Living with Contentment, Joy and Ego
We all need to be aware that there are differences between short term interest and long-term interest and the consequences of both. And that the long-term interest in anything is far more important than the short term
It serves us to remember there is no absolute and everything is relative.
We must be able to judge according to the circumstances and our experiences and feelings are mainly related to our bodies and our minds. It is wise to remember that mental happiness and mental calmness is beneficial and to consider that, although two people may face the same kind of tragedy or situation or scenario. One person will face it more easily than the other, due to their own mental attitude, abilities and coping mechanisms.
If you really want to live a happy life, then it is important to pursue internal and external means, and what do I mean by that? Personal development and material possessions and that is not something you will hear me say very often, but we can be as personally developed as we can possibly be and if we do not have a roof, over our head, food on the table, and warmth when it is freezing cold outside, then will we be truly happy?
There are complete and alternate levels of materialism, which is something I have to admit I have become very aware of in recent years. As much as we need personal development, and we need material possessions, we also need spiritual development. Spiritual development does not necessarily link to religious faith.
Spiritual development can relate to the core basic human qualities and characteristics of someone who lives with ethics and morals for a good life, doing good for themselves and for others.
We all have the same human potential unless we have a physical or mental impairment and even with a mental or physical impairment, we have huge potential to become far more than we currently are. When we utilise that potential in the right direction, and we utilise the brilliance of the human mind and body and soul, we can create magic rather than creating disasters.
We can create happy lives for ourselves, and we can also help and support others to create their happy life and that we all have a natural creative ability – we do we sometimes just have to find the switch and turn it on
We need to realise our own potential and accept our own potential and then build if we do not already have it, the self-confidence in our own ability and potential.
Self-confidence is not something that comes to many naturally. Self-confidence is something that can be built, it can be developed, and it can be managed. We can all develop from where we are to where we need to be when we live with our future in mind. We become the person we need to be to achieve the thing that we want to achieve.
We create balance or imbalance in our own lives and recognising that everything is in balance is an important first lesson in creating a happy life
As a very simple example, if we do not smile, how would we and why would we expect others to smile at us? Most of our outcomes and our results originate from within and what we put out into the world, generally speaking, is what we receive back. Coming back to the smile, it is illogical to expect smiles from others if we do not smile.
One of the first stages to living a happy life is self-awareness and what do I mean by that?
Being aware of:
- Our own behaviours,
- Our own thoughts,
- Our own habits,
- Our own unconscious and conscious driving forces
Which allows us to make judgments, which allow us to change our behaviours, which allow us to assess and rationalise the situation.
Why would we do that? When we think and rationalise, we can think about the potential for our own benefit and the benefit of others and choose how to respond rather than react.
Self-awareness and self-confidence do not always mean that we have to be right. And that the thing we are doing and are looking at we are assessing; we are reviewing; has to be a win for us regardless of any other situation and the other people in the scenario.
As much as I don’t particularly like the phrase win-win. It is something that when we think about win-win and utilise the concept appropriately. Many situations that aren’t currently a win-win can become one and, believe it or not, on occasions, we don’t have to win, we can lose. As long as, we are losing with a conscious forethought of mind, it can help all parties to lead a happier life. Our losing is our win in our eyes and that is what is important, not what we think others may be thinking.
Remember, everything is in balance. We win, we lose, we win-win
Now let’s think about self-confidence? When we chose to balance that out on a spectrum what is the balance, it could be conceit or it could be pride. Or it could be lack of confidence
One leads to good results, and the others potentially lead to not so good results for very different reasons
Maybe this is the point to actually say one of the things that very often comes up in these types of conversations.
People are told they have an ego and the ego got in the way.
Let’s have a think about this. We all have ego, all of us, it is neither good nor bad, lets look at what it actually means
An ego is a person’s sense of self-esteem, self-importance, self-confidence, self-image, self-worth
Our Ego is the part of the mind that mediates between the conscious and the unconscious and is responsible for our reality testing and a provides us with a sense of personal identity.
We need our ego to allow us to continue. We need our ego to get us through things.
Ego is not necessarily bad and it is not necessarily good. Everything is in balance; everything is on a spectrum. One part of my ego says, and my phrase is, ‘I seek to serve’, where another part of my ego says, I really can’t be bothered to do that today and I am just going to look after myself.
Now, if either one of those egos continuously, wins, for want of a better word, I continuously sought to serve, what would happen to myself, and if I continuously only thought of myself, because I couldn’t be bothered, what would happen?
So once again, I’ll say it and I’ll say it again and again, everything is in balance, when we are out of balance, it can lead to an unhappy life, then a life where we are in balance and happy, we have the ups and the downs, we have the rights and the wrongs, we have the for and the against.
How do we obtain happiness, when you really think about it, what is another word for happiness, happiness could be that great old belly laugh, where we really do throw any caution we may have to the wind, and express ourselves in absolute pure joy, of finding something funny and laughing with it, not against people, but with the thing from the pure joy of that childhood state of pleasure, and fun.
If you think about being happy, much of that comes from the fact that we are content with our lot, we are content with where we are, we are content within our relationships, we are content.
Now of course, contentment and comfortableness can be a preface to not growing, not developing and that may cause discontent – it is an interesting life we lead when we truly think about it in all its glory.
To grow and to develop through personal development, we need to be slightly discontent with where we currently are, which then takes us to change and how do we do that?
You will have heard me say it and I will say it again nothing sits in isolation.
Remember we are in balance, if we are content, we will also be discontented. If we are happy, we will also be unhappy and for us as the human being that we are – it is all around and all about how we balance everything in our life and not get hooked into the negative or hooked into the positive without remaining in balance.
Life is a joy and life is beauty and getting that balance right or wrong, as we ultimately do, and recognising when it is right and when it is wrong leads me to ask you:
- What do you feed your own mind?
That leads to thinking about and believing in a happy life, a contented life whilst acknowledging that neither will be 100% of the time. We will not be 100% happy or 100% unhappy, and that will be we will be on occasions discontented or contented – It is perfectly normal and to be expected
Let me give you an example of something that happened to me the other day and it could have affected my day, it could have affected my next hour, and I didn’t allow it to. I managed to break two, not one, but two crystal champagne glasses the other morning, they fell off a work surface onto the floor, and smashed.
Now, I will say they were beautiful crystal champagne glasses, and, with a smile on my face, I was not drinking at 9am in the morning, they were on the side to be hand washed from the night before. In fact, the two nights before, because I hadn’t done the washing up that day.
Now, I could have chosen to allow that scenario, that situation to make me very unhappy, I could have allowed that situation that scenario to make me become angry and I could have allowed it to last for a chunk of the day
‘Please remember, nobody can make you do anything. Nobody can make you feel anything it is an absolute choice we make.’
As much as I was, in that initial moment, angry at myself, because I had knocked them over nobody else did that, I can only accept personal responsibility for my action. I could have in that moment, been very discontented and very unhappy. They were nice glasses and for that split second and maybe a little bit longer than a split second, I was very angry with myself for being so stupid as to knock two glasses from a counter and allow them to smash on the floor.
With the greater good and the greater vision and the greater everything in my mind. What’s the point of being angry? What’s the point of being annoyed with me? What’s the point of being unhappy? Over two glasses? What is the point? Yes, they are beautiful and yes, they have served and yes, I have enjoyed them and yes, they can be replaced at a cost, if I choose to.
They are a material object and when we replace material objects, of course, the economy of the world goes round. There is balance in everything we do.
There is balancing everything we think when we are in charge of, and in control of, our own thought processes.
This article is from an episode of the and has taken a bit of a different route and I trust it is allowing you to think about what goes on for you.
What triggers your emotions?- What triggers your thought processes?
- What triggers your happiness or unhappiness?
- What triggers your contentment or discontent?
- What triggers your anger or your joy?
Remember, everything will be in balance one way or the other at some point. That’s not a prediction of doom, gloom, and despondency. It’s a prediction of things happen, life happens for good and not so good
I wrote an article the other day, around the concept of life is a mess, life is messy. We go from one mess to the next mess.
There can be two people facing the same mess and dependent on the individual. One will look at it and think that’s okay, I can deal with that. Whereas the other one will look at it and collapse into a heap.
We are all through our own perception, personal development, self-development, wisdom, knowledge, intelligence, whatever you want to call it our experiences throughout life. We are all capable of far more than we can possibly know, and it is our duty to not only serve ourselves, but also to serve others, enabling them to be the best version of themselves they can possibly be.
Sometimes that is allowing and creating a shine in others rather than ourselves. We can put others first not ourselves and then on occasions of course we put ourselves first and not others and for some of us that is a big lesson to learn.
All of everything combined, enable us to be happy, enables us to be content, enables us to be in balance with the world and with the other people in it.
There is a reason for everything, and things and people come into our lives for a reason, for a season or for a lifetime, not everything is permanent, and not everything is impermanent.
Everything is in balance or will be in balance regardless of what happens when – we can all have a life of joy and happiness when we are prepared to realise, we do deserve it and we are the creative genius that we are.