Ever since I was a young kid in school, I feel like I was always pushed to achieve more. My grades were never good enough, my clothes were not nice enough, my shoes were not the latest trend. Every time I thought I was finally there, society pushed me to go again. Reaching satisfaction in our current world, seems to be a utopia.
Satisfaction in my world
For me things were always pretty simple. I always dreamed to have my own house so that my inner child can finally feel safe. For work I wanted to be a mechanic because I always loved cars. I didn’t necessarily want to go to university (let alone two, for now!). I just wanted to do something with my hands. And for a relationship, I just hoped to find that one person that loves me for who I am.
I think that our modern example of success is not a happy, simple life. It’s a model where we all slave for a company or a boss. We work day in and day out so that we can buy stuff we don’t actually need and we consider ourselves happy.
A culture of Capitalism
Whenever I go back to Romania and visit friends and family, I am shocked by how obsessed people are with owning shit. ‘Oh, look at me I bought an expensive car! It’s on credit but isn’t it looking great?’ or ‘Oh, look at me, I bought clothes from brands!’.
This goes on and on and on. It’s holidays they can’t afford, it’s luxuries nobody gives a shit about, it’s jewelries with no significance.
And yet, research shows that most of these people that define success by the rate of acquisitions, are the most unhappy ones. Does that come as a surprise? Maybe to someone who doesn’t read much about how the human mind works, it might be. But for me it is rather clear. And I know that Capitalism plays a major role in this culture. I gave the example of my fellow Romanians, but this is common everywhere. It’s not for nothing that movements such as minimalist living or slow living are gaining popularity.
Capitalism is a main reason for which we don’t know how to reach satisfaction anymore. And Capitalism brings about another last century issue: depression. A depression driven by various unhealed traumas, not being able to achieve certain standards, not living a life as expected in your community or culture, and so many other issues which are covered in the need to spend. For many depressed people, spending is a form of love. Unfortunately, because the same people don’t invest in their mental health, they continue to spend or even worse, go into debt.
A recipe for satisfaction
I think that satisfaction is a superpower that we can all achieve if we learn how. Satisfaction comes from within instead of the world that surrounds you. I’m a firm believer that satisfaction is achieved only when you are enough for yourself. Anything or anyone else is just a bonus in your life. So in order for us to tap into this superpower, we can do a few things:
1.Learn about yourself
I wrote in a previous blog about us millennials and how stressed we are every day. Somehow we grew up with the idea that we can do anything we want if we want it hard enough, we dream of becoming better than our parents ever were 30 years faster than they did it and we reach a point where nothing makes us happy anymore.
By learning about ourselves, we might discover a thing or two. Maybe in fact we want less, maybe our genes don’t take us that far, or we can simply discover unhappiness. More often then not, we need to adapt our expectations and scale down.
Scaling down is a difficult thing to do by many of us. Nobody taught us how to take it easier, instead we were told the opposite. But by increasing your knowledge about yourself, you can actually figure out who you are and what you truly want.
2.Take things as they are
I had a time when I set out to make this big ass strategy for the company I worked for. Something geared towards success, numbers, achievements, goals, pushing content, etc. And in the end, I figured that it wouldn’t work.
Not because the people didn’t want it or because they were stubborn. But because that’s simply not what they needed. In that case, I just let it be. Sometimes we need to let things be, and if we need to slow down, we might as well. We don’t always need to run at 100%.
3.Choose end goals over means goals
To make this simple, means goals would be something like “I wanna make $1 million by the end of the year’. And if you don’t? Then what? Desperation, depression, catastrophe. While end goals are closer to our nature and to our values.
An end goal can be your happiness, satisfaction, health, personal development. As long as you’re stuck in means goals, you will live a life of unhappiness. However, you can reach your end goals regardless of the material outcomes. The only trick here is continuity. You can only achieve your end goals as long as you dedicate time and effort.
Takeaway
Ultimately, we can all be superheroes and make use of our satisfaction superpower as long as we stop comparing ourselves to others, we focus on personal development instead of acquisitions and we don’t give up on ourselves.
I’m aware that not everyone can tap into this superpower without help. And that’s exactly why I am here. Your self-awareness journey is just one click away if you’re willing to make the leap.
