How To Finally Feel Satisfied
Using Gratitude To Take Charge Of Your Present And Future
It’s hard to feel satisfied.
What’s interesting is that we won’t normally admit this.
When someone asks us how things are going, we say they’re great. If we quickly check in with ourselves, we’ll think, yeah, things are good.
But if we stop to look inward and are honest, almost all of us feel a sense that our lives could be better. No matter where we are at, we always desire more. We want more freedom, money, healing, peace, status, or stuff–or maybe we long for more of all of those things.
Never feeling satisfied is wired into our brains. That’s one of the things that makes humans such incredible creatures. We are designed to overcome, move forward, and constantly adapt to our surroundings. This is an excellent feature for innovation and survival. Yet, it’s not so great for trying to feel happy and free from the burning sense that somehow we aren’t far along enough in life.
The Hedonic Treadmill is a psychological theory that defines this phenomenon. It states that even if we win the lottery or fall in love and feel a quick happiness boost, we’ll still return to our old desires for more. We adapt to how our life improves, see our new circumstances as normal, and go back to our old patterns of looking for faults or ways we can advance.
So, what can we do to find some relief from the feeling that our life–just as it is–simply isn’t good enough?
Focus on gratitude. Doing so shifts our perspective. It brings us closer to the richness of the present moment and helps us release our attachments to how we feel things should be so that we can deeply embrace the profound nature of what already is.
Take a moment–right now–to open your mind and appreciate how good your life is, the incredible people you know, and how much you’ve already accomplished. Imagine if you were looking at your life from the outside in. It’s quite special. And believe it or not, there are people who know you that wish they had the life you’re living.
Now let’s take things a step further. Appreciate the fact that you’re alive at all. The fact that you get to be conscious in this human form–to experience the love, drama, sadness, joy, ups, and downs–is almost impossible to comprehend.
Being alive is so mind-blowing that we focus on stuff that doesn’t matter so we don’t get overwhelmed by its magic.
But, it’s important to not just focus on gratitude once and forget about it. Start a gratitude practice. Once a week, once a day, whatever works for you, pause and reflect on what a beautiful gift your life is, how much you’ve grown, and the love that you get to feel.
Practicing this will help fill you up and keep you from feeling the emptiness of dissatisfaction. Now, this isn’t to say you shouldn’t be driven and try to achieve your goals and bring your dreams to life. You absolutely should.
The difference is that by staying connected to gratitude, you can let those positive feelings be what you are grounded in and driven by instead of the painful feelings of yearning and incompleteness.
Not only does this mindset keep you from suffering, it also allows you to build your future out of the fullness of love rather than fear of falling behind.
Until next time,
Cory
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This is all soooo true yet sometimes difficult to practice. In 2022 I made a point of listening to some sort of meditation nearly every morning while being grateful for life and all that comes with it. But it's very easy to let habits slide and revert back to old ways. Thanks for the motivation. Let me go meditate now lol.
Yeah, fully agreed. Good advice.
Never feeling satisfied is indeed an inherent part of human nature that I think is crucial for humanity to thrive and consistently progress forward.
Unfortunately though, it makes it naturally challenging for us to live in as well as appreciate the present moment, and our lives as they are. In that sense, we need to strive to find a healthy balance between these two aspects.