On the morning of the New Year, I woke up with a very peculiar resolution on my heart: “This year, I want to be happy.” The resolution seemed so dark and light at the same time. But what I did know was that one of the most important decisions in life is to be happy no matter what because life will throw curve balls at you no matter what. About a week later, I voiced out my resolution during a team meeting. Almost everyone laughed but only a few must have truly understood the intentionality and sacrifice required to attain happiness; genuine contentment.
When you’ve been blessed with the opportunity to experience a few wins, most people assume that you’re naturally content. What they may not realize is that your subtle fascination with comparison blinds you from appreciating how far you’ve come. What they may never know is that contentment became a far stretch for you when you stopped practicing gratitude for the cards you’ve been dealt with. What consoles you today is the haven you’ve built in the future but your unpaid dues continue to drag you into an unforgiving past.
As I reflected on my resolution, I stumbled upon a post in which the entrepreneur described his 2022 simply as ‘contentment.’ He was content not because he lacked ambition but because he found PEACE on his journey. The more I pondered the post, the better I understood that when you find peace with the path you’ve chosen, everything you deserve somehow mushrooms together for your greater good. Economists may call it the invisible hand, I call it Divine Intervention.
Most of us have a lucid image of the life we are certain will birth contentment. Until we can attain that dream, nothing seems to suppress the hunger that continues to germinate within. Well reality check; if you can never be content with the little you’ve been given today, you will never be content no matter how much more you attain tomorrow. You can only break free from this cycle of desperation when you discover peace on your own and practice gratitude. ‘Cause fam, being content has everything to do with your state of mind and so little to do with your burning desire. Stress less.