Contentment is for Cows
How this destructive mindset blocks us from flourishing and how to flip the script
In my last post, I critiqued the belief that we should optimize mental health - in other words, the belief that pursuing Always Better, Always Happier, and Always Healthier is the only way to flourish. This optimization mindset is pervasive and almost always backfires to make us less effective, less happy, and less healthy.
There’s another mindset that blocks flourishing. It’s about what the Good Life is supposed to feel like.
I had a friend once who, in her early 20’s, was wrestling with the challenges we all face: How do I feel good in the world? How do I find love? How do I do what I love? She was talking to her mother about it one day and said “Mom, I just want to find peace. I want to be content.”
Her mother, without skipping a beat, answered, “Contentment is for cows.”
This story has stayed with me for over three decades. It’s still the best example I have of the destructive mindset that enough is never good enough.
Indeed, many of us believe, consciously or unconsciously, that contentment is for losers. Only cattle would settle for enough, because enough = less. Contentment is not for those of us who have aspirations, who are ambitious, who want to do something with our life. Contentment is failure, because the Good Life is for those who always strive for the peaks and the highs, who strive to feel happy and be better.
Is this down-grading of contentment warranted? All signs point to no.
A recent study showed that one of the biggest predictors of satisfaction, self-acceptance, better relationships, autonomy, and purpose in life wasn’t happiness - it was how much contentment people felt.
They dug deeper to find out why this might be. They randomly assigned 300 young adults to recall and write about an experience of either contentment, pride, or joy (to induce those feelings). They found that contented people felt the most accepting of themselves and most able to accept the good and bad sides of their lives. Acceptance, an essential source of resilience, was only weakly linked to pride and joy.
We have some profound misunderstandings about contentment. Contentment is not settling for less. Far from it. It’s having the discernment to know what you value, what matters most, what makes life worth living, and what gives energy rather than takes it away. As some scholars have described, it’s ‘perceived completeness, …the perception that the present situation is enough and entire.’
This is not a lack. This is fullness. That’s why contentment feels so good. It clues us into the reality that Psychology has long taught: Mental health is not the presence of peak happiness or the absence of distress, but rather: ‘A state of well-being in which the individual realizes his or her own abilities, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully, and is able to make a contribution to his or her community’ [1].
In other words, mental health is flexibility, contributing to others, and knowing we can work to make things good. Mental health is not peak performance or blissful pleasure. It’s not even happiness.
The amazing thing about contentment, as suggested by the study I described above, is that it’s one of the things that is most likely to promote what we’re chasing: happiness and resilience. In other words, amplifying contentment breeds enduring happiness, whereas the opposite is not true: amplifying happiness does not breed enduring contentment.
Contentment is like the energy you get from complex carbohydrates rather than downing a bag of chips: it’s lasting and sustaining, gives you strength and promotes excellence, and doesn’t boomerang back with devastating lows. Going for blissful happiness is just another way to chase dopamine. It’s the bag of chips all the way, with all the downsides.
Amplifying contentment breeds enduring happiness, whereas the opposite is not true: amplifying happiness does not breed enduring contentment.
Contentment is perhaps the most under-rated positive emotion.
The forces working against the valuing of contentment are legion. You can hear the steady drumbeat of their march, almost like a soundtrack to our lives:
Be happier. Try harder. Be more productive. Be more confident. Learn to say no. Be more mindful. Be smarter. Heal your relationships. Have more orgasms. Reduce the clutter. Optimize your laundry to be fresher and cleaner.
The lyrics change, but the song remains the same: Better better better better ra ta tum ra ta tum better better. It’s a never-ending loop, on topics both trivial and serious, so unrelenting it’s almost ridiculous.
So we dance to the tune. We read the books and follow the tips. We listen to the podcasts, sign up for the gym membership. We work harder and do more, even when we’re not sure why. And, so help me God, we’re finally going to get those kids off screens.
This endless loop of advice and solutions eventually exhausts and distracts. You still feel overwhelmed, and you trust yourself less. There are so many life hacks that we have to use lifehacks to stop using so many lifehacks.
Contentment is nowhere to be found.
If you feel like you’re stuck, marching to this drumbeat; if you’re not finding that happiness you seek; or if life just doesn’t feel enough or complete, consider trying this:
When you’re feeling overwhelmed, just for a moment, stop. Stop doing. Stop fixing. Stop envisioning, planning, or striving. Ask yourself, ‘What is the one thing in this situation that matters the most to me?’ Picture yourself holding on to that thing. Hold on so tightly that you can only hold on to that, so that you have to put down everything else. Put down all the things that aren’t relevant, that annoy you, that scare you. Put them down. That one thing you’re still holding onto, that’s the source of contentment. It will point you to the essential thing you need to protect and elevate.
Choose your next action in total and complete support of that and nothing else.
This past year, one of my children was really struggling emotionally. At first, I jumped into action. I did all the things: therapy for all, self-help activities at home, talking and journaling. Meanwhile, I felt like an abject failure - as a parent and as a psychologist.
But instead of things getting better, they got worse. My child’s distress remained high, they isolated themselves more, trusted me less, and constantly argued and resisted.
One day, we had a terrible argument and they screamed, “You’re ashamed of me! It’s always about you! You always get your way!” They were right. I was trying to control everything so that we could ‘get to happy’ and ‘get to productive.’
So I paused. I stopped doing all the things I was doing in the effort to help. Instead of my frenetic fixing, I created space to understand what actually mattered in this moment. Was it figuring out what was wrong? Was it ‘fixing’ my child? Was it assuaging my guilt? I was acting like those were the essential things, but they weren’t.
The primary, most essential thing was for my child to cease feeling alone in their struggle. They needed me to be in the metaphorical basement with them, abiding with their deepest despair, fears, and confusion. There were other things that needed to happen, but unless this one thing started to happen, nothing else could.
So I put down everything else and focused on that.
That’s when things started to change. How do I describe how we changed? Was everything perfect? Were we terribly happy? Was the family running like a well-oiled machine? No. Definitely not.
But I knew we were changing for the better because we had more moments of contentment.
Thanks so much and I love your comment! I am a big fan of awe in particular. The science on it is quite good and I highly recommend Dacher Keltner’s book Awe. I think it’s awe that we look to when we really center in on what makes us most human. I’m not sure about joy. Is it just an even more intense version of happiness? I do appreciate how it’s being used politically to reframe our priorities.
I had a thought -I agree so much on how our not achieving ecstatic positive emotions can make us feel less than. And? from a mindfulness point of view, I have appreciated the insight of accepting and watching a positive emotion come and go rather than thinking positive emotions are a higher state of being that should be sustained constantly. I have been wondering about a couple positive emotions lately - joy and awe - and what you think about this - 1) joy as political and healing and worth recognizing as a superpower, like at the democratic convention; and 2) awe as an emotion which has the potential to heal if one’s attention skills to it can be further developed. Like, I’ve been exploring how in context of political oppression of refugees - how awe can often be a driving and healing force.