Valerie Patrick

Since other people's judgment is outside your control, the practical lever is choosing work that matters to you and aligns with your talents. That shift from an external scoreboard to an internal one underpins the assessment and well-being material in the other posts.

Valerie Patrick opens a post with the question "Are you fulfilled?" and answers that fulfillment comes from how you judge your work, while success depends on how others judge it. The part you can control is working on things that matter to you and fit your talents.

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Joy and excitement come from reacting to what's happening around you; fulfillment and satisfaction come from your relationship to what's happening, which is under your control. For Patrick, that makes fulfillment a steadier target than chasing peak moments.

Patrick treats fulfillment as "a place we go when we are living a good life," placing it inside Brown's mapping of 87 feelings across 13 "places we go," and names harmony, gratitude, contentment, and being free of regret as its emotional side.

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They credit the idea to Stephen Covey's term "response-able," which they adopt and connect to fulfillment rather than productivity alone.

In a post on cognition and fulfillment, Patrick explains that being response-able means determining your response to a stimulus by thinking before you act. They present that pause as a key aspect of fulfillment.

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Covey's The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People supplies "response-able" and "sharpen the saw"; Brené Brown's Atlas of the Heart supplies the emotional vocabulary. Patrick's own history grounds the borrowing.

Patrick says they read the Covey book more than 30 years ago and that it still informs how they live. They recall attending a Covey seminar in Pittsburgh in the late 1990s, where Covey gave them an encouraging smile while walking past their seat.

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SPICE follows Covey's four renewal areas, making renewal the maintenance side of fulfillment rather than a separate topic.

One post names SPICE and points readers to Patrick's book through a shortened link rather than giving the title in the post text. The post describes the framework through Covey's four areas.

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Patrick says it includes recommendations for improving fulfillment, making the instrument the practical takeaway of the series and the destination for readers ready to act on the ideas.

Posts on a Covey reflection, talents, and Brené Brown's feelings all close with the same invitation and link to the assessment.

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It’s a useful starting point for newcomers: they describe being “response-able” as choosing a response after thinking rather than reacting automatically.

Patrick links good thinking to fulfillment and describes response-ability as determining one’s response to a stimulus.

• They connect the idea to Stephen R.
• Covey’s work and offer an assessment based on the Fulfilled Life Scale.

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For a leadership development session on pausing before responding, this could anchor a discussion. Ask Patrick how they would turn the idea into a practical exercise for workplace situations.

It introduces their distinction between external judgments of success and a person’s own judgment of whether their work matters.

Patrick writes that fulfillment comes from how people judge their work, while success reflects how others judge it. They say people can work on things that matter to them and align with their talents, and point readers to an assessment with recommendations.

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This could suit a workplace session about connecting people’s talents and priorities to their contributions. Ask Patrick how they measure talent alignment and who the workshop is intended for.

It gives newcomers a concrete example of how they use a vocabulary of feelings to explain well-being.

Drawing on Brené Brown’s Atlas of the Heart, Patrick names harmony, gratitude, and contentment, and says fulfillment involves being free of regret. They link these emotional aspects with cognitive aspects of fulfillment and the Fulfilled Life Scale assessment.

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For a leadership or well-being event, this could prompt discussion about how people describe their experience of work. Ask Patrick whether the session is educational or assesses participants, and what the assessment involves.

It’s a helpful starting point for readers interested in the origins of their approach.

Patrick recalls reading Stephen R.

• Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and attending one of Covey’s seminars in Pittsburgh in the late 1990s.
• They say Covey’s “sharpen the saw” idea—self-renewal across physical, emotional/social, mental, and spiritual areas—inspired their SPICE well-being assessment, which appears in their book.

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This could frame a session around self-renewal as part of fulfillment. Ask Patrick for the framework’s components and a sample activity before commissioning the session.

It helps newcomers see that their focus is on a person’s relationship to events, not just an immediate reaction.

Citing Brené Brown’s Atlas of the Heart, Patrick contrasts low-arousal positive emotions such as satisfaction and fulfillment with high-arousal emotions such as joy and excitement. They say joy and excitement arise from reactions to what is happening, while satisfaction and fulfillment come from one’s relationship to what is happening.

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This distinction could support a discussion about sustained well-being rather than short-lived enthusiasm. Ask Patrick how they apply it to workplace examples.

Because you cannot control other people's judgment, the practical lever is choosing work that matters to you and fits your talents. The argument is their entry point: one post states it plainly, and the same framing underpins the well-being and assessment material in the other posts.

Patrick pairs a contrast (fulfillment versus success) with a controllable action (choose work aligned with your talents), ending with something readers can act on rather than a definition to admire.

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A keynote or workshop can open with this reframe, giving a leadership audience a way to measure fulfillment internally before introducing any tool or assessment. It suits groups that track achievement only through external metrics.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2

One post distinguishes satisfaction and fulfillment from joy and excitement, calling the first pair low-arousal positive emotions that come from your relationship to what is happening—which is under your control—and the second a reaction to events around you.

Patrick draws on a distinction from Brené Brown's research to sort what a person can influence from what simply happens to them.

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Useful for a session on role design or engagement: the argument gives managers a reason to look at whether people's actual work uses their strengths, not just whether targets were met.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2

The assessment anchors posts on different sub-topics: cognition, well-being, feelings, and talents.

Each post takes one sub-topic, connects it to a dimension of fulfillment, then routes readers to the same assessment link and a consistent set of hashtags. The repetition makes the assessment the series' practical takeaway.

The posts give no question count, scoring method, or validation data for the assessment. Ask for the instrument and its validation details before building a session around it.

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A workshop can use the free assessment as pre-session diagnostic and discussion material, with the keynote or facilitation interpreting the results. Confirm its current availability and content before offering it to an audience.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2 · Source 3 · Source 4 · Source 5

The SPICE framing follows Covey's four renewal areas: physical, emotional/social, mental, and spiritual.

Only one post names SPICE, and refers to the book through a shortened link rather than by title. Ask for the book title and the framework's full treatment before featuring it.

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Offers a concrete hook for well-being programming: the four renewal areas can structure a workshop segment or breakout exercise. Check the underlying book before citing it as a resource for participants.

Examples: Source 1

Personal history grounds the borrowing: Patrick says they read the Covey book over 30 years ago and attended a Covey seminar in Pittsburgh in the late 1990s, recalling a moment from it in detail.

The posts open with a remembered or quoted framework, extract a single concept, connect it to a dimension of fulfillment, and close with the assessment link.

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Works well for audiences already familiar with Covey or Brown, since the talk can move straight to the reinterpretation rather than teaching the source material from scratch.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2 · Source 3

The emotional side includes harmony, gratitude, contentment, and freedom from regret; one post maps Brown's 87 feelings across 13 "places we go" onto fulfillment as "a place we go when we are living a good life." The cognitive side is captured by "good thinking"—determining your response after a stimulus and before reacting, illustrated with Covey's term "response-able."

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Gives a modular structure for a workshop or keynote series: an emotional-vocabulary segment, a decision-and-response segment, and a talents segment can be combined or run alone depending on the client's time.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2 · Source 3

They credit specific Covey concepts as shaping their own tools: “sharpen the saw,” described as self-renewal across physical, emotional/social, mental and spiritual areas, inspired the SPICE well-being assessment in their book; “response-able” thinking is tied to the cognitive side of fulfillment.

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One post uses Brown's map of 87 feelings grouped into 13 “places we go” to argue that a shared emotional vocabulary helps people process feelings, and places fulfillment among those places. Another draws on Brown's distinction between low-arousal positive emotions such as satisfaction and fulfillment and high-arousal ones such as joy and excitement, arguing that fulfillment comes from your relationship to events rather than your reaction to them.

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The post does not name the book in prose. Ask Patrick to confirm the attribution.

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One post argues that the finish line keeps moving for people who believe happiness lies in the next achievement; another says that when a child's achievements become a parent's scorecard, families carry pressure that rarely leads to fulfillment. The theme of outward success failing to produce lasting satisfaction is close to Valerie Patrick's distinction between success and fulfillment.

Blanchford applies the idea mainly to parenting and the achievement treadmill, without building a named assessment or well-being framework. Valerie Patrick ties the theme to talents, emotional vocabulary and a free Fulfilled Life Scale assessment.

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Wagner and Valerie Patrick both use reflective, question-led posts to separate external markers such as promotions and paychecks from a more durable sense of fulfillment.

Wagner focuses on retirement planning and designing purpose in later life, often through lists and direct questions to the reader. Valerie Patrick's posts stay closer to fulfillment as a skill, with emotional and cognitive dimensions and a repeatable assessment.

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That echoes Valerie Patrick's contrast between how others judge your work and how you judge it.

Desrochers tells the story through personal career-change narratives and lessons learned, aimed at mid-career professionals considering a change. Valerie Patrick more often translates established frameworks into fulfillment language and points readers to an assessment rather than a career-change story.

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The available posts take the same core argument as Valerie Patrick—that fulfillment is not the next achievement—and bring it into family life: a child's achievements becoming a parent's scorecard, and the treadmill of promotions, pay, and relationships that never settles. That framing suits a keynote for parents, a session on work-life expectations, or a client seeking a reflective personal story rather than a framework.

The available material offers no assessment, named well-being model, or structured exercise.

• A client that wants participants to leave with a diagnostic, shared vocabulary, or repeatable self-check would need to supply all three.
• Patrick's posts offer the Fulfilled Life Scale assessment and the physical, emotional and social, mental, and spiritual self-renewal areas; Blanchford's offer the argument and family angle.
• Only two posts were available.
• Ask for examples of delivery style and format, and confirm availability.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2

One available post centers on a single question: what will a great Tuesday look like?

• It argues that retirement is lived in ordinary days, not in a financial projection.
• The other is a personal retrospective on confusing achievement with fulfillment, ending with alignment between work and values.
• That combination fits a retirement-planning firm, an alumni or pre-retirement program, or a session on purpose after work, where the client wants lived reflection more than workplace instruction.

This is narrative and reflection rather than a program a facilitator can run.

• The available posts offer no diagnostic, named framework, or participant asset, so the client would have to build the exercises.
• Patrick's workplace framing—controllable levers and a testable assessment—is lost.
• Only two posts were available; ask for cadence and delivery-style examples, and confirm commercial terms.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2

The available posts describe a move out of a successful career that felt empty, identify an audience of mid-career professionals roughly 30 to 50, and describe a podcast and coaching practice for people stuck in a job they think they should love.

• That suits a breakout on mid-career transition, a coaching component, or an audience of individual professionals.
• The self-described human-resources background and training work make this the closer match when the client wants practitioner experience with career transition.

The available posts are transformation stories rather than teaching from a documented framework.

• They offer no assessment, published model, or reusable exercise, so a client seeking a structured fulfillment program would have to supply one.
• Patrick's posts tie each idea to an audience-facing diagnostic and widely recognized sources; Desrochers' tie the argument to a personal narrative.
• Details such as the number of people trained, the podcast, and the awards come from the posts themselves.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2