Dog Is God Spelled Backwards

July 31st, 2010

Tater

If you know me, you know Tater, is one of the lights in my life. One of the things he teaches me, and I think it’s a common trait in all dogs, is the ability to live in the moment. Just think how content we’d all be if we were only paying attention to the moment we are living in.

How much of of our discontentment is about wishing we’d done something different in our past, worrying about what will happen in our future, or being annoyed about what someone else did or is doing? We’re told to set goals and make plans. But how often do they turn out like we planned? I’m not saying you shouldn’t have goals, but our discontentment is often in the details of getting them. We have to keep our goals in perspective with our reality. And our circumstances can change hourly.

Tater, on the other hand, may be annoyed with me because I don’t take him on a walk when he wants to go, or I spend too much time at my computer (he actually sits on the stairs and whines when he wants me to quit working), or when he wants a snack. But the moment I take him on the walk, play with him, or feed him, he’s a happy camper. He doesn’t hold it against me that he didn’t get what he wanted when he wanted it. He immediately moves to his next happy moment.

I believe that this is a spiritual gift, to be able to move to the next moment without holding onto the past. Living in the present helps you experiencecontentment.

Maybe that’s why dog is God spelled backwards ~ our furry friends have a special God connection that allows them to naturally live in the moment. Lesson learned.

Celebrate Happiness Happens Month

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Posted in August 2010 | No Comments »

It Is What It Is

July 20th, 2010

Content people seem to have an uncanny ability to know when to try to change things and when to simply accept the “is what it is“.

The truth is there are a lot of things that we have absolutely no control over. The ways other people act, if our company is going to do layoffs, the weather, if the stock market goes up or down, you get the idea, there’s a lot we can’t control. We just have to accept what happens and adjust our plans if needed.

Even the best companies set goals that a robot who works 24 hours a day can’t achieve. What are you going to do? Your only real choice is to triage the important task of the moment and move to the next one. It is what it is.

If you’re significant other is a dare devil, they probably aren’t going to be happy if you’re always trying to talk them out of doing whatever thrilling thing they want to do next. They love the adrenalin rush, even if you fear it. It is what it is.

If it’s raining outside, you have to use your umbrella or get wet. Just pull your hair back and just accept that it’s going to be a frizzy hair day. It is what it is.

Contentment disappears when we let things that we can’t control bother us too much. When the unexpected happens and it adversely affects us, we won’t like it because it won’t feel good. But it still is what it is and we have to move on to the next Plan B or C or D.

Sometimes the is what it is, is simply a temporary annoyance; other times it may be there to provide that spiritual bridge to those God chats that may be life changing.

Next time you’re dealing with the uncontrollable, remind yourself it is what it is and work with it. No matter the situation, you have control of one thing: your attitude. Content people approach the is what it is situations with an attitude of working with it and doing it with a big grin.

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Posted in July 2010 | No Comments »

Contentment Myths

May 25th, 2010

You’ve had some time to think about contentment since the last post. Maybe you’re thinking Pamela might be right, if I’m content that’s pretty darn good, so it might be the new bliss.

One of the reasons that contentment is a minimized type of happiness is that content people are incorrectly associated with three Contentment Myths:

  • Content People Lack Ambition
  • Content People Are Settling
  • Content People Are Boring

These things simply aren’t true.

Content People Lack Ambition

Just because you’re content with your job doesn’t mean that you don’t want to be promoted. It simply means that being promoted doesn’t define your happiness.

Just because you’re content with your garden, doesn’t mean that you don’t spend hours trying to win a gardening club award. But if you don’t win, of course you’re disappointed, but it doesn’t mean that you don’t like your garden anymore.

Just because you’re content with your job, doesn’t mean that you don’t want to write the next Pulitzer Prize winning novel. You, like most aspiring writers, write in your off-hours.

Being content doesn’t mean you’re just hanging out and waiting to die. Contentment simply means that you aren’t unhappy with your life. But just because you are content living in one city doesn’t mean that you’d never consider living in another one.

Being content doesn’t mean that you don’t want to better yourself or your life. It just means you understand happiness is more than what you accomplish or own.

Content People Are Settling

Someone is settling if they quietly long to change something or someone but just don’t do anything about it. If you want to lose weight but don’t try, you’re settling. If you want to change the people you love, but just quit having the conversations, then you’re settling.

Acceptance can be mislabeled as settling. Content people don’t have a need to change other people. It’s not that they like or agree with everything some else does, like their significant other, kids, or best friend, but they understand that these annoyances are the flees on the dog they love. Personally, you may dream of living in a house on the beach, but realize that it’s expensive and not-necessarily practical at this particular time of your life. And just because you’d love to live on the beach doesn’t mean you dislike where you live..

Acceptance isn’t settling. Acceptance is merely understanding when a battle with yourself or others really isn’t worth your time.

Content People Are Boring

Content people may appear to be uninterested or passionless, simply because they don’t want to waste their time sharing their point of view or their favorite things with just anyone.

Boring is sometimes equated to content people who live quietly instead of loudly. They are content to do their own thing. They are often quite lions about their passion. But if you take time to get to know the content lion, you’ll probably be surprised at their exciting roar.

When thinking about the role contentment plays in your life, remember, that you can be very happy, and appear to others as non-ambitious, settling or boring. And guess what, it really doesn’t matter, after all, you’re content, and that’s the new bliss.

What are you content about?

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Posted in May 2010 | No Comments »

Contentment is the New Bliss

April 18th, 2010

All happiness is good and desirable, but each type of happiness isn’t equal. When the Secret Society of Happy People identified the original 21 Types of Happiness the list included contentment. To me it was a natural inclusion. But after 10 years it still surprises me that when I mention contentment in an interview it almost always evokes yawns. And I still don’t understand why. What’s a better type of all-round happiness than contentment?

If you’re mostly content it means you’re not seeking significant changes. You may not be ecstatic or doing cartwheels about everything, but you’re feelings are north of neutral. And whenever you’re not content with something, you either work to accept it or change it.

If you’re content at work, it’s not that you wouldn’t take a new job if it paid more or was on the dream job list, but you don’t dread Monday’s or you’re not frantically job hunting.

If you’re content with your friends it means you enjoy yours most of the time and don’t need to screen your friends calls.

If you’re content with your habits it means you don’t always look in the mirror and automatically think I need to eat less, exercise more, drink less, stop smoking, social media less, or whatever you do that you want to change.

If you’re content with your significant other it means despite anything else, you just can’t image life without them.

You get the idea, when you’re content life is pretty good. No major chaos. No major roller coasters. You get to enjoy the present because you’re not always looking for the next happy high.

One of my day job customers got me thinking when she told me that her husband was happy to have a new job, but that he was over-qualified for it and a little bored. It occurred to me that lots and lots of people are in the same boat: over-qualified and no where to go. Recent generations have been taught if you’re educated and work hard, your career is of your own making. That’s probably not true for the immediate future. Our current and short-term career goals may be to pay the bills over-qualified or not.

Then my thoughts jumped to other areas of our life that this recession has changed. We’re looking for houses the size we can afford rather than MacMansions so we can impress ourselves or others. We’ll drive cars with affordable payments instead of ones the size of our mortgage. Discount shopping is as chic as luxury shopping. Staycations have replaced vacations. Saving accounts have more prestige than the number of credit cards in our wallet.

For many, life has changed from chasing big exuberant happy dreams to being happy with what we have. And if we honestly assess what we have, many of us would be content about a lot of things. But we don’t acknowledge them because we get caught up in the chase for more, bigger or better. Why? We spend hours and hours hearing commercials and society telling us we want or need more, bigger and better to live the American dream. Eventually it can brainwash even the best of us.

Society undervalues contentment because it incorrectly assumes that a content person lacks ambition, is settling or boring. But that’s not true. A content person is simply happy with life as it is. People who value contentment are less susceptible to advertising, media hoopla, and peer pressure that encourages them to chase things that usually turn out to be temporary happy highs at best. Contented people have a natural immunity to propaganda and manipulation.

Our post-recession world will revolve around creating a life that isn’t solely about the chase for bigger, better and more. And as a result, perhaps those who are lucky enough to know they are content will realize that contentment is the new bliss.

What are you content about?

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Posted in April 2010, What This Blog Is About | 4 Comments »