Happy vs. Content
Yesterday I was listening to Morgan Housel on the Tim Ferriss show on the subway back to my apartment.
There was a line ~ 47 minutes in that stuck out to me:
Money can buy contentment, but it can not buy happiness.
The latter, most already know to be true.
When asked to define the 2 terms, Housel stated:
Happiness is waking up grinning ear to ear. Contentment is waking up with low to no level of anxiety. You’re satisfied with career, relationships, etc.
This is a good anecdote for money.
But to be honest, my initial response as he was describing contentment was “that sucks”. I’d rather be grinning ear to ear.
Then poses the next question… how do you do that?
Well, that’s where I’m stuck.
Because there are infinite ways to be happy.
Waking up in silk egyptian sheets is nice but by month 6, it probably won’t make you 10x happier than waking up in BB&B sheets.
Some days the thing that makes me the happiest is a barista at my nearby coffee shop just remembering my order.
And because there are infinite way to be happy, it makes it really difficult to be happy, repeatedly.
The silk sheets lose their appeal. We take for granted our relationship with our local neighborhood. The newness that led to the happiness begins to lose it’s varnish. And it leaves you searching for the next thing to make you happy.
But there are probably only a handful of things that could make you unhappy.
• Bad Health
• Poor Relationships
• Non-Existent Financials
• Lack of Safety
On the topic of contentment, waking up without worrying about rent, stressing about your looming credit card bill from the weekend, or feeling a pit in your stomach when the grocery bill hits 3 figures is a really good feeling.
So then why don’t more people strive to be content?
The pursuit of happiness is what everyone is striving towards.
But what everyone really wants is a good life.
The easiest way to have a good life isn’t by trying to have as many “good days” as possible. It’s by minimizing the number of bad days you have.
Find what a bad day looks like for you:
• Stressing over appetizer prices at dinner
• Waking up with a sore back
• Getting in a fight with a friend
• Your house is broken into
And begin desigining your life around eliminating those things. Optimize for contentment.