Living a Life of Contentment and Happiness
Where Are You?
Are you happy?
Are you content?
If asked to define these words, would you know the difference? Or are they terms you use interchangeably? Sometimes, you have everything you need to find happiness, but you aren’t happy. Sometimes, you struggle to find contentment in your life. Life can be chaotic, it can be depressing, and sometimes it’s hard to feel happy and content.
Happiness Versus Contentment
Happiness is the feeling of pleasure or a state of happiness, but contentment is a state of satisfaction or happiness. So, you can see based on their definitions that they are intrinsically linked, but it would not be fair to say they are interchangeable terms.
Contentment is peace and happiness is joy. Happiness ebbs and flows, it’s temporary. Whereas contentment is a big picture emotion. It’s a long-term goal you should chase.
Emotions fluctuate. That is a fact of life. There are days where you will experience a range of emotions, and it can feel overwhelming. You can be content with your life and still experience negative emotions like grief or sadness. Contentment is less emotion and a state of being.
Your life may have turned out differently than you expected, but you can still be content. Let’s be honest, life turns out differently for most people.
So, what does it really mean to be content? The best way to describe it would be to say that contentment means an overall sense of peace with your life.
The opposite of happy is sad and the opposite of content is discontent. If you have a restlessness, a sense of unhappiness, or there’s something you want to change, then you might be in a state of discontent.
If you overthink everything, constantly compare yourself to others, and listen to your inner critic, then you might be in a state of discontent. If you lash out at the people around you because they don’t make you happier, then you might be in a state of discontent.
Ultimately, there is only one person with a responsibility to your contentment and that is you.
The Importance Of Contentment
Contentment isn’t the fulfillment of the things you want. Contentment is the acceptance of how things are.
We only get one opportunity to live this life. You don’t get a do-over, you can’t enter a cheat code to be immortal. You get what you get and it’s done. You will only live this stage of your life once. You will be this age once.
If you look back on different parts of your life, are there areas where you see how discontent you were? Does it make you think about the time you wasted being miserable? Because life is way too short to sit with negative emotions.
You want to be content, you want to enjoy happiness. You want to practice gratitude, experience joy, and soak up all the love you possibly can.
It’s a lot harder to be positive than it is to be negative. For a lot of us, our thoughts quickly turn negative. It’s natural to doubt yourself, but you can’t dwell on it. You have to make a conscious decision to be more positive.
Happiness is a choice, but it’s certainly easier for some people to choose than others. Mental illness doesn’t care about socioeconomic status, but at the same point, someone with more money can afford better care.
So, there are all kinds of issues, situations, events, and health problems that can contribute to a lack of happiness. It’s still a choice, but it would be like asking someone with $10 to their name whether they would like a $1 salad for dinner or a $10 plate of spaghetti. It’s hard work. But you don’t have to be happy to be content. That’s what is truly important to understand because freeing yourself from the idea that everything hinges on happiness, will be a key step in finding contentment.
3 Major Benefits Of Contentment
Resilience
Resilience might be the latest buzzword, but it is necessary to success. Resilience comes with the ability to manage stressors, to pick yourself back up, and to keep going in the face of great adversity.
Contentment breeds resilience. Understanding that things are tough but knowing you will get through… that’s everything when you’re dealing with stress and trauma.
Relaxation
When you always want, you put your nervous system under extreme pressure. Your cortisol levels spike and that has a serious impact on your overall health and wellness.
Chronic stress slows digestion, spikes blood sugar, causes brain fog, upsets your sleep pattern, and can damage your heart health. Finding contentment helps you relax and find relief from your stress levels.
Acceptance
Contentment comes from self-acceptance and self-acceptance fuels contentment. They have a beautiful, working relationship. Beyond self-acceptance, though, contentment breeds acceptance of others as well. You become a more empathetic person because you start to see things from others’ perspectives.
19 Steps To Achieve Life Contentment
You can’t choose contentment like you can happiness, but there are plenty of steps you can take to boost your happiness and engender contentment.
Practice Gratitude
How could this build contentment? Practicing gratitude forces you to shift your focus to the positive things in your life. With you more focused on all that positivity, there’s less space for negativity to creep in. Practicing gratitude is extremely simple, you can start by writing three things you’re grateful for in a journal each night.
Money Management
Money cannot buy you happiness but having enough money can mitigate a lot of the circumstances that drive our misery. Financial stress directly contributes to stress and a range of mental health issues (https://www.helpguide.org/articles/stress/coping-with-financial-stress.htm).
Your money is limited so you need to manage what comes in. You need to decide how to spend, where to save, how best to budget. It won’t change the amount of money you have coming in, but it should help you feel more in control of your budget.
Having a greater sense of control will help limit some of the stress from financial difficulties. This is something that will directly contribute to your happiness, but more importantly, helps you build up to contentment.
Evaluate Choices
You are faced with hundreds of choices daily. Some of them are second nature (brushing your teeth), some require a bit more attention (what to make for dinner), and others have long-lasting impacts (ending your marriage). You won’t make the right choice every time.
You might not even make good choices every time. That’s the inevitability of being human. However, as long as you evaluate your choices through the lens of happiness and contentment, you should get better at making good choices.
Ending a marriage is a scary decision, it will have long-reaching effects, but if that will make you happy, it’s the right decision. That doesn’t mean it won’t hurt like hell, but that is only temporary.
Set Goals
It’s much easier to find contentment in life when you have a purpose you’re pursuing and goals you are chasing. If you don’t have any ambition or motivation, you won’t be happy or content. Your dreams are what give you hope.
Everyone needs some hope. Your dreams shouldn’t stay dreams, not when plenty of those dreams can become a reality. Take your dreams, break them down into goals, and make them your reality.
Set Routines
The beauty of routines is they provide your brain with the opportunity to slide into autopilot. This means your brainpower can be used elsewhere. Routines are a healthy habit you can use to build happiness and contentment. How? By making good choices and managing your time. This is another handy tool that helps you manage stress, which has a natural impact on your contentment levels.
Practice Self-Care
There is nothing selfish about practicing self-care. If your cup isn’t full, then you can’t pour yourself into others. If you want to be happy, if you want to find contentment, then you must look after yourself properly.
Be Kind
When you have a choice, choose kindness. Be kind to others and be kind to yourself. We don’t have a lot of control over the things that happen in life, but when you do have a choice, you should take the high road. Just because someone else isn’t kind to you, doesn’t mean you have to respond the same way. You can build bridges by being kind and guess what, you will feel a lot better for it.
Be An Active Listener
We are the most connected we have ever been as a species. Today, you can strike up a conversation with someone across the world as though they were next door. That being said, are you an active listener?
Conversation is a two-way street. You don’t need to spend entire chats coming up with your response, sometimes it’s enough to just provide an ear. If you want to find contentment, you will learn to understand before you worry about being understood.
Let Others Know You Care
The more love you give, the more you tend to get back. Not that that should be your only motivation to let others know you care. But it’s worth making sure that the people you care about know exactly how much you love and appreciate them.
If you feel it, then say it! That’s a valuable tool in the contentment arsenal. There’s nothing better for happiness and contentment than knowing others have your back.
A Hobby
Believe it or not, something as simple as a hobby can do a lot for your overall sense of contentment with life. Whether it’s playing the piano for an hour each day or gardening under the warmth of a summer evening.
We all need an outlet, we all need activities that lift our spirits. Hobbies help you relax, reducing cortisol levels to help you manage stress and its related illnesses (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2863117/).
Learn, Learn Learn
Your desire to learn shouldn’t end with your formal schooling. If you don’t particularly have a desire to learn, then you might want to consider what types of topics or subjects do interest you. That’s a good place to start your learning journey. The human mind wants regular stimulation and it’s up to you to pursue knowledge to sate it. You might just find you feel happier and more content with life when you go out of your way to learn, learn, learn.
Let Go Of Perfectionism
Do you find yourself constantly striving for perfection? Stop. There is no such thing as perfection and by chasing it, you are feeding discontent in your life. You can’t achieve perfection so by constantly striving for it, you’re telling yourself you will never be good enough. You are already good enough. You don’t need to exhaust yourself trying to be something nobody is.
Adopt A Growth Mindset
What type of mindset do you have right now? Do you have a fixed or growth mindset? Do you believe in abundance or scarcity? With a growth mindset, you are prepared to succeed. You recognize that there is enough for everyone so, when someone achieves something, you celebrate alongside them.
A fixed mindset is convinced that everything is scarce. There aren’t enough promotions, there isn’t enough money so, you feel the need to hoard. When someone achieves or succeeds it feels like a direct threat to your own success. It isn’t!
One of the key aspects of a growth mindset is the belief that you can learn new skills and improve on yourself. Whereas a fixed mindset will convince you that you will never move beyond where you are right now and that you can’t improve, grow, or evolve. You can see why the former contribute to contentment while the latter steals it away.
Get To Know Your Values
One of the key aspects of contentment is keeping yourself grounded. Do you know the best way to ensure you remain grounded? Get to know your core values. Your core values will serve as your north star.
They are the guide by which you should make all of your life’s decisions. As long as you remain true to those values, you will remain on the right path. However, it’s important to note that values do shift and change with time.
Your core values at 20 will not be the same as they are at 30 and those won’t be the same you hold at 40. That’s a natural change as your perspective on life, yourself, and the world shifts. So, if you make decisions that align with your values, but things aren’t going well… you might need to revisit your core values.
Journal
Journaling is an excellent exercise for a variety of reasons. It’s a private place to vent, to work through your emotions, and to process all kinds of feelings and events. That being said, it’s also an excellent exercise to achieve contentment.
Having an outlet where you can process your thoughts and process emotions is a useful tool to reach contentment. It’s also a great way to recognize destructive patterns, brainstorm, reflect, and ultimately, improve your life.
Build Patience
Sometimes the only thing you can do in life is wait. Patience is a virtue and luckily, it’s one that you can build with a bit of practice. In doing so, you will learn to enjoy the present more. There is nothing better for contentment than enjoying the moment.
Control Your Attitude
Someone who lacks contentment gets trapped in the trap of when this happens, I’ll feel better. You have to take control of that and adjust your attitude. Your happiness should never be reliant on achieving certain goals, reaching certain milestones, or attaining certain material possessions.
It’s good to set goals and achieve them, but your happiness shouldn’t hinge on them. You can decide to be happy and just be happy. When you do this, it helps you engender contentment.
Break Bad Habits
Retail therapy has long been joked about in books, movies, and TV shows. It does make you feel better. Unfortunately, that feeling is only temporary. Bad habits are damaging to your long-term health and happiness.
Whether it’s buying a new car just because, replacing the entirety of your wardrobe, or drinking two bottles of wine. We are far too comfortable spending as a way to satisfy discontent.
Material possessions will not truly satisfy your desires.
Substance abuse will provide you with temporary relief and a distraction from your problems, but it won’t last long.
Getting home from work, sitting on the couch, and eating a pint of ice cream might provide you with comfort at the moment. But it won’t take long before you feel guilty about it and beat yourself up over it.
Your bad habits fuel discontent and by breaking those bad habits and addressing those issues, you can embrace contentment instead.
Live For Yourself
Probably the most important step is to always be sure you are living for yourself, specifically that you are living your own life, not the version someone else has programmed for you. To live authenitcally is one of the most important rsponsibilities each of us has to ourselves.
It is very difficult to feel content while you are living someone else’s version of your life.
5 Signs You Are NOT Living An Authentic Life
* You feel disconnected from your life
* You don’t feel fulfilled or generally satisfied
* You are not thriving
* You know something is missing
* You feel resentful about the life you are living
* There is a deep longing inside of you, but you can’t quite put your finger on what that is
* You are not happy or content with your life
* You don’t love your life
If any of the above apply to you, it is time for some serious soul searching.
15 Obstacles Between You And Contentment
Since there are steps, you can take to promote contentment, it should come as no surprise there are obstacles in your way. Think of it as spring cleaning… focused solely on the ‘junk drawers’ hiding all over your home.
Overthinking
This is probably one of the biggest reasons for discontent and it’s an easy trap to fall into. We get trapped thinking big thoughts that fuel our negativity and fail to drown out the inner critic. We take things too personally, we let it bash our confidence, and it’s an easy way to make a mountain out of a molehill.
Comparisons
Do you compare your car to your sibling’s? Or your neighbors? Do you look at your fellow majors and wonder how they got the jobs they did? If you constantly compare yourself and your things to what other people have, you will never be content. By constantly comparing yourself to everyone else, the only thing you do is ensure that what you have will never feel enough.
There’s one big thing people tend to do when they make comparisons. They compare the breadth of their life to the highlights of someone else’s life. You take the warts and all of your existence and you put it up against the best someone else has had. That doesn’t seem like a fair fight, does it?
You Listen To Your Inner Critic
There is no harsher voice in your life than your inner critic. We are guilty of thinking things that we would never say aloud. Certainly, we think things about ourselves that we would never dare say to someone we love. Your inner critic will tear you down in the blink of an eye if you let it. The best thing you can do is silence it with a positive thought when you notice it taking over.
You Take Everything Personally
This, like overthinking, stems from excessive worry and your inner critic. Someone makes an offhand comment and everything works together to blow it out of proportion and make it about you. Your boss made a request at this morning’s meeting and by lunch, you’re convinced it was about you.
A co-worker sent an email to the office and your inner critic prompts you to panic thinking they’re passive-aggressively taking you on. We do this type of thing every single day, which is why it’s such a detrimental obstacle standing between you and contentment.
The Little Things
Have you ever heard someone say something along the lines of “it’s ruining my happiness”? Let me let you in on a secret – you shouldn’t give anybody or anything the power to ruin your happiness. The only person in control of it is you.
It isn’t just people, it’s silly things like traffic, a line at the coffee shop, an out-of-stock product at the supermarket. They’re all inconveniences, yes, but they don’t need to ruin your day. They certainly don’t need to ruin your happiness. Yet, we often allow these little things to get us down. One setback shouldn’t be enough to derail your day.
Reacting Over Responding
This is something we are all guilty of because it’s incredibly easy to do. Something happens, you are mad, and rather than responding you immediately react with your emotions. It isn’t until later you consider whether your emotional reaction was accurate.
For example, you’re sharing breakfast with the family and your partner makes a suggestion. You mishear or misunderstand their meaning and you snap back at them. If they don’t have the presence of mind to respond to you rather than reacting, it could blow up into a whole thing. Either way, by reacting you have essentially complicated your day unnecessarily.
No Priorities
Life can be chaotic at times, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t plan ahead. It doesn’t matter how many people brag about their incredible multi-tasking skills. You should know they’re lying because studies have shown that multi-tasking is a lie (https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/creativity-without-borders/201405/the-myth-multitasking). Your brain doesn’t have the power to switch between tasks and refocus properly before you jump to the next thing. So, forget multitasking, focus on setting priorities, and work through things methodically.
Procrastination
Procrastination gets us all at some point. However, it will be so much worse if you don’t do the previous step of clarifying your priorities. So, you put everything off and you procrastinate. Then, the last minute arrives and you rush around trying to get things done. Whether you get it done or not, you subjected yourself to high levels of stress.
You did it to yourself, but you didn’t need to. While some people thrive under pressure, nobody performs well under immense stress. How could you possibly feel happy with that? How could you possibly be content with life when you constantly face a five-alarm situation every week.
A Lack Of Self-Confidence
A lack of self-confidence is truly the enemy of contentment. A lack of self-confidence keeps you trapped in your comfort zone and that holds you back. You live in fear rather than living in
No Personal Boundaries
There is only one person responsible for your feelings, thoughts, and actions. It’s you. You can’t control how anyone else responds. You can’t control how anyone else behaves or thinks. You can control your behavior.
Part of that is drawing a line between you and others. What are you willing to accept from others? How much time can you really spare? If you are a people pleaser, there’s a good chance you would rather run yourself ragged helping others out rather than say no.
It won’t make people like you more, but it will signal to others they can take advantage of you. You will never be content with life if you put everyone else before yourself.
A Lack Of Motivation
Contentment is a good goal for all of us to set, but it isn’t the only goal you should be striving for. All of your goals can and should play a part in your journey to achieve contentment. Think of every goal as a puzzle piece or a building block. Eventually, it will all click into place and feed into further contentment. This is why motivation is crucial.
Everyone needs something to be passionate about. Everyone needs something to give them purpose. You need a reason to get out of bed every morning. If motivation is something that you struggle with, you can build habits and learn new skills to build them.
You’re Lost In The Past
There are plenty of lessons you can find in your past. There are benefits to self-reflection and, it is an important part of our evolution as humans. That being said, if you are always looking back to your past, you will end up trapped in those emotions.
For example, despite the fact that you have been in a committed relationship for a decade, you still spend a lot of time thinking about the one that got away. How will you be content with the person you’re with if you are constantly obsessing about someone else?
There are a lot of complicated feelings wrapped up in our past. You can take time to understand them without getting lost in them. Your children are all grown up, it’s nice to look back at their baby pictures and remember the sweet scent of their heads and the warmth of their snuggles. But if you start thinking about it all the time… that’s not great.
We all grow and evolve and the present moment is the one that matters. That one that got away. Think about how different you are now as a person… they’ve been through the same growth and changes. They’re not the person you knew, so they’re not the one that got away. They were a stepping stone to where you are now.
You can snuggle someone else’s baby if you need to hold a baby. Your babies might be grown, but they can hug back now.
Negative Thoughts
A positive mindset is helpful when striving for contentment. To instill a positive mindset, you need to cultivate positive thoughts. The first step in doing so is to correct your negative thoughts. This isn’t about ignoring all of the bad things in your life and pretending as though everything is hunk dory.
The truth of the matter is that our negative thoughts are often lies we tell ourselves. We have set the story and bought it hook, line, and sinker, and you never stopped to ask yourself if it was accurate. When those negative thoughts and stories pop up in your mind, you have to challenge them and replace them with a more positive thought.
For example, it’s been a rough time at work. Your boss has been particularly hard on you and you find yourself thinking they hate you now and your job is on the line. That’s the story you are telling yourself because it’s stressful and scary. You don’t feel in control so your brain is filling in the blanks.
The reality of the situation is that your boss is under a lot of stress and crap rolls downhill. They don’t hate you, your job isn’t on the line, your boss is reacting to their stress by putting more on your shoulders. It isn’t good management, but there’s a reasonable explanation for it other than the story your brain created.
Rather than reacting to the emotion of your negative thoughts, you need to respond to the thought itself. It will take practice, but you will get there if you stick with it.
To use the example above to put it into practice – you recognize your boss’ mood, you think your negative thought, and then what? You replace your worried thought.
I recognize that my boss is stressed right now and that as a result, they are making me feel more stressed out. I do a good job, I work hard, and I am valued. This stress will pass.
To use a home-life-related example, you had an argument with your partner this morning. It spiraled out of control and you both left for work feeling furious at the other. You spent the day obsessing over it, replaying the conversation, over-analyzing, and getting angry all over again.
If you could just remove your emotional reaction from the situation, you would see how it was overblown. You took something personally and proceeded to convince yourself that your partner wasn’t on your team. Then you spent an entire day stewing in those negative thoughts. What a waste of time and energy. What a terrible way to spend your day.
Instead, you could have replayed the conversation in your head and recognized that it was a misunderstanding.
Even in situations where you’re in the right and have genuine reasons for your anger, indulging those negative emotions for an entire day will not serve you. That doesn’t mean you ignore those emotions, it doesn’t mean you stuff them down. No, it means that you address them when they arise, you process them, analyze the trigger, and figure out how best to move forward.
Mindless Living
You’ve heard of mindfulness, well mindless living is the opposite of it. Being mindful means you are fully present. It’s something we could all do better at, but with practice… you can. A lot of your day is spent going through the motions. You take your kids to the waterpark, but you miss out on their joy because your mind is elsewhere.
You’re thinking about where you’re going next, what’s on your to-do list, playing on your phone, responding to emails, worrying, and you’re missing out on what’s right in front of you. You will miss out on a lot of joy by living mindlessly.
Practice mindfulness at dinner tonight. Put your phone down, turn the television off, and sit at the table with your family. Open the floor for everyone to speak a little about their day, whether everyone shares their bright spot or has an opportunity to discuss something that’s been on their minds. You have one life and you’re letting it pass you by.
Self-Sabotage
Of course, one could argue that all of the things above are forms of self-sabotage. That is technically correct, but self-sabotage is worth mentioning because it truly is the enemy of contentment. You make plans and then you set about undermining your efforts to make it happen. I want to provide you with a few tips on how to avoid self-sabotage.
* Learn to let things go. Don’t hold onto resentment and anger, let them go and move on. Holding onto those negative feelings isn’t going to harm the person you’re mad at, it’s going to drag you down.
* Know your inner critic. The best way to beat the competition is to get to know the competition. While your inner critic isn’t quite competition, it is something that can hold you back from succeeding and finding contentment. So, get to know your inner critic, recognize when it’s trying to tear you down so that you know how to counteract it.
* Throw yourself into it. The best way to get something done is to just get on with it – throw yourself into it. Just take action!
* Stop. Or, more importantly, know when it’s time to stop. Whether it’s recognizing you’re stuck in a rut or that you’re pushing yourself too hard, know when to stop. Even if you manage your time down to the minute, you might not tick every single task off on your to-do list. As important as it is to get stuff done, it’s just as important to take time off.
* Enjoy playtime. Playtime is important so, make time to enjoy your hobbies. Whether you buy season tickets for your favorite team, attend karaoke night every week, or grab dinner with a friend, we all need an outlet. It’s nice to let your hair down, relax, and just enjoy. And honestly, life is so chaotic it’s easy to forget that life should be fun. You don’t have to beat yourself up over enjoying yourself.
* Trust your gut. Think of it as inbuilt GPS. Your gut can guide you if you just listen. Learn to trust your gut.
7 Best Kept Secrets Of Those Who Achieve Life Contentment
One of the most valuable things you can do for yourself is define success for yourself. If you think about the situations and people who make you miserable, it’s probably the people who make you question your success. It’s really easy to fall into the trap of chasing success as others define it.
For example, someone who comes from a long line of lawyers or doctors so, that’s what their definition of success looks like. In order to truly succeed, they have to follow in those footsteps and nothing else will do.
What happens if they don’t want to be a lawyer or a doctor? They are going to have a hard time finding contentment. What they needed to do was sit down and define success for themselves.
Your definition of success is unique to you and the only comparison you need to make is to that definition of success. You should be chasing your own version of success, not somebody else’s definition.
So, you have a clear idea of what it takes to achieve contentment. You have a clear list of things that will prevent you from achieving it. Now you need to know what behavior and habits that content people embrace.
* They Manage Their Time
If procrastination is the enemy of contentment, then time management is one of its best friends. They don’t need to plan their lives 20 years in advance, but they do know how to use their time wisely.
They take the necessary steps to improve their lives. When they make a mistake, they get back up and go again. When they experience ‘failure’ they learn a lesson and ensure they don’t repeat it. They don’t give up on their dreams, they just keep going.
They also recognize how limited time is. More to the point, they recognize how limited their time on earth is. They still experience rejection, disappointment, and heartache. They still deal with financial problems and other struggles. But they recognize that these are part of the process and they will come out stronger and more determined. Contentment isn’t based on one event. It’s cumulative.
* They Move Forward
Content people don’t get caught up in seeking vengeance when someone wrongs them. They have clear boundaries drawn and when someone crosses them, they deal with it appropriately.
They’re not interested in carrying all that baggage. So, they forgive people who wrong, hurt, or trouble them. And they move forward! Whatever happened, it doesn’t have to follow them forever. That’s not on them, it’s on the person who did the damage. That’s their issue to deal with. It’s as simple as that.
* They Don’t Compare
Everyone has their own story and their own journey. We all come from different backgrounds, struggles, socioeconomic positions, and that shapes our realities. We bring different things to the table, we have different experiences, and that is why you can’t make comparisons.
It’s a natural human habit, but when you compare so often and so much that you fall into insecurities and self-pity, you have to draw a line under the sand. Content people recognize when they’re taking it too far and they get a grip of it. Then they work harder and focus on shaping success as they have defined it for themselves.
* They Help
We discussed the power of an abundance mindset versus a scarcity mindset. This is something that truly content people have down pat. They aren’t self-centered because they have learned that there is no contentment in it. There is far more to life than their world. So, they are the type of people who reach out and help others. When someone is truly content with their life, it’s easy to share more and do more for others. Because you recognize that there is enough for everyone.
* They Share
This is a continuation from the last point, but this is different in that it’s their knowledge, skills, and talents they share with others. It’s about giving directly of themselves to help others improve themselves. They have done well for themselves and in return, they want to help others better their lives.
* They Spread Positivity
Hardship is a natural part of life, but content people choose to spread positivity in the face of it. They know how it aided their own success and they want to share it with everyone else.
They don’t bury their heads in the sand and pretend everything is perfect. They just understand that they wouldn’t be where they are right now without a positive mindset.
People who recognize the power of positivity and adopt an abundance mindset, want to spread that love, and encourage others rather than discourage them. There’s enough for everyone and when everyone succeeds, the world is a better place.
* A Spiritual Connection
You don’t have to be religious to form a spiritual connection. Content people often form spiritual connections, whether it’s with god, mother nature, the universe, or even the ocean. Our spiritual connections are grounding and they help provide us with peace of mind, self-respect, and respect for others.
A Short Contentment Meditation
I’d like to leave you with a short meditation to practice. It is designed to encourage contentment. It’s an excellent way to start your day.
Ideally, you should have a quiet, comfortable place to do this. However, once you have done it the first few times you will be able to do it whenever you feel the need. Sit upright, chest out, back straight. If you struggle with posture, just imagine someone hovering above you, tugging your spine to sit you up.
A couple of things to remember when you meditate, your exhale should always be longer than your inhale. You should always inhale through your mouth and exhale through your nose. And, you don’t necessarily need to have a purpose for meditation or a guide. Sometimes, deep breathing is just as efficient in a pinch.
Every meditation begins with deep breaths. You should inhale to the count of six, pause, and exhale to the count of seven.
Continue this breathing until you feel yourself calm. Once you feel calmer, smile on your next inhale. On the next exhale, close your nostril with your thumb.
On the next inhale, close both nostrils before releasing one for your exhale. Repeat this several times.
Once you feel calm, you can direct your thoughts to gratitude and positivity. Think of a list of things you are grateful for, whether it’s people, situations, or a pet. It doesn’t matter what it is, as long as you are truly grateful for it.
You can sit with these thoughts as long as you wish and shift the focus back to your breathing for three cycles before you return to your way.
You can deep breathe or meditate as long as you want, but if you are new to it, start with a period of five minutes to ease yourself into the practice.
Final Thoughts
A lot of your thoughts probably revolve around the things you want. You want to achieve a certain outcome. You want to reach a certain milestone. Want plays a large part in the human existence.
There is a longstanding myth that humans have 60-70,000 thoughts every day. That isn’t quite accurate. However, according to Newsweek, humans have around 6,000 thoughts each day (https://www.newsweek.com/humans-6000-thoughts-every-day-1517963). If only a quarter of those thoughts revolve around wanting, that’s 1,500 wanting thoughts a day. That’s at least one a minute. You might not be aware of them. At least, not consciously. But your subconscious is registering every single one of them.
The point is if you are so focused on wanting it can be difficult to be content with life. Because wanting means there’s an absence of having. If you focus on what you don’t have, rather than on what you do have, you will always feel miserable.
There’s a big difference between chasing success to improve your life and chasing success to get more stuff to fill a void. A void cannot be filled by things. If you’re still reading, you have the blueprint to achieve contentment laid out in the text before you. It’s up to you to take the necessary steps to make it your reality.
Don’t fall into the trap of saying I’ll finally be happy when… this happens. Forget about this, forget about that. You can be content with your life as is, but you have to take the steps to do it for yourself. Likewise, you shouldn’t fall into the trap of believing that contentment and complacency are the same.
Just because you find contentment doesn’t mean you stop striving for improvement. The opposite of this is true. When you settle into a feeling of being enough, your journey to self-improvement becomes bigger than you. It isn’t self-serving, it’s about serving something greater. Contentment breeds clarity and clarity can clear the path to success.
Enjoy the little things in life – take a moment to smell the roses, breathe in that scent of coffee before you drink it, text a friend to let them know they’re loved, hold the door open for a stranger, and just enjoy the moment.
I will leave you with this thought.
You should always be content with the things you have, but you should never be content with who or what you are. By that I mean, you should never stop pushing yourself to learn, grow, and discover new things.
You can be proud of you who you are, you can accept yourself exactly as you are, but you have to keep moving forward. There is always room for improvement, but that doesn’t mean you’re not already incredible.
Stay content and be well!
