There might be something in your life you really want right now. You might want to find love, your dream job or live off your art. But what happens when that desire to want more can make you dissatisfied with where you are. I’ve been in situations where I really wanted to progress my career. Each time I got the job, the happiness was short lived. Whenever the roots of my desire were from a state of discontent the feeling of lacked eventually reappeared.
Inherent in our nature is to want to be happy as well as want more. In Deepak Chopra's book “the 7 laws of spiritual success” one of the laws he mentions is the ‘law of intention and desire’ to achieve. The following law is ‘the law of detachment’ from the outcome. Those two laws almost appear contradictory and a difficult state to be in. It’s honestly something I constantly find myself struggling with.
Over time though I’ve observed some behaviours that can at least help in moving towards that state:
1) Prioritise self-care. We find ourselves so busy we have no time to exercise, eat right and take care of our minds. Pushing to the point you neglect will lead to diminishing returns. You will find yourself having to spend time recovering from being sick hindering your long term progress.
2) Pace yourself. There is this constant influx of messages to hustle. This is not bad advice if your find yourself unmotivated. I think a better message would be to be consistent and do what you can practically manage.
3) Stop comparing to others. There is something someone may have which you want. They might have the job, the money, the relationship. Spending too much time on social media can take us down a rabbit hole. We start comparing ourselves to friends, old friends, friends of friends and so on. They say a picture can paint a thousand words, but it can also paint a thousand lies.
4) Enjoy the journey and be okay with it changing path. We can get attached to a certain goal when life might be moving us in another direction. It’s hard to let go of something you’ve invested so much time and energy in. Even if you don’t move towards where you initially thought it opens up opportunities that wouldn’t have existed if you never went down that path in the first place.
5) See how far you’ve come. The desire to want more often blinds us to see how much progress we’ve actually made. If we look back a few years back we’ve had experiences never would have imagined.
In 2019 I hope we can all be happy where we are at the same time achieve what we want.