Happiness is often equal to the amount of gratitude I have, at any given time, that my needs are being met; while sadness being equal to the degree in which I have confused my wants with my needs.
Needs are items such as food, water, and shelter. If I do not get them, I will die. Wants and desires are things which I “think” will make my life better and/or bring me happiness. No matter what the price, many people spend their lives striving to obtain their wants, and yet still never find true inner-peace and happiness.
Think about the last thing you really wanted and obtained. For me, it was new laptops for both me and my wife. Oh yeah, and a camera too. Once we had those things, we were set. We eventually got them, now I want a bigger TV. I don’t need one, the one, I mean four, we have work fine.
Wants and desires are always changing. Always. When I am truly in gratitude and look at my life, I realize my needs are always provided for. And it’s when I’m in this place that I’m most serene. My spiritual growth and strength has more potential when I’m in a state of gratitude. You’ll hear a lot of people say that pain is the touchstone to all spiritual growth. I do not believe it has to be, but more often then not, pain is the only thing which motivates significant change; resulting in real spiritual growth.
So why are my desires constantly changing? Because I’m looking for happiness outside myself. I do think many desires can be useful, they drive me to become better at many things. For instance, I do have a desire to become a better friend, husband, son, and brother. Do I work as hard at those things as I do at building income to purchase material things? Probably not. But you know what? I do work at them, and that’s more than I could say for myself many years ago. Heck, I wouldn’t have considered this conversation with myself before. So I guess I’m making progress. It’s when I use these desires to obtain more than I naturally deserve that they become counterproductive to spiritual growth.
The key is to recognize that our desires will never be met, yet our needs are always provided for. The fact that all of you are sitting somewhere reading this is proof of that.
So the next time you think about something you don’t have, turn it around and find gratitude for something you do have!
I leave you today with a quote by James Allen, it’s up to you to decide what it means. I’m not real sure myself. Since I’ve read his book, As a Man Thinketh
You will become as small as your controlling desire; as great as your dominant aspiration.
-James Allen
What does this quote mean to you?
photo credit: jonlarge
{ 15 comments… read them below or add one }
I’ve been teetering on the edge of going minimalist more and more and lately that’s been my biggest “want” – to have as little material possessions as I can get by with. The hardest part for me is trying to convince my family that it really does make life easier.
Great post :)
Chelle,
Thanks for stopping by! That’s really great that you bring this up, my wife and I are going through the same thing. Last week we went through all our closets and took out everything we haven’t worn in a year. Bagged them all up and donated them. Next it’s the shoes then we’re going room to room. Think about all the stuff we have that hasn’t been touched in a year… someone could be using that you know? Maybe someone out there needs that and it’s just sitting in my house collecting dust. Our goal is to get rid of as much as possible. The upside also is when we move to the beach someday, we’ll have less to sell. ;-)
First reading your comments, de-cluttering is a great way to make room for serenity; I still live with a lot of clutter but each time I make headway with reducing it, the results enrich my life. Chelle, I think your ‘want’ in this case is a good one – like Jared’s for his family friendships.
For me the quote means that you must first let go of things you don’t have control over – for instance, my husband and I are still waiting for the Ministry of Education here to place his daughter who at late notice moved over here from St. Lucia – school starts Tuesday – 27 other kids are also in this situation, none of us parents can do anything about it so stressing over that uniforms are going to run out, books too etc, serves no purpose but to reduce our power to use out time and abilities do useful things in this time.
The second part I believe is intended about your dreams – dreams lead us to do things greater than we thought we could, and I agree with that but my experience also keeps sending me down the path of believing we are as great as the things we actually do.
Finola,
It is funny, seems like I’ve spent most of my life trying to acquire things and I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to get rid of it all!
Ah yes, accepting the things we cannot change! And as the prayer goes, “and the wisdom to know the difference.” I agree, that when I’m worried about something I have no control over, I am not able to be useful to myself or anyone else in the moment.
Thanks for the comments.
Thought provoking. For somebody like me though, it usually doesn’t take much. :)
For some crazy reason, and maybe it’s because perhaps I never REALLY settled this issue, at fifty-something years old, I’m having a major identity crisis.
Yeah, yeah, I know all the stuff about mid-life crisis, menopause-induced crisis, etc. But, it’s deeper than that. Like reeeeally deep. It’s way beyond the ‘who am I and what am I doing thing’. Or maybe not.
It’s about reconnecting with what I once believed were my deepest spiritual beliefs. One of the downsides of being a “thinker” is that your belief system is always getting rearranged somehow. I hate that. :)
Nothing is more stressful than to realize you’re in the middle of questioning every damn thing you ever thought was true or right.
Yet, here I am. Doing just that. Recently, the notion of thankfulness rose to the top of my myriad of thoughts and I realized just how ungrateful and unthankful I have become. Like horribly bitter unthankful. It occurred to me that I have spent the last 20 years of my stinkin’ life filling it up with shit to keep from thinking about how miserable I was. Nice clothes. Nice TV’s. Nice computers (I have more than 3 ), Nice house. (Big-ass mortgage) and a really nice car (which now has freakin’ dings all over it)
The years that I was the happiest was when I was a total minimalist bohemian. My transportation was a 68 VW Beetle (God I loved that car) a Raliegh Marathon road bike and my feet.
I didn’t own a house, much furniture and never spent more than 20 minutes per day (if that much) sitting on my butt in front of a television. I was free of encumberments and able to give myself over to more Godly and spiritual things. I wore the same clothes over and over and over again and NEVER felt I needed something new. It just never crossed my mind.
Now, I have no problems with money, “things” or the acquisition of them. But ’stuff’, just like drugs, alcohol et.al, can be nothing more than a big fat distraction.
I think it’s possible to be wealthy, materially comfortable and prosperous and thankful as well. It’s definately a mind set and takes an incredible amount of work. But, if you think about it, our generation has more leisure time than any others before us. Perhaps we ought to use it cleaning our mental house instead of fussing over our physical house so much.
Great post. thanks for giving me a venue to “vent” this morning.
Magnolia,
Thanks for the great comments! I went through a shift several years ago when I surrendered and went in to treatment for the 3rd time. I left behind any belief system I may have had and any idea of what I thought I knew about life. I left it all behind and started at ground zero. It was scary, but also liberating as well. I still remember the day… I was out of treatment and living in a halfway house, I had been going to a ton of meetings and had a sponsor and was working the steps, I was pulling into a gas station and had this overwhelming feeling that I had no clue what my life was suppose to be about anymore. For most of my life I had this “fantasy” in my head of what my life would look like when I had “made it” or reached what I thought was successful. It involved a Porsche, a loft overlooking a great skyline, a beautiful wife, and at the top of my game professionally. I gave up on that idea and realized I had no clue on how to live life. BUT, what I did have was this overwhelming feeling of peace and serenity. The knowing deep in my heart that if I just kept it simple, lived each day doing the next right thing, trusting in whatever higher power I was beginning to know through the steps, go to meetings, and trust my sponsor, that no matter what happened, everything was going to be OK. I just felt it in my soul and believed it to be true.
Sure, ever since then at times my faith has wavered, I too am a thinker. Early on I was told to “stay out of my head.” Of course I had no idea how to do that. I’ve learned since that I can do that by moving my feet and helping someone else… seeing where I can be of service. And at times my “belief system is always getting rearranged somehow” but I know that to be part of the process. And beneath it is still the fundamental belief that as long as I do three things everyday, I’ll be OK; 1. Trust God, 2. Clean House, 3. Help others. There are days when I’m in 20% doubt and 80% faith, and others where I’m at 20% faith and 80% doubt, but I accept that as part of the ebb and flow of my spiritual growth.
I spent most of my life thinking about acquiring physical things, thinking they would make me happy. Then I went through the process in the steps and cleaned my mental house, did the hard work and enjoy the benefits each and every day. Now my life is about cleaning my mental house each day and moving onto cleaning out my physical house of things which I do not need. It’s the same with my mental housecleaning, I needed to get rid of the things that were keeping me from growing spiritually.
Thanks for the great comments and sharing your journey.
Happiness is a state of mind which can be attained from making progress. Only progress can truly make us happy at the end of the day. We have to make daily steps toward progress by finding a purpose in life, developing a positive attitude and appreciating life for all it glory. Here are a few tips to creating the life you deserve
1. Find A Purpose
2. Make daily steps
3. Be grateful
Good post and nice writing – Thank you, I enjoyed your topic very much.
Dr. Marshall Rosenberg in his book Nonviolent Communications breaks needs into a bigger collection and by doing that he made needs more “real” to me in my living.
He makes this list of needs: Autonomy, Celebration, Integrity, Interdependence, Physical Nurturance, Play, and Spiritual Communion. He give them some more definition, but his list gives me a wider scope to assess my needs and wants and to see what value that are exposing.
When I look at the purchase of my new HD TV, I bought a TV because I thought in the future my partner and I would enjoy watching it as we grew older (and maybe wiser :) ) and I had the resources to acquire this item at this time in my life and to continue paying for it’s cable and electricity maintenance. In the year of having this TV, we have now added time to our schedule to watch something on TV – we have watched a DVD for 12 Saturday nights and have a quick supper. We have watched Bill Moyer’s Journal and put that on the schedule…..
We can keep our value of our purchase in line with our needs. I find this makes life much easier to navigate and certainly much more pleasant for me :)
Patricia,
Thanks for the great comments! That’s funny you mentioned the HD TV. My wife and I just purchased a new cable package and I was all excited because we finally got to use our HD TV. Then we decided the extra $ for HD a month wasn’t worth it so we got rid of the HD service. Now we’ve been looking at new HD TV’s. Doesn’t make sense, ha! But we enjoy spending time watching a few of “our” shows. We like the DVR function so we can pause during commercials and discuss the show. :-) We also do movie (DVD) night at least once a week. But we refuse to watch local news (most news) because the media demands only showing negative things. It’s really depressing. We often talk about starting a news program that runs the same time most local news runs and only showing positive things that are happening in the community. Sad things is, we probably wouldn’t have any subscribers.
This is such a great post. And it’s so true that our perspective is responsible for how we look at things and respond. Thanks for this powerful reminder!
Emily-Sarah,
Thanks for the comment. The thing about perspective for me was, I really didn’t have much of one until I went through some really tough life experiences. I was running last night and listening to this song by Craig Morgan called, This Ain’t Nothin’ and it’s about this old man who just lost everything in a tornado and a reporter is asking him what it feels like to lose everything. His response is “This Ain’t Nothin’” and goes on to talk about loosing his hand in a war, lost his dad when he was eight years old, held the hand of his wife as her heart stopped beating, all this things. That money can replace the things the tornado took away and it is nothing time won’t heal. It really made me realize how I have everything I need. Knowing what I’ve been through and my perspective on life, I realize what things are really important, the people and relationships in my life.
Thanks for stopping by
I’ve always said that everyone needs a good life-altering crisis to put things in proper perspective.
In my early twenties (I’m now in my early fifties) I had a couple of these. It drastically reshaped my life. Though very painful and not something I would actually *recommend* to anyone to learn some valuable life lessons, I don’t honestly think I would be the person today or have the capacity to put life in perspective had I not gone through that very difficult and painful time.
It’s too easy to become insulated in life when everything goes your way. I also think it tends to breed a self-suffienct hautiness as well. When people become that way, they almost always become condemning and critical of others who are not up to speed with “they” are.
So, again, nothing like a good crisis to keep you humble.
P.S. Please forgive my above grammar and syntax erros. :)
So the next time you think about something you don’t have, turn it around and find gratitude for something you do have!
Hmm sounds like Byron Katie
Great Article
Alex
Alex,
Thanks for stopping by! This process really works well for me. There’s always something to be grateful for, sometimes I just tend to focus on the things I don’t have. It takes practice to learn how to turn that around when you’re feeling it.