This is a big struggle for me personally…the idea contentment or Santosha, one of the niyamas in yoga philosophy. It’s taking me a lot longer to even write this blog about contentment due to my own resistance to it! But I must remember that these yoga philosophies are a lifelong practice. Progress not perfection, right?
For me, contentment was laziness, not challenging or growing yourself, not having goals, not striving to be great, etc. I am type ‘A’. I don’t like to sit still and I love to learn. I am always responsible and trustworthy. My husband has said to me, “I can’t imagine you ever acted like a kid, even when you were a kid.” So I am sure my face looked totally disgusted when my best friend said to me, “I wish you could just be content.” Yikes! But this isn’t what contentment is all about. What has helped me is to understand the difference between contentment and complacency. My memories, beliefs, and experiences had intertwined these two words.
What Is Santosha or Contentment?
In Brene Brown’s Atlas of the Heart, contentment is defined as the feeling of completeness, appreciation and “enoughness” that we experience when our needs are satisfied. The Sanskirt word Santosha is divided into two parts: sam, meaning completely, and tosha, meaning acceptance, satisfaction, and contentment. Santosha asks us to look within ourselves to find balance and to appreciate what we already have in our lives.
Contentment vs. Complacency
Complacency is self-satisfaction especially when accompanied by unawareness of actual dangers or deficiencies. Complacency stems from a place of unawareness while contentment requires self-awareness and understanding what really is true in your life. Due to this lack of self-awareness, complacent people can have an inaccurate self-evaluation and may choose goals that are unrealistic or unsatisfying. This can lead to lower achievement and satisfaction. Content people pick life goals that are realistic and that utilize their skills. They find satisfaction simultaneously in work and enjoyment. Their contentment doesn’t limit their achievements but can propel them toward accomplishment.
Seeing Things As Neutral
My definition of contentment above came from my past stories. Stories past down to me by my family, friends, and that I cultivated through personal experiences. We all have our own stories or our own ‘lens’ that we view life through. Santosha invites us to see things as neutral and as the moment truly is. For example, a lot of us have perceptions about money. Money can buy happinesss. Rich people have it made. Or in Biggie’s lens, ‘mo money, mo problems’. But money is paper. It has no value or story or lens until we put one on it. The other part of seeing things as neutral is to remain calm and balanced even when the moment isn’t going the way you expected it to or the way you think it should go. There is only the present moment. When we are in that moment, the moment is complete.
Loving the Shadow Side
We all have doubts, fears, and parts of ourselves that we may not like, love, or appreciate. Santosha asks us to look at our shadow side without judgement. We need the light and the dark in life even though we may not like it when we are in the low spots. But if you look back at your life, the parts that challenged you are usually the parts that changed you and helped you grow.
If/When Scenario
How many times have we thought or heard someone say…
“If I had as much money as X, then I would be happy.”
“When I get my raise, I will be happy at my job.”
“If I could lose 20 pounds, I will be worthy of ____________.” “When I find the right person to love me, I will be complete.”
“When I get this promotion, I will be able to slow down and not kill myself at work.”
Dangerous, but we all do it! I created an if/when scenario with building my yoga business. I thought, “If I get more certifications and go through more trainings, then I will be more confident to teach others.” Am I more knowledgeable? Yes of course, but not more confident. The confidence has come from me exploring more of what resistance or old conditioning makes me feel that way. And then, actually getting out there and teaching has been invaluable to me.
And what happens when we get to the scenario that we were hoping for or working for? We move onto the next thing. It’s a momentary high and if we don’t take the time to savor it, then we quickly move on to the next if/when scenario. In Deborah Adele’s The Yamas & Niyamas, she shares a Chinese proverb:
“People in the west are always getting ready to live.”
We are always future tripping and can’t wait to get there. We can’t wait to go on vacation to relax, to get a bigger house to entertain more, to become an adult and make our own decisions, etc. We expect when we “arrive” at one of these points in our lives or we acquire what we view as success that our problems will be solved.
The Comparison Game
Our modern world can keep us out of contentment when we allow ourselves to get swept up in the marketing game or scrolling through social media. We are bombarded by images, ads, and commercials that may make us feel like we need more things or better things. We see someone on our feed that looks like they are having the best vacation of their lives, but we all know that isn’t always reality. People will show you what they want you to see on social media. When we look outside of ourselves for contentment, we look at our lives and see lack and scarcity. We are allowing others to control our happiness. Unless we seek inside ourselves for our own personal contentment then we will never be content because we are chasing a moving target of what the next best thing is.
Seeking Outside Ourselves
Or we seek outside ourselves for contentment instead of appreciating what we already have right now! We look to our jobs, our friends, and our partners to make us happy. We are giving away our contentment to someone else or something else. What if we used all the energy we used to compare and look outside ourselves we used to explore within? What if we didn’t wait to feel the feeling we think we will have when we achieve the goal or get the thing we want? What if we allow ourselves to feel that feeling right now?! Robert Emmons, world’s leading scientific expert on gratitude says, “Instead of adapting to goodness, we celebrate goodness.” Meaning once the newness of something we once wanted and finally get wears off, we still appreciate it in our life.
Gratitude to Battle Discontentment
We stay in contentment by cultivating gratitude. Research shows that gratitude is linked to better sleep, increased creativity, decreased entitlement, decreased hostility and aggression, increased decision-making skills and decreased blood pressure. Practicing gratitude for what we have in our lives help us stay out of comparison and seeking more. Deborah Adele states, “Practicing gratitude protects us from our own pettiness and smallness and keeps us centered in the joy and abundance of our own life.” I do this daily in my morning routine. I write down 10 things I appreciate about my life that morning. Sometimes things are the same from day to day and sometimes they are different. For example, coffee, a good night’s sleep, my safe home, my son being home from college, whatever comes to mind! It is a nice way to start your morning, but you can do it any time of day or night.
Much love & health,
Carrie
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