Finding Contentment in Life – Are you forcing happiness?

Hi, I’m Paul Krismer. I’m your happiness expert, and this week’s video is all about why is there so much pain in the world? Specifically, some pain that’s just overwhelmingly tragic. There’s been examples in the popular press recently about student athletes who have actually committed suicide. These were people who seemed to be the top of their game. They had friends, they had accolades for their achievements, they were doing well in school, and people were shocked and surprised when they took their own lives. What’s driving that kind of thing? And how can we address it? How can we set the goals in a society such that people can be content with their lives that are seemingly pretty darn good? Stay tuned.

As a coach, public speaker, and best-selling author, I teach topics just like this one all around the world. So stay tuned, and I’ll give you practical tools that you can use to make both yourself and those around you both happier and more successful. Yeah, I read a really interesting article recently about this challenge of being content and happy in life. Yes, what’s going on in our society that people are seemingly really challenged to be content and happy? Well, I read a very interesting article recently, and David will include a link to it in the description below. You can kind of explore it more on your own if you’re interested.

But why is it that people such as student athletes who seemed to have everything going for them would actually take their own lives? I think, at least this article suggests and it resonates with me, that sometimes there’s just so much pressure to be happy. Big smiling happy, and over the top, showing the world you’re happy. I mean, that’s exactly what all our social media posts are about. The popular media has all kinds of articles, me as guilty as anybody, creating content saying, “Here’s how to be happy. Happy, happy, happy.” Well, happiness usually, as I’ve talked about in some past videos, comes in little squirts. It’s a big good moment of that kind of joyous grinning from ear to ear kind of happiness, and the rest of time, we don’t typically feel that way.

Now, there are other very positive emotions like pride, curiosity, contentment, serenity, and amusement that are other types of happiness. But we typically don’t see the word happiness through that lens. So we feel a little bit like our life must be falling short if we’re not having that big happy experience all the time. The writer in this article suggests that maybe contentment is a much more realistic and attainable goal, and that is kind of interesting.

Sometimes, contentment as a word suggests we settle. You know, if we’re in a bad relationship, we say, “Well, no, I’m content,” or “I’ve got a job that I can handle and well, yeah, I’m content.” I’m not meaning it that way. From a psychology point of view, contentment means when we’re in alignment with our own selves, where we feel that we have a sense of purpose and connection in the world that just makes us not just okay, but we have peace of mind. We feel good. We have some of this foundation of good self-esteem.

And when we have a lot of contentment, it obviously is a really great measure of well-being. It’s when we’re okay. The idea of being content seems to be related to when we have a sense of purpose, when we have a mission in life or a partner in which we navigate our lives, when we have people that we’re really connected to. So, somehow connected to purpose or people or both is a great foundation for self-esteem. So we can examine that for our own selves and say, “Is my goal today to be really, really happy, grinning from ear to ear, or is my goal today, as you watch this video, to become grounded again in my sense of purpose? What am I about? And who are the people in my life that I feel most attached to?”

If we go and work on that and spend some time in those juicy places of being on purpose and with the people we love, maybe this idea of happy will be less provocative and more just we can say, “Yeah, I’m content,” and that’d be a pretty good thing. If you like this kind of content, click the like button, share with your friends and family, and we’ll see you next week. Thanks for watching. Bye for now.