Seneca
“It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor.”
I am fascinated by just how much stuff my children have and probably more fascinated by how much stuff they still want. When I walk into my youngest sons’ room it is like a museum dedicated to Christmas past. Toys he wanted so bad that now he barely touches.
This probably reflects a parenting failure on our end, but also, I think it represents human nature.
We all want more.
Social media bombards us daily with images of happy people and what we need to be happy.
People now have built entire careers from their lifestyles on social media platforms. Appropriately enough these new celebrities are called “influencers”.
Contentment is a fickle thing with a short-term memory and here are three sure fire ways to totally sabotage yours.
Focus on Things
In our culture we rely too much on things to make us happy. Kids are an easy example, because they can be much more vocal about their discontent. Adults, well we can be sneaky.
Our house is like an Apple graveyard. We have old iPods, iPads, iPhones probably 95% of these are not even charged anymore.
Was there anything wrong with the older models? No, just that someone in a black turtleneck told us we needed a better model.
Did the better model change my life? Nope.
Did the new model make me happier? Probably for exactly one minute until I got frustrated with some new feature on it.
The cliché is that things don’t make us happy. I 100% believe that, but that doesn’t mean I am not grabbing the new iPhone XXVII (It does have 7k viewing compared to the 6.9k of the older model, that will definitely make me happy).
Focus on Money
Our culture attributes contentment to having more money. While it’s true having more money may make certain aspects of life a little easier, it doesn’t mean you will be more content. It just means your worries will just be replaced with more expensive worries.
The more money you have often leads to worrying about losing it.
Living in a small two bedroom apartment as newlyweds were probably some of the happiest times my wife & I had. We didn’t have much, but life was just good.
The less you have doesn’t always mean you will be miserable, actually you might be quite happy. You don’t miss what you never had.
Focus on What You Don’t Have
Comparison is the contentment killer.
I remember as a kid when it was time for desert I always was upset if my sister got bigger piece of cake than me (which she usually did, but I am not bitter). I totally overlooked the fact that I had my own piece of sugary goodness sitting right in front of me.
How often do we do this in life?
Totally overlooking our current good thing, because we have become distracted by someone else’s better thing.
If you walk that back a step there is probably someone who would love to have your piece of cake.
The best way to never be happy is to constantly compare what others have against what you do not.
This is a game you will never win.
Build Your Relationships
While I have given you three way to destroy your contentment there is quick way to become more content.
People, we need to build our contentment around relationships.
If someone cares about you, that is huge. Think about it no matter how bad things get, someone cares about how you are doing.
You can’t buy family (although I am sure there some members you would like to sell. Just kidding, I am not advocating selling any family members)
I guess you could buy friends, but not true friends. Friends who are willing to tell you when you are being unreasonable or when you have that piece a spinach stuck between your teeth.
I’ll bet if you think back to some of your best memories, they may involve things, but I’ll bet a lot of what made those memories great were not the things, but the people.
Focus on your relationships and see if contentment starts to follow
Are You Poor?
“It is not the man who has too little, but craves more that is poor”
Are you craving more possessions?
Are you craving more money?
Are you craving more power?
None of these are necessarily bad aspirations, but when they are all consuming and impact your happiness, this is a problem.
A quick solution for your discontentment is to build your relationships.
Ask friend out for coffee this week, spend four bucks and just talk. I’ll bet you’ll feel happier.
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