Should You Be Content with Your Life?

Many years ago I was asked to give a talk about contentment. At first I was taken aback. You see, in my mind, I had connected contentment with complacency. How many of you have made the same mistake? I say mistake, because I quickly realized that contentment and complacency do not have to be the same thing-- far from it.

Webster defines complacency as self-satisfaction especially when accompanied by unawareness of actual dangers or deficiencies. Many times we connect laziness with complacency.

I have come to believe that contentment on the other hand is about being satisfied with your life right now. AND you can be content with your life right now and still want and strive for more

So you can be content with your life even if you have not attained all your dreams and goals yet. And actually, it is very important that we learn to be content with our lives right now, because we will always have more dreams and goals. The old phrase, enjoy the journey, cannot be reiterated enough times. As a recovering Type A personality, I know the importance of that as much as anyone.

So how do you become more content with your life right now? There are many ways. Some of which are at a more spiritual level, and I'll talk about that more in the future.

But there are also small, doable, action steps that you can take to be more content with your life almost immediately.

The truth is most of use tolerate and put up with way too many things in life - from clutter in our homes and offices to people treating us badly to our own anxieties and thoughts that keep us awake at night. And when we tolerate things, it drains us.

If you get up in the morning and continuously dread something or someone related to work, that too is pretty obvious. There are smaller things that are less obvious that also have an effect on our level of contentment, but we may not even notice the effect they are having. For example, I may not notice what is bothering me as I walk through my office, but find I am irritated. There is a stack of papers on the floor. I can choose to tolerate it and it is a toleration because I find that I get irritated by it - i.e. in this case continue to step over it or around it, or I can choose to buy more file cabinets or re-organize to make space for it.

What you are putting up with keeps you from being fully yourself and evolving quickly as a human being. It also drains you, so that no matter how much you put into your cup, the toleration-hole lets it all drain you - thus affecting your level of contentment to varying degrees depending on the level of the toleration.

I encourage you to start noticing what you are tolerating and start eliminating those things from your life. Start with the small things. You will be amazed at how much better you can feel almost instantly.

I have created a program to help you understand better why you tolerate things, to identify your toleratiions, and a process to start zapping them. To learn more visit www.igetpaidtodothis.com/content.htm