Content: feeling happy and at peace with your current situation without craving more.
“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.” - Lao-Tzu
Note once we get used to the pattern of chasing, it’s very easy to fall into the trap of moving the goalpost the moment we achieve what we wanted, instead of being content. Avoid moving the goalposts of happiness and contentment. Be happy now, with what you have. Not ecstatic, not over the top, but mildly, in moderation. The externals could be better; they can certainly be worse.
“Desire’s a contract you make to be unhappy until you get what you want.” - Naval-Ravikant / https://nav.al/desire
It’s also worth noting the risk and balance of true contentment: the potential to lose motivation. Especially when what you were doing was not aligned with your inner being. In those cases you can easily stop caring about those external duties, since you’re already at peace with where you are.
if you arent content you wont be
“He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have.” - Socrates
Note this assumes the base level of have. There are studies that happiness does in fact go up quite linearly with increase of income while your basic needs are not met. However, once the basic needs are met the relationship between income and happiness plateaus and takes quite a logarithmic shape. But for those that do have the basic needs met, it is paramount to work on mindset of being content now.
Link to original