#94😺 Beyond Happiness: Finding Peace in Contentment

Why Chasing Happiness Might Be Holding You Back

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Part 7 of the Finding Happiness Series

🦋The Takeaways

Belief: You need to be happy all the time to live a good life.

Reality: Happiness is a fleeting emotion while contentment is more stable and grounded.

Action: Redefine having a good life through contentment rather than constant happiness.

⭐️Introduction

In your journey to find happiness, you might be chasing the wrong goal. I know I was.

Recently, while exploring this topic with Dr Megan Shen , she posed a question that caught me off guard: "How do you define happiness?" I realized I didn't know. After 8 weeks of writing about this topic, I didn’t have an answer.

Like many of you, I've been pursuing something I couldn't even define. What is being “happy” with my career? What is being “happy” with my ADHD?

Because happiness and contentment are complex topics that intersect with mental health, I again invited Dr. Megan Shen to share her insights. As a social psychologist, researcher, and Associate Professor at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, Dr. Shen has extensive experience helping people find well-being even in life's most challenging circumstances.

What we discovered might change how you think about happiness entirely.

Last week I chased my kid at Legoland. It was a good time.

😵‍💫The Belief - Happiness is the Ultimate Goal

In tech's hustle culture, there's constant pressure to achieve more, grow more, and feel awesome the whole time. You might think you need to:

• Feel happy all the time

• Chase the next big achievement

• Keep pushing for more

• Never be satisfied with "enough"

But as Dr. Shen explains, "Happiness is a fragile state to work towards. It's a state of being that's very in flux. I can be happy, I can be sad. Those are emotions, but they're not always stable."

This constant pursuit of happiness becomes exhausting and unsustainable, leaving you feeling like you're always falling short of an impossible standard. Throw in the hyperactive ability of ADHD to change emotions and moods on a dime from ADHD and you might never feel the success you hoped for.

🤝The Reality - Contentment Runs Deeper

"With contentment, there's a deep level of satisfaction with... fill in the blank," Dr. Shen shares. "If I'm content with my life, it might mean there's a deep satisfaction with where I am at in my life."

This isn't about settling or giving up on growth. As Dr. Shen points out, "You can be content and still want more things... you can decide 'I'm so happy with where my family's at and I love where I'm at my job and also I have all these other goals.'"

For those of us with ADHD or neurodivergence, practicing contentment is especially crucial. Our brains often oscillate between extremes – either everything is amazing or everything is terrible. We might hyperfocus on what's wrong or constantly chase the next dopamine hit of achievement. Learning to find contentment helps stabilize these extremes, giving us a middle ground where we can both acknowledge our challenges and appreciate our progress.

Unlike happiness, which fluctuates with daily events, contentment provides a stable foundation. Your plumbing might break (making you unhappy), but you can still be content with your overall life direction.

Practicing joy is an act of resistance - Josh Johnson

🛠️The Action - Building Contentment

Here's how to start shifting from chasing happiness to building contentment:

1. Define Your Version of Content

   1. "One person could say, 'I'm really content with my job' and what they mean by that is it is stable, it provides the income I need to feed my family," Dr. Shen explains. Another person might need deep meaning and purpose. Both are valid paths to contentment.

2. Separate Areas of Life

   1. You can be content with some areas while working on others. As Dr. Shen notes, contentment allows for nuance - you can be satisfied with your career while wanting to improve your health.

3. Allow the "Both/And"

   1. "Being content allows you to be content and still want more things," Dr. Shen emphasizes. Embrace that you can be both satisfied with your current state and excited about future growth.

Here's an example of the strategies working together at work:

As a product manager, your version of contentment might mean shipping features that help users while maintaining a work-life balance. With ADHD, it's easy to see presentation skills as a fatal flaw that invalidates all other achievements.

Instead, be content with your current impact (helping thousands of users daily) while viewing presentation skills as an area for growth, not a flaw or a condition for contentment. This balanced approach breaks the ADHD cycle of all-or-nothing thinking, letting you appreciate your achievements while pursuing growth.

Make contentment and ambition work together. Like DEI, focus on the and instead of the or.

✨Conclusion

Contentment isn't the enemy of success or ambition - it's the foundation that makes sustainable growth possible. In tech's "growth at all costs" culture, choosing contentment might feel counterintuitive. But as Dr. Shen's work shows, it's possible to be both content and ambitious.

Next time you check in with yourself, try asking "Am I content?" instead of "Am I happy?" You might find that contentment offers the stability and peace you've been seeking all along.

I practiced her advice this week as I hit a new milestone in my coaching practice. I can’t quit my day job but it’s enough that I feel proud of myself. I did this thing. I’m not done yet but I’m proud of how far I’ve gotten so far. I can be happy and content with no fear it’ll all fall apart. That’s a good enough life for me.

If you enjoyed this topic, you can find more of Dr. Shen's work at her SubstackLight in the Wound.

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⏭️Next Week

How resentment boxes get in the way of happiness and clarity.