https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/what_if_you_pursued_contentment_rather_than_happiness

 

Contentment—the knowledge that things are OK exactly as they are, right now—is highly valued by many cultures.

Steps to finding Contentment rather than Happiness:

  1. Practice mindfulness. The first one may not surprise you, because everyone from doctors to athletes to Oprah has endorsed it over the past few decades. Mindfulness is the cultivation of focused attention to the present moment, without judging your experiences as good or bad. It is one of the most well-studied practices for calming down the body and weathering the manic cyclone of the mind. There are literally thousands of websites, videos, and apps where you can learn how to practice mindfulness.
  2. Identify your well-being contingencies. A well-being contingency is an external factor that you believe is required for you to feel complete as a human being. Some common well-being contingencies include:
    1. When I have $X in my bank account, then I’ll be happy.
    2. When I achieve X at work, then I’ll finally feel good about my job.
    3. When X gives me the validation I’m looking for, then I’ll be satisfied.
    4. When I purchase X material item, then I’ll be doing well.
    5. When I’m X years old, then I can retire and finally enjoy life.
    6. When my kids achieve X, then I’ll know I was a successful parent.

While it’s OK to have goals, unhealthy attachments to well-being contingencies can be problematic, because they create dependencies that are out of your control. They also reinforce the idea that you can’t be OK right now and that self-love and acceptance need to wait until later. If you’re a human being, you likely have a few of these contingencies running in the background programming of your subconscious mind.

Take some time to reflect, and map them out. Keep the ones that you like, and deeply reflect on the ones that are holding you back from your ideal life. Ask yourself how you can begin to feel whole, complete, and unconditionally accepting of yourself right now instead of waiting years for these contingencies to be fulfilled—if they are ever fulfilled at all. This will empower you to take ownership of your personal well-being, instead of leaving it up to other people and factors that are largely out of your control.

  1. Radically accept all emotions. This is a tough practice, and you’re probably not going to like it—at first. Imagine a world where every emotion that you experience comes and goes like a wave on the ocean, like a visitor that stays for awhile and gently leaves when it’s ready. There are very few guarantees in life, but one that I can offer with absolute certainty is that whatever you are feeling right now is going to change soon. By definition, emotions have a lifespan. They have triggers, they rise to their apex, and then they gently taper away before being replaced by a new emotion. This is part of what it means to be human.

This seems all well and good, but the problem arises when we begin to create unhealthy relationships with our emotions. There are some emotions that we like so much that we hold on to them with a white-knuckle deathgrip—emotions like happiness, joy, elation, serenity, and other really, really pleasant feelings. There are other emotions that we despise so much that we would prefer to never feel them again as long as we live— emotions like shame, sadness, despair, embarrassment, rage, and other really, really unpleasant feelings. Which emotions do you want to always feel? Which would you prefer to never feel? It turns out that at the end of the day, all emotions are here to guide us and provide valuable information about the world around us. What if, instead of trying to cling to some emotions while pushing others away, you instead allowed all feelings to come and go, without needing to change them?

This radical appreciation of all of life’s experiences is a cornerstone to contentment, which is the idea that right here, right now, everything is OK as it is. Yes, that means we can be content with our sadness, content with our anger, content with our shame. We can be content with our elation, joy, and peace—and everything in between. Contentment is the underlying acceptance of what it means to be human, an unconditional love for all of life’s experiences, without the need for anything more than what is here right now. Once we learn how to bring this into our lives on a regular basis, we can finally begin to understand what the ancients meant by the knowledge of enough, the acceptance of the present moment, and true happiness.