Practicing Contentment: A Simple How-To for a Happier Day

"When you are discontent, you always want more, more, more. Your desire can never be satisfied. But when you practice contentment, you can say to yourself, 'Oh yes, I already have everything that I really need.'" - The Dalai Lama

I find it interesting that the Dalai Lama uses the phrase "practicing contentment" in this quote. To "practice contentment" is different than simply "being content."

It seems to me that to practice contentment is to engage in an ongoing and conscious process of being aware of your own contentment. It is to continually remind yourself of what there is in your life to be grateful for. It is to become more and more aware that today you already have everything that you really need.

In his brilliant "Notes from the Universe" email series, Mike Dooley once wrote this: "Whatever it is you want, however you want to have it, no matter why you want to have it, you can have it faster if you can first be happy without it."

What would it take for you, right now, to practice contentment?

It can be as simple as saying this: For me, for now, this is enough. I am content.

If you were to practice contentment today, you might spend more time with your friends. You might invite more people over, even if your house is kind of a mess. You might play more and laugh more.

Maybe these tough economic times are a great time to find out where we are striving for things that we don't need at all. Maybe all of that striving is actually taking us further from a contented state of happiness.

What brings us misery is the focus on those things that we don't have. Misery doesn't often come from having those things or not having them. It comes from the obsession with the things in the first place.

Sometimes I think it would help for me to take everything out of my home and start over. What do I really want? What do I really need? Then I can slowly start letting things back into my home, one by one.

On a much simpler level, it helps to just remember to be grateful as the day goes on. Caught in traffic? Take a minute to appreciate your car or the bus or the subway and how grateful you are for your destination (whether it's your work or your home). Frustrated at home? Take a minute to feel grateful for your loved ones. Feeling rushed at mealtime? Think for a minute about all the people who had a hand in getting your food from the field to your table.

Practicing contentment is something we have to do consciously, over time. A true practice takes just that: practice. And it's a practice that has the power to expand our level of happiness each and every day.