Tag: discontentment

Having your cake and eating it

Posted on by philipdodson

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Rather than getting off the fence, we all too often want our ‘cake and eat it’.

Simply put we want the best of both worlds, we don’t want to feel like we’re missing out on something. So we try hard to achieve too many things all at once, hoping that we can have everything all at the same time.

The thing is, you can have your ‘cake and eat it’ if you focus on what you already have. Most of us already have all that we need in life, yet we expend a huge amount of energy on trying to get things we don’t have or actually don’t need.

What we need, is not more money or possessions, it’s belonging, love, kindness, to feel worthy, people, friends, family and memories of activities we did with the people who matter.

If you realise you will always have the ‘cake’ every day, it’s there because you are choosing happiness and contentment with what you have.

Then you can ‘eat’ and the next day it will be replenished by your mindset, there will be another ‘cake’. We can create all the ‘cakes’ we need. We just need to accept that, be content and enjoy what we have.

Discontent is the tool of the industrialised system to lead us to constantly want more, it is how we feel we are able to reach contentment and happiness. Keep getting more and more. It’s a myth.

Happiness and acceptance of what we have are the perfect antidotes to discontent and feeling inadequate.

We only want the best of both worlds when we are striving for things we don’t have and actually don’t need.

Accept what you have and be happy.

Step off the discontentment treadmill

Posted on by philipdodson

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Today, I am at my monthly mastermind group that I go to in Birmingham, run by my coach Debbie.

We wrote some things down on notes a few months back that we were grateful for. While eating lunch we went through what we wrote.

My three were:

1. I’m alive (thankfully I still am!!)

2. I have great friend(s) and family (apparently adding the ‘s’ was getting carried away)

3. I have all that I need.

Number 3 is what matters to all that we focus on in life.

If we all take a moment to look at what we have, instead of the programmed assessment of what we do not have, then it is amazing how differently life looks.

I would be bold enough to say that the vast majority of us already have everything that we need in life, and once you focus all your energies on what you have, and stop being pulled down by what you do not, then your whole mindset will change to a totally positive outlook on life.

That’s where I have been for a while now, and it is so liberating to think only about the things that you have and forget all that list of things that you are discontented about not having.

The consumption driven industrialised world has trained us all to be discontented and the only way to become contented is to work hard for all these things, material things, that we do not have.

We are lead to believe by owning yet more and more things, most of which will fill the landfill, it will make us content. Yet once we have that new shiny thing, there is always another thing that we do not have, and so the cycle continues.

So step off the consumption and discontentment treadmill, and choose to focus on what you already have. I guarantee that you will be happier, more fulfilled and successful in achieving the meaningful things in life.