Radically Content Being Satisfied in an Endlessly Dissatisfied World

When you give yourself permission to opt out of the societal expectations, you get to find that voice within that is trying to create for you the most beautiful life that fits you perfectly. It may not look impressive, but it’ll feel generative, lovely, and like home.

Go toward the good, the positive outcome. Not just trying to outrun a shameful feeling, or to berate yourself. When you add things to your life for a good reason, you are ensuring your own success. Most times if you find yourself not sticking to something, it’s likely because your why is constructed around shame.

Because, what is love if not the word, the intent, and the action of being loving? Love cannot just be words alone. It cannot just be intent alone. It cannot just be action alone. It has to be all of it, together.

That’s how an intentional life feels. Like you’re listening to yourself and acting in accordance with that.

Imagine your partner saying one thing and their actions lining up with another reality entirely. They say they love you, but they act in a way that doesn’t really convey that sentiment. The relationship you have with yourself is the exact same way. If you say you want something, truly, and then act in direct opposition to it, it creates an internal struggle. It creates dissatisfaction. It creates anxiety. It creates unhappiness.

The conclusions that you have come to are not the conclusions you need to keep coming to. Think about that. Think about how you are forming patterns. Think about what you take as some sort of ultimate truth. “I’m just not ready for that.” “I’m such a mess.” “I’m always anxious.” “Things don’t work out for me.” Even if you have evidence to support these statements, you likely have evidence to support the opposite, too.

Representation is so important, because without it we have a hard time knowing what is possible.

And then I get lost in this spiral, this negotiation of keeping up, this external reward and downgrading and upgrading—and I no longer know how I feel about anything. Just how others feel about everything. And it happens in a snap. In the shower on an ordinary Saturday, when I’m minding my own business, trying to wash the conditioner out of my hair. The wave of it, sudden. And at least now I’m in the place where I can notice it cresting over me.

Aspiration is not motivating. Let’s unlearn that. You may think that exposing yourself to the perception of perfection will motivate you, but actually it can eat away at you and create insecurities where none existed before.

I became almost thankful I hadn’t received all that I thought I wanted, because if I didn’t think I deserved it, then I probably would have self-sabotaged. I had self-sabotaged before on smaller scales. On a larger scale that self-sabotage can be catastrophic. I felt I had been spared that. And I started to sense a budding gratefulness for having been spared.

I realized that I didn’t have a “not doing enough” problem. I had a worth problem. A deserving problem. I was making that reality true over and over and over again. Even when I hit certain milestones, I was still making it true that it wasn’t good enough.

How other people think of you is on them. How you think of you is what matters—that is your job. From that point, see what you still want to do in your life. See which dreams stay and which ones go. You may be surprised.

Settling, to me, feels like ignoring my gifts. It feels like telling myself something isn’t possible when I haven’t even tried. It feels like saying I’m too old to do what I want to do. It feels like rejecting myself before someone else might reject me. It feels like avoiding the hard work of believing in myself so that I never get disappointed.

Where I think we get it wrong is when we ascribe a definition to settling that is based on someone else’s life.

Settling is not a place or a configuration of a life. It’s a feeling. And I’ve come to realize that when we have unspent dreams within us, when we aren’t living honestly to our truest selves, when we are hiding parts of ourselves away, when we are neglecting to honor our deepest desires—that is a life that feels like settling.

That tension—of loving where you are and building where you’re going—is one of the most important things for me to balance.

If the external world wasn’t going to affirm me, then I would be intent on affirming myself. At every age. I resent the idea of late bloomers. It might seem like a compliment. It might be a way to assuage the feeling that coming into your dreams later could be a positive thing. But in actuality it creates a time line, where no time line needs to exist. There is no time line for blooming. Who decides when a person is “late”? Can we ever really be “late” to our own lives? We can all bloom at our own pace, thank you very much. I decided after the chaos of turning thirty that I’d never let my age determine my possibilities ever again. I’d stop being so worried about “settling” and, instead, learn to enjoy my life at every stage I was in, every version of myself I’d become, every old skin I’d shed. And instead of having my life be a fear of settling, I’d simply live as wholly and honestly as I could and continue to grow and evolve as needed.

When a trickier emotion rises to the surface, the best thing you can do is listen to it, try to understand the wisdom in it, and sit with it. Try not to suppress, distract, and numb the harder emotions. Don’t play the “I’ll be happy when...” game to avoid the healing. It’s a distraction. Your life is here. Right now. Not when.

When we are no longer terrified of failure, rejection, disappointment, sadness, grief, any of it—that’s when we’re on the path to healing. When you can feel these things, learn from them, deepen your relationship to yourself and others through them—that, to me, is being in a healed state.

There’s so much trauma inflicted on others by people who refuse to reckon with themselves, who refuse to take responsibility for their own healing, who think they can achieve their way into feeling whole. The grasp for power is a way to bypass healing. The greed, the accumulation, the over emphasis on superficial achievements—it’s all a way to get around the healing.

Achievement can be wonderful. But achieving when you are truly able to embrace it from a healed place is one thing. Achieving when you are trying to prove your worth—it complicates everything.

But the work of being happy is not an accumulation. It’s not an eventuality after you’ve achieved enough and own enough and have enough. Think of how wildly unfair that would be in a world that is so deeply inequitable.

Grow, yes. Learn, definitely. Stretch yourself, absolutely. But do it from a place of foundational happiness. Get to the feelings first.

So, what if your happiest life wasn’t going to be very impressive by societal standards? Would you still want it?