The Fulfillment Formula
Living in your values plus working in your strengths plus a high level of awareness — then the good things just happen.
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~ongoing to results
- Steps
- 4
- Confidence
- 85%
Darius's Fulfillment Formula, credited in part to Marco Gargenta of PlusPlus, has three inputs: are you living in your values, are you working in your strengths, and are you doing it with a high level of awareness. Values you discover and then check yourself against regularly, using friction as the alarm — the moment you feel icky, you're rubbing against a value. Strengths he assesses with StrengthsFinder and then asks the honest question of whether you're actually living in them. Awareness he breaks into four practices: mindfulness, exercise, diet, and sleep — treating your body like a temple. His claim is that if you pay attention to those things, the good things just happen. He pairs it with ikigai: find the cross-section between what you love to do and what people will pay you for, and go all in.
Origin
Darius lost his grandmother at 14, his father to lung cancer at 22 (his mother diagnosed with cancer right after), which taught him young that life is short and that he didn't want to work his ass off for 40 years and be done. Later he checked every entrepreneurial box — built the nine-figure company, won the Stevie and ABA awards, ranked number nine highest-rated CEO in America — and found it didn't feel any different. Sitting in his car on January 9th after another round of layoffs and yet another ruined Christmas, his body threw up the words 'I'm going to quit'. He resigned in November 2019 at 40, having realized his core values weren't aligned with his industry. The framework, refined in the Stagen conscious-leadership program and credited partly to Marco Gargenta, is his answer to that.
Core principles
- 01Fulfillment comes from three things: living in your values, working in your strengths, and doing it with a high level of awareness.
- 02Friction is the signal — the minute you feel icky, you're rubbing up against your values.
- 03Awareness has four components: mindfulness, exercise, diet, and sleep.
- 04Personal values can be slightly aspirational — some you fight for.
- 05Do the three things consistently and the good outcomes take care of themselves.
How to run it
- 1
Get clear on your values and watch for friction
Define your personal values, write them down, and look at them on a regular basis. Then use discomfort as the detector — the minute you feel icky or feel friction in your life, you're rubbing up against a value.
Pro tip Some values will be aspirational. Darius fights for happiness and balance; curiosity, passion and creativity come naturally.
Watch out Being the person who teaches values is no guarantee you've done your own — Darius was writing the core values book before he'd defined his personal set.
- 2
Work in your strengths
Identify your talents — Darius uses and teaches StrengthsFinder — then ask honestly whether you're actually living and working in them, and measure yourself against it.
Watch out Checking every external achievement box while working outside your strengths produces the 'this doesn't feel any different' result.
- 3
Raise your level of awareness
Audit the four inputs to awareness: do you have a mindfulness practice, are you exercising, are you eating a good diet consistently, and are you sleeping well?
Pro tip Treat your body like a temple — awareness is physical infrastructure, not just a mental posture.
Watch out Darius's father was a workaholic who smoked heavily, was diagnosed with MS at 18 and died of lung cancer at 60 — the cost of ignoring this input compounds invisibly.
- 4
Aim at the ikigai cross-section
Find the intersection between what you love to do and what people will pay you for, and go all in on it, continually asking how you can do more of that.
In the wild
Darius set a goal in 2010, while failing, to build a $100 million company off a $2 million base. Five years later he'd done it — plus Stevie and ABA awards, a private equity business buying up companies, and a number nine Glassdoor CEO ranking in America.
→ His verdict: 'I did it all and I'm like, it just doesn't feel any different.' The external scoreboard didn't move fulfillment at all.
After his seventh round of layoffs in a cyclical industry, Darius realized he was a person who pours into people and would recruit someone for three years, then tell them two years later it didn't work out. Sitting in his car on January 9th, his body produced the words 'I'm going to quit' before his mind did.
→ He resigned in November 2019 at 40 — not because of the company, but because his core values weren't aligned with the industry.
Common mistakes
Chasing boxes instead of alignment
Building the nine-figure company, winning the awards, and getting written up in Entrepreneur can all land at once and change nothing, because none of them are inputs to the formula.
Ignoring the friction signal
Friction is data about a value violation. Darius spent five years in what he calls entrepreneurial purgatory refusing to quit a broken space — grit past a point, on a broken foundation, is just anguish.
Treating awareness as optional
Mindfulness, exercise, diet and sleep are the four inputs to the awareness leg. Skip them and the other two legs can't be perceived accurately — you won't even notice you're out of your values.
Is it for you?
Best for
Founders and operators who are succeeding on paper and quietly unfulfilled.
Not ideal for
Anyone looking for a tactical performance system — this is a diagnostic for alignment, not a productivity method.
From the transcript
“Here's something I tell everybody and I call it my fulfillment formula.”
“The minute you ever feel icky or like friction in your life, it's you're rubbing up against your values. So, get clear on what your…”
“Fulfillment comes through living in my values, working in my strengths, and doing it with a high level of awareness.”
“Am I being mindful? Do I have a mindfulness practice? Am I exercising? Am I dieting consistently, eating a good diet? Am I sleeping well?”
“There's a word in Japanese called ikigai... it's really finding that cross-section between what do you love to do and what people will pay you…”
From the episode
Darius Mirshahzadeh: The Core Value Equation
Darius Mirshahzadeh