How to Feel Satisfied With What We Have in Life — Part 1

We humans are striving animals. More than any other species, humans have big goals, dreams and ambitions. Only humans want to change the whole world. That's both why humans are so successful, but it's also why we're never quite satisfied.

So how can we be happy with what we have while still striving for more? How can we struggle our way towards success, and yet be happy along the way? And how can we feel content no matter where we are, where we've been, and where we reach tomorrow? I answer these questions and more in this two-part series on finding contentment and peace right here and right now.

Please enjoy other episodes where I share meditation techniques, tips and spiritual lessons from around the world for peaceful and stress-free living. Remember to subscribe to stay up-to-date.

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Transcript

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Welcome to path to peace with Todd Perelmuter. I'm your host, Todd Perelmuter our world is a projection of our collective consciousness. The more peace we bring into our lives, the more peace we bring into this world. So let the transformation begin. Every single experience that we have, every emotion, every judgment, and preference, everything we like and dislike. It all stems from our mental story. And it doesn't matter what is going on, it can be viewed in a way that generates suffering, or peace and joy. Many people think that situations are inherently objectively good or bad. And they may think of extreme scenarios that prove their point, like, could someone being tortured, find peace and joy in the moment? And the answer is difficult, yes. But doable. Yes, and probably been done many times throughout history, where we see some body who was a hero for a cause. And we can imagine, or even in some cases, recount witness accounts, that show that these people felt proud in their last moments, justified, righteous, fulfilled, and satisfied. If the story we tell ourselves is that I am doing this for a cause bigger than myself, then we endure, and even embrace the torture and that is a frame of mind that we can apply to every aspect of our lives. When ever we are facing hardship, struggle, setbacks, obstacles, we can always see those moments as these learning opportunities as these noble challenges to help me better provide for my family, or for my community. Everything we do, has a purpose larger than us. We are deeply interconnected with every living being on this planet. And every little action that we take, builds this society towards its future. And we are ingrained in this culture, no matter how separate we feel, how we do everything that we do, sets an example for how this society is in this moment in this place. Every thing we do, no matter how insignificant, it seems, is as invaluable and important, as we are able and willing to notice. Even if we hate our job, and we are really just struggling to go through the motions. Getting there to work, getting ourselves there and struggling to get through is important, noble work, we all need to provide for ourselves and sometimes for others. We are all a part of these communities. And to provide for even just yourself is not easy. And something we can be immensely proud of ourselves for and we can take great joy and delight in this accomplishment. Now, in no way am I saying you know we give up on are dreams, and we just accept a terrible job or any other condition in our life that we wish to change. But while we are working towards that change, we can find content and satisfaction in every step of the journey. There is no satisfaction later, if there is no satisfaction. Now, if we can't be happy, while things are imperfect, we will never be happy, because we will never find the key to perfection, which is to change our mental story, to embrace and love everything. And that means starting with those things that trigger us the most that we really hate about our situation. And again, we don't change on the outside, we don't have to change something about our life, or do anything differently in any way. But what we can do is just mentally in meditation, or anytime we have a free moment, we just check our mental mindset, our mental story. And if it is negative, or if there's something it's focusing on, and then it's worried about and obsessing over, we simply try to find a way to love it. And there is always a way we can always choose to see a situation, from a different perspective, we can always find some nugget of reason to be positive, and optimistic. To be grateful. And to be accepting of, usually, what we find is, what we're giving up is not anything we would actually want to hold on to, when we find the thing to love in a situation, we are letting go of anger, we are letting go of so much negative energy that we were holding on to because we thought it was protecting us. And when we realize that it is us holding on to this, we instantly let it go because we don't really want it deep down. We want to feel content in the journey towards our goals, and to find the joy in that journey and that struggle. And we find that when we let go of that negative energy, we have so much more hope to drive us forward, we have so much more optimism to justify those late nights. Work feels like pleasure, and pleasure feels like extra pleasure. So we have to keep a very close check on that mental story. And to whenever we see that it is creating discontent. We need to reframe, by looking for what we can love and accept in a situation instead of focusing on all that's wrong, and making that the only thing that fits into our perceptual awareness. It's kind of like the nightly news. They can have two people arguing over the same story to her three people taking two or three different sides. And they can talk endlessly, and everyone will feel correct and nobody will change their mind. But my point is that this is like going on in our brain. And we get to choose which story we want to believe inside with. And we think that it's this objective, uncontrollable thing, because for most of our lives, we don't consciously choose our beliefs and create them we are given them since birth. And so whatever side we choose to take, whatever mental story, we want to believe about a situation in our lives. It is our choice, and there is no right or wrong interpretation there is only which one gives me the most joy and fulfillment in life. And it always comes down to gratitude and appreciation for the things that we do have for even if nothing else, our breath, we are breathing consciousness. It is amazing. And so yes, maybe someone said a mean word. Maybe I was passed up for a promotion. But I am consciousness, walking on Earth, it makes everything else pale in comparison. Beliefs are so powerful, because we can't control our thoughts. random thoughts will pop into our head often negative, and fear based, because that's our body's defense mechanism, why we survived because we always were looking for danger. But belief is able to control our thoughts. When we have a strong belief in ourselves in the universe, then those thoughts, no, there is no danger, there is no fear, there is nothing to worry about. And so a deep rooted belief is one way we can guide our thoughts to be more positive, more grateful, and more loving. But we need to examine what our beliefs are first, and where they came from. Because we must first examine that subconscious, that programming in order to understand what we take for granted what we assume as truth, because we've just always known and always done it. And so we need to really reflect what are our dreams, what is our perfect life? What is my perfect day. And these are so important, because these can guide not just our thoughts, but our entire trajectory of our lives. We can either live someone else's dream and help them build their dream and slog to work. Or we can build a life that may not be what the magazines, say, as a perfect life, I may not be able to afford the clothes, that the social media shows me. And maybe I don't even want these expensive status symbols. You know, everybody's going to be different. But as long as we examine why we believe what we believe, and we imbue it with intention, conscious intention. So we may say, you know, I love clothes, and I want to be in fashion, and I want the latest clothes, and I want to be able to afford that. And I will work every day in the fashion industry, morning till midnight, you know, this is a person who clearly whether they achieve their dream, or work in the mailroom is going to be satisfied and have a fulfilling life. But if this same person grew up in a very strict house, and they were pressured to be a surgeon, and they cannot stand cutting people open, even though they achieve a dream, it's not their dream. And even though there is wealth, there might not be happiness or fulfillment. And what is the point of life? What are we hoping to feel at the end of it? We are not going to take that money with us. The only thing that we can truly measure our lives by is how much we enjoyed it. And that doesn't mean vacations, two weeks a year. Please let's not limit our joy to two weeks a year. It is about every day. Moment, how did we appreciate and enjoy the moment? Did we take it in peacefully? Or was it filled with worry, and doubt, and fear and longing for something different. It doesn't matter if you are a butler, or a movie star, or a movie stars Butler, we can accept where we are, we can be happy, right in this moment, and nothing is preventing that, except our mental story. And our belief system is causing that. So we can accept and embrace this very moment, we can choose to make a change or not. And in either case, our satisfaction, contentment, fulfillment, will remain steady, because they are not dependent on external temporary conditions. Belief is 100%. In our control, we can believe that we are fulfilling a great purpose, we can believe that we are grateful and blessed for all of the amazing experiences we have in our lives. We can believe that we live in a magical universe, we can believe that everybody loves us, even if they're not quite aware of it themselves. And this change in how we see the world changes how the world appears to us. And we literally change the world to fit that belief. And I don't mean this in any kind of magical manifestation technique. What I mean is, people respond to people's energy. And when someone appears very confident, we think they're very smart. And we all just bounce off of people's energy, and we feel their energy, and we feed off of it. And when we view the world, like everyone loves us, people start to treat us as if they do. Because we have no insecurity. Because we're at ease and relaxed, and that's charismatic and attractive. And it puts others at ease. And they will want to be around you. And they will love us. How we view ourselves, how we view how others see ourselves, this all conveys an image to people about who we are, and how we see ourselves. And this is really most of business is just, you know, conveying this part well, which is to say, this confident leadership type, you know, everything in business, we're not using our muscles. So it all comes down to our words and our body language. Very few office jobs, require muscles. And so our mindset, really, everything stems from it, to how we dress to how we carry ourselves, to how we treat others into how we convey to others how we will allow them to treat us if we have a mindset that we are losers, because we didn't fit the mainstream view of how life should be. If we're all doom and gloom, and we're negative, and we're always worrying, and we're always fearful, we are going to convey that. And people will treat us as if we are carrying that anxious energy and they won't feel at ease with us and maybe even distrusting of us. So it's a simple reframing and no matter what our story is, we can find peace with it. If that story is negative, we can simply witnessed it, and turn our attention fully into the moment, full speed ahead and lose ourselves in the moment. And this is how we can reach a state of bliss. Even doing something we hate even being in a place we didn't want to be in, simply witness that story, and then redirect that negative energy into present moment awareness. And we will find a beauty and peace, like we've never known whether or not we are in a mansion, or a studio apartment. What difference does it make? Ultimately, we're sitting on even cheap, couches are pretty comfortable these days. Even at the Salvation Army, they have great couches. So I mean, we're just you know, we can always close our eyes wherever we are, and find peace, we can always accept this moment, it is available to us, we simply have to observe those beliefs, and that story, and create new beliefs. And give our attention to this step of that journey. by noticing the story, and turning our attention to the present moment, we're doing two things. And dissatisfaction is really about two things. It's complaining about what is, and it is longing for what isn't. And that is why we want to do the one two punch, where we notice that story, and then become fully present. When our mind wanders from the present moment, we witness that mental story again, and we redirect our attention back to the task at hand, the present moment, whatever we're doing, with our full attention. And then this way, we turn life into a meditation because this is all meditation is we focus on our breath, which is happening in the present moment, when thoughts come in, we notice them and redirect our attention back to our breath. And when we make life a meditation, it becomes a blessing of peace, gratitude, love and joy. Every single moment, we perform better at whatever we're doing, whether it's physical activity, whether it is working on our business plans, when we give a task, our undivided attention, and we are fully present, we do it better. We notice the details, the nuance, the subtlety, the many layers of meaning. And we just see more with this expanded awareness than we would have if we were lost in thought. And so one of the incredible laws of nature is that when we become content with what is infinitely more is given to us, because we are flowing with the universe, instead of resisting it. We are picking up cues and adapting, instead of being self absorbed into our own thoughts. So we're able to adapt and find where the universe is guiding us and not just where our thinking mind is trying to force us into. You may want to be an actor, but if everybody is telling you that you're a much better sculptor, you know, he might want to listen, if you find a great deal of joy in sculpting as well, you know, if acting is the thing, then of course, follow it. But, you know, sometimes the universe might be guiding us to a place that is better suited for us. And so we simply have to be out of our head. So we can be open to those opportunities. And again, we do that by what I like to call radical acceptance. This is To love everything that you find challenging, if we love everything that we hate, we just love everything. And there is a way to love. Even those greatest of challenges those most challenging of people just ask Gandhi and Martin Luther King. We can all learn to love, the grind, the struggle, the pain in life, we can see how it is simply that other edge of that dualistic coin, the other side, and we can love the coin. Because we are the coin, we've got the good, we've got the bad, we've got the impulses, and we've got our better nature. And it is simply us at every moment to choose which path we take. And every instinct and intuition in our body guides us to that home, that center of love and peace. And so we know which way to go. Because love feels amazing. Give love a shot. Try to love what is most difficult. And because anger is so draining, try giving it up and see what happens. You've been listening to path to peace with Todd Perelmuter. Being here and putting in this important and noble work is one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself and others. If you found this podcast even a little helpful. Please make sure to leave a review so it can reach others who may be in need. And remember, the path to peace starts with a single step.