external.
Bernie Borges [00:02:19]:
But I figured out that the real missing piece is. Are you ready for this? Clarity? Yes, clarity. Let me explain it with a metaphor. Imagine you wear glasses like I do, and your glasses are fogged. You can see through them, but not perfectly clear because they’re fogged. You tolerate this for a long time, and eventually it’s your normal. Not seeing clearly is your normal. Then one day, someone shows you how to clear the fog in your glasses, and bam, you can see clearly.
Bernie Borges [00:02:58]:
When you experience this clarity, you’re excited and appreciative, and you wonder why you didn’t clear the fog in your glasses sooner. You appreciate the newfound clarity in your glasses, and you’re loving life because you can see clearly now. Like the song now, self discovery gives you this kind of clarity. Self discovery is foundational to understanding who you are at this point in your life. Let me repeat this because I don’t want you to miss it. Self discovery is foundational to understanding what who you are at this point in your life now as in today. Because you may not be the same person you were five or 10 or 20 years ago for any number of reasons. In fact, there’s a good chance you’re not the same person.
Bernie Borges [00:03:53]:
Most of us experience transitions, but if you don’t clear the fog, you walk through life thinking that that you’re the same person that you were at age 21 and now you’re 40 or whatever your age situation is. It’s just what happens. Don’t beat yourself up over it. Clear the fog. So what is self discovery anyway? Self discovery is not reinvention, it’s uncovering. You don’t need to reinvent yourself to feel fulfilled and experience self discovery. And at the risk of oversimplifying it, you just need to understand what matters most to you at this point in your life today, and then do an audit, so to speak, of how your current life aligns with those things that matter most to you. For example, if you’re prioritizing your mental health more than you did in the past, but you’re still in a highly stressful work environment, well, that’s an example of misalignment between something that matters to you and your current reality.
Bernie Borges [00:05:03]:
If that example resonates, I can’t solve it for you in this video. But if you’ve been in denial, you can start by having clarity on this misalignment. You can start by clearing the fog. Then, and only then, you can begin to think about your options to fix this misalignment that you now have clarity on. Is employee turnover quietly draining your bottom line? I’ve been there. I learned the hard way that the cost of replacing just one employee can be as high as two times their annual salary, especially in leadership or technical roles. And if your turnover rate is above your industry’s average, the financial impact is even worse. That’s why we created the Employee Engagement Fund ROI calculator.
Bernie Borges [00:05:54]:
It’s free, and in about one minute, by answering just a few questions, you’ll get a clear view of what turnover is really costing your business and how much you could save by investing in employee engagement and retention strategies. You’ll also get a free cheat sheet with turnover benchmarks by industry and and replacement cost multipliers by job level to validate your numbers and know where you stand among your competitors. The ROI calculator is available at fulfilledatworkacademy.com and it’s linked up in the show notes for this episode. If you want to build a strong case for investing in culture, engagement and retention, this is where you start. Besides, you really should know the cost of turnover in your business and and how you can improve profit when you improve employee engagement. Try the Employee Engagement Fund ROI calculator Today we experience fulfillment when we can better align how we’re living our lives with our values. In other words, those things that matter most to us. But first, you need to have clarity on where you’re misaligned.
Bernie Borges [00:07:05]:
Yes, that’s Clearing the fog Lets talk about life transitions. Have you ever noticed how certain seasons of your life are triggered by significant events or circumstances that may be within your control or may not be within your control? These events create transitions. For example, a big transition might be a career transition, or getting married, or becoming a parent, or becoming an empty nester, as my wife and I have experienced since both of our adult children have long been living their lives on their own and in fact having kids of their own. Another transition can be success. Maybe you experienced success early in your career. Maybe you had a big title and a great income by age 30, and that’s great. But it’s a transition that needs to be reckoned with. How about failure, such as a failed marriage or a failed business venture? Another event can be the loss of a loved one or a diagnosis that rocked your world.
Bernie Borges [00:08:21]:
Life throws transitions at us, and sometimes they happen so gradually that we don’t even realize that we’re transitioning. And then we wake up one day and realize it. The point is that in each case, we need to acknowledge the impact of a transition on our fulfillment. I didn’t do this. I was doing life with the fog that I mentioned earlier. It became my normal. That is, until I gave myself permission to clear the fog and gain the clarity that I needed and deserved. When transitions are pleasant, like financial success, that seems pretty easy to acknowledge, but it still needs alignment with the things that matter most to you.
Bernie Borges [00:09:09]:
Do you know someone who has maybe gained the world but lost their soul? When you experience a difficult transition, the exercise is the same. Ask yourself how it aligns with the things that matter most to you. The magic in this process, and I learned that it is a process, is to gain clarity on the alignment or the misalignment. It’s that clarity that can guide your actions. Another metaphor that comes to mind is that if you’re going to do a drive, a long distance drive, you need to know your destination before you can plan Your route, you know, as you go through this self discovery process, the most important thing is to be honest with yourself. There are no right or wrong answers. Actually, the only wrong answer is the one to the wrong question. The right question to ask is what matters to you today and how these transitions that you’ve experienced align with what matters most to you today.
Bernie Borges [00:10:16]:
Ask the right question and your answer is always the correct answer because you’re asking the right question. I want to talk about the ripple effect of self discovery. You see, your life is not one dimensional. In fact, I suggest that it’s five dimensional. When you gain clarity on where you are aligned between your values and your reality, you can look at it across these five dimensions. So here’s what it might look like in each area of your life. And this is hypothetical. Your health pillar.
Bernie Borges [00:10:51]:
You might listen to your body and your mind with more intention and self care. Your fitness pillar. You might make more time for it or start making time for it. Your career pillar. You might prioritize purpose over prestige. Relationships. You might double down on some relationships and you might discard others legacy. You might pursue what really, really matters to you.
Bernie Borges [00:11:21]:
The biggest takeaway for me in going through this self discovery process is that fulfillment is built, not found. It took me a while to realize this. And when I stop looking for fulfillment, when I stop chasing fulfillment fulfillment, I reframed my whole approach. I started building my own fulfillment. Not that I manufactured it. That’s not what I mean. And not that I experienced or achieved perfection. That’s not at all what I’m saying.
Bernie Borges [00:11:51]:
But I realized that I have more control than I thought when I understood that I can build fulfillment by having clarity about where I need to work harder in each of the five life dimensions. It’s really amazing how powerful this clarity is. Really, really empowering. Again, it’s not about achieving perfection. It’s about knowing where I can move the needle on fulfillment in each of the five dimensions and knowing which ones need the most effort. I’m recording this at the end of 2025. So whether you’re watching or listening to this in late 2025 or early 2020, 2026, or even later in the year. And as a side note, some of my episodes that published two or three, even four years ago still to this day get new listens.
Bernie Borges [00:12:44]:
So I know it’s possible. But I digress. If you happen to watch or listen to this around the beginning of 2026, I want you to take a moment to look at your life through the lens of self discovery. Remember, it’s not about reinvention. It’s about understanding who you are at this point in your life. Today. We all experience seasons, and those seasons can impact what matters most to us. But sometimes the way we live our lives doesn’t adjust to the changes that we make to our values.
Bernie Borges [00:13:21]:
When that misalignment occurs, the best thing that we can do is recognize it. Don’t wear foggy glasses. Take the initiative to gain clarity so that you can discover where you need to make some adjustments to experience the fulfillment that you want and deserve. And if you know me, you know that I have to connect this to the topic of leadership because I believe that we’re all leaders in some area of our lives. You may know that I teach Fulfillment Centric Leadership, which is a structured approach to leading with head and heart in business. And the first step in my program is what I discussed in this episode. It’s a self awareness, self discovery exercise that empowers leaders to lead with head and heart. You can learn more about my Fulfillment Centric Leadership programs at my website, fulfilledatworkacademy.com I’ll leave you with this thought Fulfillment is a performance strategy wherever you need to achieve optimum performance.
Bernie Borges [00:14:29]:
Whether it’s at work, at home, or in the community. Fulfillment is your path to performance optimization. And it begins with self discovery. I’m Bernie Borges, your fulfillment architect. If you enjoyed this video, please like it and subscribe to my channel. Stay fulfilled.
