MASTERING CONTENTMENT

Original Artwork by Designs By Otis G

As a father and around the holiday season, the word “contentment” is a specific subject I think about a lot as a parent and the aftermath of the giving season. We all have desires, especially our curious kids but when is enough, enough? This particular subject can be taxing and complicated. Or there is the other perspective, we could accept human nature and dissatisfaction is just something we just have to manage and control.

We need to do an inventory of what is really important to us that could aid with the powerful feeling of contentment. Certain examples could include a heavy focus on: faith, family, friends and our professional career. By stripping these key elements down to the core and getting rid of everything fighting for our time and going against our peace would be worthy strategy. In short, turning on a flashlight on the important subjects in our lives and having boundaries with the elements not influencing our lives in a rich, tangible way.

Focus on elements that bring us joy

Contentment Connected to our Greed

Currently I am reading a book called, The Psychology of Money, Timeless Lessons on Wealth, Greed, and Happiness by author, Morgan Housel. On this subject, the author touches on the many variables that are connected to contentment. He reminds us saying:

“Happiness is a complicated subject because everyone’s different. But if there is a common denominator in happiness, a universal fuel of joy, it’s that people want to control their lives.”

But the freedom of buying and purchasing our desires is not directly tied to happiness. It’s more related to freedom of our time, flexible hours, not bigger homes or larger SUV’s.

One of my favorite books

Here in the United States of America, we are the wealthiest nation and have the most luxurious items in the world. But recent research is telling us on an average, even though we are wealthier than ever, we are less happy and have less joy than we did in recent history going as far back as the 1950’s.

Another excellent example in this book I would like to share to understand the contrast of how things are so much different now from many years ago is one related to our home size averages. Author Housel says:

“The Median American home increased from 983 square feet in 1950 to 2,436 square feet in 2018.”

We give up our time to work more, make more money to buy very large homes, only to feel dissatisfied, have more anxiety, and ultimately, less joy. The conundrum of progress looks bleak with these well-known examples of a modern society and a foundation built on more, larger and better.

Hyper Focus on Foundation Pieces

Many people will say they value family, faith and friends, but our actions and the amounts of hours spent doing something different is saying something different. Success is related to a certain type of healthy perspective, with both words and actions hyper focused on foundation pieces. Controlling your time, spending quality time with your children, grand-children or friends in your community is lessons for living and a foundation worthy of your time.

One of my favorites studies is the longest study by the Harvard Study of Adult Development  (link here to read full story) recently updated on The Atlantic. The study, starting back in 1938, confirmed over many years and decades that quality relationships has had a direct effect on our happiness. The conclusion in the excellent piece of work says:

“Good relationships lead to health and happiness. The trick is that those relationships must be nurtured.”

It continues on by highlighting how many distractions we have now and the challenges to literally silencing the noise, turning the distractions to “silent mode” and spending intentional, quality time with our loved ones.

The benefits of putting time into our relationships, nurturing them, hyper focused and growing with them, even though it might be messy, uncomfortable and downright challenging will ultimately lead to “enormous benefits”.

By taking some time to reflect on your relationships’ health and then in-turn come up with an action plan, write down a few simple goals, and act on this plan, a relationship assessment action plan.

Much like we put time into our physical health (running/weight lifting) or in our career (working overtime hours/applying for higher paying jobs), put time into nurturing your relationships. The world’s longest scientific study of happiness confirms this will be worthy of your time and over time will grow, and possibly even bloom like a flourishing flower in the early spring.

Nurturing = happiness and blooming

Tying Contentment with Focus and Gratitude

The state of being “content” is tied with being focused on the simple things and having a grateful heart for what is being provided. Respected science studies confirm and echo these sentiments. This can be challenging especially in a contemporary world surrounded and inundated with technology, alerts, messages, updates, notifications and demands.

We might need to take a step back in time, lessons in life when we could work, worship or spend time with family, uninterrupted. Also helpful is circling back to key foundation pieces we deem necessary to live a fruitful life and live a life being content and living a simple life might be the best investment we make.

By not neglecting our relationships, applying more focus, increasing the time nurturing our connections, spending daily time with our own self-care, our joy meter will increase. This will lead to a grateful attitude, a higher quality of contentment and peace.

Read more at: BREATHEANDEATCHOCOLATE.ORG

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