#2043 Content or Complacnet?
Complacent: marked by satisfaction with the status quo especially when accompanied by unawareness of actual dangers or deficiencies.
Contentment: happiness and satisfaction, often because you have everything you need.
I never want to be complacent and doubt I will be. Complacency has been trained out of me. I wonder if that is why contentment is so elusive.
The trick is to find contentment while still looking for improvements. Further, the balance of contentment vs. dissatisfaction needs to shift mightily as we age.
In my thirties, dissatisfaction ruled. I looked at my health, my relationships, my bank balance, and my professional acumen and only saw the holes. I read more and worked harder to learn about ways to make fast improvements to all of these. I was the opposite of complacent, and contentment wasn’t even on my radar.
As I look around today, I see complacency masquerading as contentment and droves of “experts” writing the false definitions that fashion and proliferate the masks.
“Be kind to yourself. Hold space for your misstep, give yourself grace. Everyone is just doing the best they can.”
It isn’t everywhere. I coach quite a few young people who want to be better tomorrow than they are today, and they set goals and make plans to get there, but complacency does seem to be a movement.
If everyone believed that we are all just doing the best we can, where would we find improvement and invention?
We have talked about our inner voice as a drill sergeant and how that might not be healthy (I’m still not sure about that). I believe that all improvement comes from a place of dissatisfaction. I must be dissatisfied with my physique, my relationships, my bank balance, and my professional acumen if they are to change for the better.
If I were to graph this, it would look like a classic bell curve. In my early years, it was flat and beginning to climb. I recognized the deficiencies and began pressing for the improvements. As I learned more about what was possible, that curve climbed more steeply. During the steepest climb, that drill sergeant was in my ear, spit and expletives flying, as he pointed out how far I had to go and how much harder I needed to work to get there.
As I hit the top of the bell, he went from Bobby Knight to John Wooden. I still needed coaching, but I was at the top of my game, and I felt a sense of contentedness.
I am and have been cruising down the other side of the curve for a few years now, feeling a good level of contentment-BUT- I won’t confuse it with complacency. There is still lots to learn. I don’t have the same priorities and goals, but some things are inviolable. Focusing on and actively seeking to improve my relationships is one. Exercise for brain and body is another. While the work in each of these areas is significantly different from what it was twenty years ago, the recognition of where I am coupled with where I see myself in the future remains a driving factor in my daily behaviors. Complacency says, “I have arrived. I’m good; there isn’t anything more to work on.”
Contentment says: “I have arrived; I’m good, and I’d like to continue to feel this way in the future. What do I need to work on today?”
Own Your Sales Gene…