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Mar 04, 2024

Winning at Home: Learning contentment

Are you content? When people hear that word, many immediately think it’s the same thing as being happy or fulfilled or that everything is going their way. However, that’s not what contentment is. I

Are you content? When people hear that word, many immediately think it’s the same thing as being happy or fulfilled or that everything is going their way. However, that’s not what contentment is. I don’t usually do this, but I’m going to quote the Merriam-Webster Dictionary entry for contentment here:

“Freedom from worry or restlessness; peaceful satisfaction.”

My guess is that everybody reading this would like to have some more of that in their lives! One of the ways that I think we can grow in our level of contentment is by accepting the circumstances we’re in and believing that they are best for us. That is much different than being happy or feeling like things are going the way you want them to go.

So, I want to invite each of us to evaluate how we’re doing with being content. Honestly, it’s tricky, though, isn’t it? I think part of the reason it’s hard is because The American Dream is based on the idea that our current circumstances are not acceptable to us; we must work harder in order to create a life where things are just the way we want them—a life where we’re driving our dream car, living in our dream house and married to our dream spouse.

Considering that most of us have grown up with this as our goal, whether consciously or unconsciously, it’s easy to see how contentment wasn’t really high on our priority list. In fact, it’s easy to see how contentment would actually be viewed as a negative thing because it would drain away our motivation to work harder to improve and achieve.

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With that in mind, I am aware that I might be inviting you to practice something that will be foreign to you at first. Even if it is, I truly believe every single person will benefit from developing contentment in our lives. There’s a fine line here, though, because being content doesn’t mean that we don’t share our preferences. It doesn’t mean that we avoid working on areas we know need improvement. Contentment is not another word for laziness or passivity. It has more to do with our state of mind and ability to be in the present moment in a peaceful way.

I’ve written before about the fact that when they are making comparisons to others, content people compare down. Instead of looking at how their house, job or car stacks up against the multi-millionaires posting on social media, content people look at how their situation stacks up against people who are living in poverty or dealing with difficult circumstances.

It's natural for each of us to look at our lives and wonder about how they could be improved. It's also easy for us to forget that there are plenty of people who would look at our lives right now and long to be in our circumstances. Contentment (and wisdom) is all about learning to appreciate what we have and learning that if we can’t appreciate our current situation, taking one step up on the ladder is unlikely to change our ability to be grateful for our circumstances and find peace.

If we haven’t figured it out at our current level of success and achievement, one more step upward is unlikely to be the key to helping us let go of that restless urge to chase more and bigger things. When we learn to seek contentment, we’ll be winning more often at home.

— Dan Seaborn is the founder of the Zeeland-based group Winning at Home, which supports and nurtures marriages and families. Email questions or comments to [email protected].