In my unemployment I’ve become a bit of an Internet addict. Between Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, StumbleUpon, Digg, my blog, and the fifty others in my Google Reader, I could easily fill an entire work week seeking and sharing information. As I’ve trolled the net these past couple months, I’ve realized the digital era feeds into the collective discontent that defines us as a nation—this idea that no matter what heights we reach, there is still something missing. 10 Ways to Boost Your Brain Power; 15 Ways to Shrink Your Waistline; 20 Ideas to Make More Money—these posts just remind us we can always be smarter, thinner, stronger, richer, happier, or just plain better than we are now.
Yesterday I found a post on Zen Habits—one of my favorite blogs—that addresses this very issue. Leo offers several cures for discontentment, including:
1. Change your attitude and perspective.
2. Take some kind of positive action.
3. Do something that gives you meaning.
I think the first is the most useful suggestion, but not for the reason you may imagine. Perhaps our discontent isn’t something to be cured but rather something to be accepted, appreciated, and leveraged.
I’m not suggesting we should accept unhappiness as the norm—just that we need to acknowledge the factors that encourage discontent and realize they aren’t going anywhere. Our society breeds dissatisfaction because it feeds the consumer machine. We don’t live in Bhutan—a nation that measures its success in gross national happiness. We live in a place where every day someone creates a revolutionary diet, publishes a ground-breaking self-help book, and creates a newer, more exciting technology that promises to simplify our lives.
We’re constantly inundated with advertising messages that imply happiness is just a face cream, cocktail, or gadget away. According to Juliette Schor, Boston College Professor of Sociology and author of Born to Buy, we’re programmed to accept the connection between consumption and happiness when we see advertising as children—at a time when we’re incapable of rational thinking. My point: dissatisfaction is rooted in our culture. Hell, it’s part of the human condition: the never-ending pursuit of meaning and answers to why we’re here. While we may find respite from our searching through meditation, selfless giving, and appreciation for what we have, odds are we will never fully relinquish the tendency to look for something more.
That doesn’t have to be such a bleak realization. One of my favorite quotes (anonymous) is “Always be happy, but never be satisfied.” It didn’t resonate with me at first because I didn’t recognize the distinction. But there is one. Unhappiness creates emptiness. Dissatisfaction breeds progress. I believe in acknowledging the factors that encourage discontentment, we can learn to identify the difference between enough and lacking in our lives—and then leverage our discontent for positive change.
If you dislike that your excess weight affects your quality of life, you may start a new exercise regime and become stronger for you and your family. If you’re dissatisfied with the practices in your business, you could innovate and come up with a more efficient, streamlined process. If you’re unhappy with your mother’s experience fighting cancer, you might raise funds to support treatments that ease the side effects of chemo. If you’re frustrated with our government’s policies, you just may run for office and fill a nation with hope for change in a time when it couldn’t be more indispensable. Discontent is only dangerous if you turn it against yourself instead of letting it empower you.
If that’s what you tend to do—if you are, in fact, persistently unhappy—I don’t have an answer for you. I don’t think anyone can offer a complete recipe for happiness in a blog post (or even a book for that matter). But I can offer you a piece of insight that helps me when I start looking for more: if there’s something that’s bothering you that you can control, address it. At the same time, ask yourself this question: can I still enjoy this moment, even though there are things I’d like to change?
Related Reading: The Power of Realistic Positive Thinking
What do you think? Should we pursue cures for discontent? Is it possible or advisable to become permanently satisfied?
By Lori Deschene, Photo Romancement
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What a great way to turn lemons into lemonade. I don’t think we can ever be truly satisfied and still remain truly alive. We are innately explorers, whether the exploration is into outer space or into ourselves. The discontentment we feel may be from being told to stand still–you’re right about the danger in it. We need to turn it into something positive, for ourselves and others.
Great post!! We have been so ingrained in negative thought patterns that it would not be easy to just switch to a positive mode without some form of inner healing. Inner healing very much encompasses an acceptance of self and an acknowledgement of our negative emotions. By the acceptance and acknowlegement, they dissolve. We experience an inner shift and a change in outward perspective.
I like the premise of the post, but I hate the quote “Always be happy, but never be satisfied.” It fails on a couple of levels for me.
Firstly, it’s really difficult to be genuinely happy when you’re not satisfied. It’s also difficult to express gratitude when you’re not satisfied.
Also, it encourages the consumer society we already get battered by. I know that’s not the intention, but it feeds the more, more, more mindset and the belief that happiness is just a new pair of shoes away.
I do honestly like the post though and I’m glad you have thrown your ideas out here for discussion.
chehaw~ Exactly! I think that when people try to fight our innate desire to explore we just become more dissatisfied. We wonder why we’ve done everything that’s supposed to fill us with meaning and purpose and yet we still keep looking. Why fight our instincts when they allow us to create miracles?
Evelyn~ I’m so glad you like it! And yes–that’s exactly what I was trying to convey. We decide what’s negative and positive. We form belief systems and creating meaning. It’s like Shakespeare said: “Nothing is either good or bad but thinking makes it so.”
Tim~ Happy to see you here! And disagree with you
I’m curious about your logic. You say we cannot be fully happy unless we are satisfied. So what if you’re an actor. You spend your days auditioning and waiting tables, hoping some day you’ll get a big break. Your dream is to become a major movie star, and you know the odds are stacked against you. Still, you will never give up. Until you land a role in a major motion picture, odds are you won’t be satisfied. Does that mean all the years you spend trying you will be unhappy? And if you never make it in show business, you’ll die having never known happiness?
@ Lori – In that example, then I don’t believe they are truly happy. The tow states are mutally exclusive imho.
OTOH, I don’t think that by definition somebody is unhappy because they’re not happy. But dissatisfaction is a horrible state to be in. You can want to do better without the need for dissatisfaction driving you forward. I’m VERY satisfied with my life but I still want to have a best seller on my hands and not be living hand to mouth so much.
Nobody ever finds peace of mind and contentedness through being dissatisfied with their lot in life.
Tim~ Agree to disagree?
The way I see it, if your interpretation serves you–if it allows you to be effective and happy in your life–then hold onto it. It serves me to acknowledge dissatisfaction is a part of life, and then use that to benefit me without equating the pursuit of something more with unhappiness. When I separate the two, I’m able to commit to being happy, even if I’ll always have something I’d like to do or achieve. I find peace of mind and contentedness in this idea.
I think maybe this comes down to semantics. I don’t think dissatisfaction is a bad thing.
Btw, I was tempted to toss your recent post on open-mindedness into the equation, and then I remembered your opinion about being open-minded: “No one is. Not even me.”
There was a time in my life whenever something negative was going on, I equated that ‘wrongness’ with a negative spiral down. Being dissatified brought on perceived unhappiness, by assumed definition. When I started to look around and realized, nothing is perfect, I am not perfect, toilets overflow and cars break down, I looked at life in a new light.
In a way, I’ve accepted negative, not as a deal breaker for life, but as an essential aspect no one escapes. Acceptance made things less tragic, understanding brought about peace of mind and permission to allow the negative in right along side the positive brought an achievable balance.
Your post reaffirmed all my ways of going through life in a nicely structured thought!
Rebecca
I always view unhappiness as my guardian angel saying, something ain’t right here kiddo, go fix it. ie, it’s a signpost to me that I need to re-evaluate my current situation and proactively choose to improve it.
Makes life much simpler.
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Rebecca~ Well-said! That’s precisely the realization I’ve come to, and I find it very empowering. I love the idea of realistic positive thinking: accepting reality as it is, and working with it to create positive change.
Barbara~ Another positive spin on a traditionally negative idea–love it!
I have to say, I agree with you that discontent is worth leveraging. I think the boundaries that define happiness in our society are so blurry that we have to find a way to draw our own. For me, the separation of happiness and satisfaction is workable and it’s what keeps me moving in the right direction without falling into those bad mental spots more often than is effective or useful.
I appreciate dissatisfaction and think we should continue using it to grow ourselves. No cures needed. As always, great post!
Not much to say other than I completely agree with it. Being unhappy because you don’t have that extra step (amount of money, new car, popular, expensive clothes) can lead to emptiness and while unsatisfaction can be used to empower you, emptiness is never the correct motivation because it can lead to bitter feelings and hate if you were to succeed using it as a motivator. Hard part about changing the unsatisfied things in your life that you can control is it’s not always easy. Then again if life was easy there would probably be no satisfaction even if you had everything and you’d be always empty inside. So basically reiterating the post is the same as stating my opinion.
Nice post Lori. I sent you this link (http://is.gd/pI2V) before I read this post, but it’s cool that they are related. It helps make that first cure very attainable (with lots more value) in just a couple hundred pages. Easily one of the most life changing books I’ve read. Plus, it was written in the mid-70s and uses words like “groovy” … very cool.
As far as the relationship between happiness and satisfaction, I’m not sure there is a correlation for me. I’m happy 98+% of the time and when I’m not, I recognize it’s my choice. Then I quickly get the source of the unhappiness so I can learn more about myself and avoid it in the future.
I also consider myself very satisfied about most aspects of my life. Of course that doesn’t mean I’m complacent – there is always more good I can do. Reaching higher levels of positive impact is life journey, a mission … meaning. My effectiveness in influencing positive results fluctuates, but … actually … I tend to be more effective, the happier I am. Hmm … looks like there is a correlation for me. Whadda ya know
Theresa~ Thanks for commenting! I love this: “For me, the separation of happiness and satisfaction is workable and it’s what keeps me moving in the right direction without falling into those bad mental spots more often than is effective or useful.”
Mike~ Good point about emptiness as a motivator. I remember when I was younger I had a large void that I spent all my time trying to fill. As I’m sure you can imagine, nothing filled it. Nowadays there are a lot of things I’d like to change or improve, but I’m happy on the whole, regardless.
Don~ Thank you for that link! I actually haven’t read that book, but now I will definitely check it out.
Lori, as usual an excellent piece. I like the effortless way you are able to make meaningful distinctions between seemingly identical concepts. The difference you note between unhappiness and dissatisfaction is a powerful distinction. One breeds progress and the other leads to emptiness, and not the good kind of emptiness either:)
The power of your post is in your uncanny ability to turn the apparent paradox of dissatisfaction into an opportunity for progress. Just being able to recognize it can be an sublime awakening.
Thanks for sharing. I have progressed in a meaningful way just by reading it.
Ken
Good post, though I would caution people to distinguish between healthy dissatisfaction and unhealthy dissatisfaction — the latter, of course, leading to things like wanting to be as thin as a Barbie doll, or wanting to smoke just to look “cool.”
Ken~ I’m glad you found this post useful! I find sometimes the smallest shift in my thought process makes the biggest difference in my life.
Thomas~ It’s so important to make the distinction between healthy and unhealthy dissatisfaction, particularly for children. I definitely don’t want to encourage dangerous behaviors, so thank you for pointing this out!
Another great post Lori! As I have gotten older, I much more content with less. In my 20’s I was consumed with “having.” I can’t believe the stuff I had…and the importance on put on it. Today, I am happy with filp-flops, yoga pants and a cute tee (it has to be cute…lol). I am so much more fulfilled with my blog and photography. Simple is better. Less is more.
[...] Channel your discontent into an immediate positive action—make some calls about new job opportunities, or walk to the [...]