Finding Contentment This Holiday Season!
Posted on November 25, 2019 by Johanna Underwood, One of Thousands of Money and Finance Coaches on Noomii.
Contentment can be an elusive skill, especially during the holiday season when shopping and gift-giving (and getting) can steal the spotlight.
Finding Contentment
Contentment can be an elusive skill when we live in a world that is saturated with images of “perfect” homes and lifestyles, especially during this time of the year. “Keeping up with the Joneses” has never been a truer statement.
Why is Contentment Important?
While money can buy us a lot of fun things, it ultimately cannot buy us true happiness or fulfillment. A great question I have heard Rachel Cruze ask before is whether she would be the same person if she all her “stuff” was stripped away, and she had to live a much more humble lifestyle.
The trap that many of us fall into is believing that ownership of certain things will make us happier or make our lives better in some way, whether its a new car or that new and larger television set or even something as innocent as that new dress you’ve been eyeing. What gets us in trouble financially is that, after a period of time, the newness and excitement of that purchase wears off and we go in search of its replacement that we believe will fill that void within us. This vicious cycle is what feeds into shopping addictions, as well as emotional shoppers.
Contentment is not a lack of caring – you can still have goals and push towards those while being content with the season of life you are in right now. For instance, my husband and I are working on paying down our student loan debts and are making sacrifices in our lifestyle to achieve that. While we are dissatisfied with our current level of debt, we seek contentment by focusing on what we do have rather than what we don’t.
How Do I Find Contentment?
A great way that several successful individuals I follow practice gratitude is through journaling. Even if it is taking a few minutes at the end of the day to write down in detail a few things that happened today that you are grateful for, it starts to put you in a mindset where you are daily looking for those things to be grateful for, rather than what we find frustrating or lacking. It is a mindset shift.
Another recommendation I have heard and tested is through service to others. When we give more of our money and, especially, our time, we stop focusing on ourselves and the things that we wished we could have. I noticed this personally within my marriage. When I am focused on myself, I get frustrated over things such as the dishes piling up or the garbage overflowing – chores that he chose to take responsibility for. When that is my focus, it becomes a larger problem than it really is. Several times over the last couple of weeks I have, instead, gone into my day with the question, “What can I do to serve my husband today?” One of those days was doing the dishes for him, because they were piling up again and I knew he had a busy evening and would be home late. And you know what? I didn’t mind doing the dishes for him after all. In fact, I felt pretty good about expressing my love for him in that way (and it was nice not to have something to fight over before bed, too).
When we are focused on serving others, our own momentary wants and desires fade into the background, and we find a more genuine happiness than what those purchases would have brought to us.
The overall payoff? Not only do content people find a greater level of satisfaction in their lives, but they tend to win with money, too! Contented people make the sacrifices needed to reach their financial goals – and that feeling of achievement far outweighs the momentary discomfort we felt when we denied ourselves the instant gratification of the item you thought you wanted or even needed.
How will you pursue contentment today?
