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Contentment & Letting Go

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For me to find true wealth I needed to give up some things:

  • I gave up a very secure job with great pay.
  • I gave up excess clothing.
  • I gave up saying yes to everything my parents or friends were getting rid of and offered to me.
  • I gave up my entire 2000 + CD collection, once my pride and joy.

Now I am giving up most of my musical instruments and recording equipment which has been sitting around collecting dust, taking up room, and hardly ever used.  In a sense I am giving up a dream as well.

However, I am of the firm belief that dreams can be reborn if they are meant to be.  Sometimes we have to clear away our past attempts to force our dreams to happen, and start back again with the simple dream. This is part of the path to contentment.

Contentment is partly about being able to let go of everything and partly finding joy in what you have. Holding everything you have loosely, but not carelessly, and letting go of what does not add joy.

If we hold on too tightly we risk loosing ourselves in the thing we are holding onto whether it be a house, a car, or a relationship. We also run the risk of losing the very thing we are trying so hard to hold onto, or losing everything else in our obsession with this one thing.

In relationships we run the risk of driving the other person away.

If we hold things carelessly, we do not assign proper value to them.  In this case we run the risk of losing them to neglect, or being weighed down by what we cannot get rid of because its value to anyone else has decreased due to our neglect.  In the case of a house, boat or car, we purchase it at a certain value, don’t take proper care of it, its value drops and we find ourselves stuck with an eyesore that now we owe more on than people are willing to pay.

If we hold relationships carelessly they will disappear, leaving holes in our lives that we try to fill with other relationships and other things. Continuing in this pattern we spiral downward into a state of despair.

But it doesn’t have to be that way, and there are ways to recover our sense of contentment, through setting boundaries in relationships, decluttering or tidying our homes, turning off the incessant voices that tell us what we need, need, need in order to be something better, and carving out time for stillness and silence every day.

Sometimes I find contentment in simply being alive.

“Be content with what you have;
rejoice in the way things are.
When you realize there is nothing lacking,
the whole world belongs to you.”
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Wealth and Health

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Wealth and health is a huge topic – something I realized after writing several variations of this post.

There is so much to delve into here, wherever you might be on the wealth/health matrix, and I hope I can offer something of value to each.

Full disclosure: although I have had some health issues in my life, they have been temporary, and at the time, thankfully, easily treatable with few if any lasting side effects due in part to excellent health care and living in a country with access to some of the best surgeons and medical practitioners in the world.

All told, I have been blessed all my life with extraordinary health, and I have learned to not take that lightly.

God has allowed me to suffer just enough to empathize with others who are suffering.  It is hard to understand a few days of pain, let alone a lifetime, without experiencing pain oneself.  I also realized that my attitude toward both health and wealth have a tremendous impact on my overall contentment.

I have encountered people who use ill health as an excuse as well as those who, though suffering, exude great joy and empathy.  Some of them struggle with finances while others have more than sufficient financial resources, and not necessarily in the same order.

The Health/Wealth Matrix

So what does health have to do with wealth?   Let’s take a look at the four quadrants of the health/wealth matrix below, where wealth in this instance represents financial wealth.

 

Quadrant 1: High Health Low Wealth

Be grateful you are healthy.  Learn to be content just being healthy.  Use your good health to your advantage and work hard.  In this way you can grow your wealth, but take care not to sacrifice your health to get there.

Your main focus in this quadrant is to be content with just being healthy, doing what you need to do to maintain your health and working consistently to improve your wealth.

Quadrant 2: Low Health Low Wealth

This is not a fun place to be for sure.  However, I do have something to offer.  Be grateful for what you do have and stop worrying about what you don’t have.  Practice gratitude.  Anxiety unchecked only exacerbates poor health.

Your main focus in this quadrant is to improve your health by consistently practicing gratitude and following the directives of your health care providers while learning to be content with the wealth you do have.  Focus on health first, then when health moves from low to high move to the quadrant above.

Quadrant 3: Low Health High Wealth

While this is not a fun place to be either, wealth can certainly make it more comfortable.  Like the quadrant above, those in this quadrant also benefit from practicing gratitude, and checking anxiety levels.  Whereas anxiety above may have been caused by not having enough, anxiety in this quadrant may come from fear of losing it all.

Your main focus in this quadrant again is to improve your health by practicing gratitude and following the advice of health care providers while holding your wealth loosely.  Be grateful you have the wealth to pay for the care you are receiving and be content to lose wealth to gain health.  You can always build wealth again.

Quadrant 4: High Health High Wealth

Congratulations.  You are in a small percentile of people on this earth who are in an enjoyable but precarious position.  One, you are the target of envy of many people in the other three quadrants.  Two, you are highly susceptible to lose your wealth out of greed or ambition, or your health from lack of self control or feeling of invincibility.  If not careful you could quickly and easily lose it all.  You also have a great responsibility.

Your main focus in this quadrant is to be grateful everyday for the gifts you have been given, and to give consistently of your wealth and self to help others:

  • Give time as mentors to those in Quadrant 1 to raise them up to Quadrant 4 so they can then follow in your footsteps
  • Give of your time and wealth to those in Quadrant 2 to encourage them and provide a greater level of comfort and care to boost them into Quadrant 1
  • Give of your time to those in Quadrant 3 to not only encourage them but help them preserve as much wealth as possible, protecting them from those who would take advantage of their poor health to rob them blind.

Conclusion

Health is more important than financial wealth.  Whether you are currently healthy or suffering from temporary or chronic poor health, be grateful that you are alive, practice gratitude for what you have and kindness toward each other, remembering there are others out there who are also suffering, and no matter what state you are in, you always have the power to encourage and bless others.  That is wealth.

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Godliness and Contentment

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Godliness with contentment is great gain.  For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it.  But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that.  Those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction… Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share.  

1 Timothy 6:6-9;18

 

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Wealth and Spirituality

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It was more difficult than I thought it would be to write this particular post in this series on wealth.  So I decided to start with a simple question.

How do I define spirituality?

Okay, not so simple.  It’s a word that means many different things to many different people.

For the purpose of this blog post I will define it this way:  Spirituality encompasses our morals and ethics, our capacity to love others as we love ourselves, our sense of justice and mercy, the level to which we are able to discern good from bad, the generosity, gratitude and grace we give, and a willingness to let everything go.

As I have mentioned in past posts, wealth is not just about money or material possessions, but also about being content.

Spirituality is tied to contentment and shapes how we interact with material wealth.  Material wealth and the allure of possessing more and more can negatively impact our spiritual health and contentment, but only if we become spiritually lazy.

Spiritual health is like physical health – it takes exercise and training to maintain.  More money and more possessions vie for our focus and time.  We start to worry about whether it is enough, where we can get more, how easy it might be to lose it all, where to store it all, and how to keep track of it all.  Over time we become more self focused and wary of those around us.  Are they trying to get at my stuff?  We even start to call close friendships into question while we make poor choices in new ones.

Yuck.

But it doesn’t have to be that way.  Spiritual health leads to contentment, and contentment is the key to true wealth.

Contentment is the ability to let things go.  Possessions as well as fears, ideologies, grudges, dreams and on and on.  I have only just begun to experience being content, but with practice it allows us to go places and experience things that we never would have otherwise.

Being content leads to a growing desire to live simply (this does not mean poorly!) letting go of the need for more stuff simply because it is shiny and available and everyone else has one (according to the advertisers).

Living simply means living on less, and as a result leaving more to save.  More to save means, you guessed it, more to build wealth and share.

Those most content in life have what they need, are satisfied with what they have in any circumstance, and enjoy sharing what they have with others.  They are not burdened by any of their possessions.  The few possessions they have are chosen because of the joy they bring.

Tend to your spirituality – it is like a garden, untended it grows wild with weeds and becomes ugly and overgrown, while properly tended it not only provides nourishment but beauty as well.

 

 

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Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of More

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We can’t be content with more if we have not yet learned to be content with less.

Interestingly, once we become content with less we seldom want more, but are better equipped to manage it when it inevitably comes our way.

When we are content with less, more seems to come our way, and we are more likely to give it away or share it with others. Our generosity increases as our contentment grows. When we no longer find ourselves in the pursuit of more, and begin to pursue less, our focus inevitable shifts away from ourselves and towards others.

No one can be generous while they are selfish. We can appear generous to others, but if we have ulterior motives – like having others think we are generous – this is selfish. When we do something for our own benefit it is by nature a selfish act.