YVALIKS

Def:

Unhappiness caused by the failure of one’s hopes desires, or expectations

So the root of my pain this year is mostly due to discontentment. I woke at the beginning of this year angry that my life did not turn out how i thought and hope it will turned out. It looks like I tried really hard to built my life and I failed.

I got discouraged and wanted to give up.

One of the thing that can spurred up discontentment is the sense of entitlement

It happens to a lot of us and in a sense it can be understood.

We all have dreams, desires and aspirations and in a sense we all fight to get what we want.

But what do we do when we fail and when the dream is not fulfilled.

How do we react when the answer is no or…wait (an answer i am way too familiar with).

But sometimes because we feel deserve certain things, we decided we need to have them now. Especially in our modern microwave society we want everything we want it now. We tried our best to get rid of the concept of patience in our every day life. Our smartphones allows us to facilitate so many aspects of our life. Google gives answers to most of our questions. You order something you, can get it the day after. You want to book a ticket to see the world, you can just do it. It’s all about having your way and having it fast.

We are also more and more subject to compare each others because of social media and the internet. We are so much into others people’s lives, it is so easy to look at ourselves and feel like we are missing out. It is so easy to feel: ‘why am i not getting the same as the rest? Why am i not there yet?’

So we get frustrated and the danger of discontentment is that it can lead to bitterness pretty quickly.

So how can we deal and fight discontentment?

Changing our perspectives

The reason why the concept of positivity is so popular is mostly because when we get hit in life , our first reaction is being down; which is normal. But the thing is we let our emotions get the best of us and our judgement get clouded.

If I have a bad day i can feel like I have a bad life,

or I have a bad year so the next year will get worse.

I did not succeeded this time so I will never succeed.

I lost this game so I will lose the season.

This person hurt me so everybody else will hut me

Re-focus

One of the favourite things I heard in a preaching came from Christine Caine, an Australian evangelist speaker. She said: ‘Do not let any thing that has happened to you be bigger than what Jesus has done for you.’

You have meaning and your life has meaning, despite the tragedies. We have to learn how to be grateful to change our perspective.

We have to look at the goodness in our life.

Learning how to be grateful is an exercise. You have to remind yourself constantly of your blessings. Truly, they are things now in you life right now that you did not used to have but you prayed and hope for them, and now you have them. But because you have the wrong perspective, you can take them for granted. Whether it is your health, your friends, your family, your job, your house, your talents etc…Someone, somewhere is even praying for what you have.

From time to time, sit down, think or even write the things in your life that you are grateful for, whether small or big. Remembers the answered prayers you had in the past.

Additionally we have to put to death comparison. I know this one is also hard.

But you know what they say: the grass is not necessarily greener else where.

As a matter of fact, we all go through things, but we just very smart at putting filters on our emotions and lives, just the same way we do with our Instagram photos. And as much as we are conditioned to think that life is a competition, it is not. Let’s not be jealous or envious of others just because they are doing something different than us. We tend to compare our chapter 20 with someone’s chapter 50. We look at our life and compare it with someone highlights’ reel on Facebook. These cannot really be compared. Let’s learn to rejoice with those who rejoice and help each other in our different races.

Leave others grass alone and water your own grass.

So in conclusion,

Mourn the life you wanted and embrace the life you have.

Embrace the mess and the good things.

It is your story.

You grew through the storms.

You learn through the painful moments.

Adversity built your character.

We will never have perfect lives but we all have things to be grateful for.

Let’s never strive for perfection, it’s not realistic…but let always look for progression.

You are not who you were a year ago, five years ago or ten years ago.

I had a plan…But God had another one and his plan prevailed.

His plan is good, and better than mine.

I won’t probably see it through the hard times but after the storms, I always see a bit clearer, and a bit better.

I can look back and realise the beauty in my life.

Rom 8:28