User:Emmawingate/Contentment

Contentment

Contentment is an emotional state of satisfaction that can be seen as a mental state drawn from being at ease in one's situation, body and mind. Colloquially speaking, contentment is a state of having accepted one's situation and is a milder and more tentative form of happiness.

Contentment and the pursuit of contentment are a central thread through many philosophical or religious schools across diverse cultures, times and geographies. Siddharta said "Health is the most precious gain and contentment, the greatest wealth". John Stuart Mill, centuries later, would write "I have learned to seek my happiness by limiting my desires, rather than in attempting to satisfy them." Marcus Aurelius wrote "Live with the gods. And he who does so constantly shows them that his soul is satisfied with what is assigned to them." Hebrews 13:5 reads "Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said, 'Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.'" Chinese philosopher Zhuang Zhou once wrote in the 3rd century BCE, "A gentleman who profoundly penetrates all things and is in harmony with their transformations will be contented with whatever time may bring. He follows the course of nature in whatever situation he may be."

The literature above all states that contentment is a state which is ideally reached through being happy with what a person has, as opposed to achieving one's larger ambitions. Socrates described this by saying, "He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have." There are a number of elements of achievement that make finding a state of personal contentment easier, such as a strong family unit, a strong local community, and satisfaction of life's basic needs as expressed in Maslow's hierarchy of needs. In general, the more needs in Maslow's hierarchy are achieved, the more easily one might achieve contentment.

Contentment is often used interchangeably with happiness, and because there are more studies on happiness, many of the discussion and sources below will use happiness.

Contentment and positive psychology[edit]
In many ways, contentment can be closely associated with the concept of happiness and satisfaction. In positive psychology, social scientists study what might contribute to living a good life, or what would lead to people having increased positive mood and overall satisfaction with their life.

Happiness, in positive psychology, is defined in a twofold manner, which in totality is referred to as subjective well-being. Subjective well-being is determined by how much positive emotion (positive affect), as opposed to negative emotion (negative affect) a person has, and how one views one's life overall (global satisfaction). Positive psychologists emphasize the importance of optimism and having greater positive affect than negative.

Positive psychology finds it very important to study what contributes to people being happy and to people flourishing. Positive psychology finds it just as important to focus on the constructive ways in which people function and adapt, as opposed to the general field of psychology, which focuses more on what goes wrong or is pathological with human beings. Most psychological perspectives are trying to fix or alleviate what is bad, but positive psychology focuses on the good.

The role of positive psychology can have a great impact on the many aspects of one's life. Human beings have a great ability to adapt, we can adapt to both the good and the bad that may happen in life. Usually in life, circumstances do not hold a long lasting effect on one's mood. However, there are multiple studies showing that when you view circumstances optimistically, you will have better health and live longer.