Next time you see somebody driving a Porsche, or living in an extravagant mansion, instead of thinking, ‘they must have made it,’ see if you can start to wonder if this is really just somebody with a deep thirst and a need for love and acceptance.

We live in world where material accumulation has become the socially accepted marker of the respect and the love that we all crave. If we look a bit more deeply at our reasons for ‘wanting more’, it’s not really that status symbol, the riches, the powerful position, or the luxury travel that we all want. What we really crave, at our core, is a need for significance, to feel loved, to feel seen, and to know that we matter.

This is a whole different way of looking at greed, status, and power. And prompts the question, ‘what does it really mean to be truly successful, and to live a good life with meaning and fulfilment?’ Afterall, somebody who has not been able to find the honour and respect they need in healthy ways, will often go about filling this void with more stuff and status. They need more and more stuff and status, just to feel they are good enough.

One of the most dangerous messages of our time

If you can deal with just riding a bike through town, or having some meals that are a bit bland with just one or two ingredients, but you’re OK with it, then these are some signs you are likely to be on a pretty healthy trajectory in your life. If you’re ok with not becoming an Instagram ‘influencer,’ or even needing to climb the corporate ladder, then you must have some pretty good values – that are deeper than the materialistic world around you. If you’re OK without all the ‘things’, that’s a sign you are most likely able to deal with just being you, and that’s ok.

Author and philosopher Alain de Botton, believes the spirit of our times has been very much influenced by an American idea that “you can be anything you want,” and, “you can be extraordinary.” It’s a very beautiful sounding message, but also dangerous because, if you really believe in a world where you can do, and you can be anything, and you find that right now, you’ve only done a little bit, or you’ve only done a fraction of what others have (seemingly) done… you will start to feel very small within yourself. Your self-esteem takes a big hit because you compare yourself to all the famous personalities we now see everyday on line. Or even just in comparison to the person up the street with the ‘better, more-renovated kitchen, we can feel ‘not good enough’. This is the nature of our competitive consumerist culture – it wants us to feel ‘not good enough’ so we buy more, try more, and strive more, to feel better.

What’s wrong with the ordinary life?

Ironically, for most of us these days, the ordinary life is more comfortable than it’s ever been in history, and yet, we are still not OK with it. It’s really quite crazy when you think about it! You most likely have a good car, you can have a nice hot shower each night, you can have pretty good food, or at least drive not too far up the road to a supermarket and find on the shelves almost anything you desire. So materially, the ordinary life is pretty abundant, compared to what our ancestors had.

But then we add to the mix this message of success needing to look like the latest and biggest SUV’s, bigger homes, higher paid jobs etc etc. So, in essence, we’ve ruined the paradise that our ancestors have built for us, by telling ourselves the Toyota Swift or Kia Sportage that we would once have only dreamed of, is now, not good enough. We have set ourselves up for failure and humiliation by living our lives through a lens that we ‘are living the wrong sort of life’ - we can’t just be ordinary, we need to be extraordinary.

We feel so inadequate in relation to the expectations placed upon us that we end up feeling worthless.

“We are suffering from an epidemic of mental unwellness, largely bred by the expectation that our lives will be stellar, when in fact they are far more likely to be ordinary. Our lack of acceptance of ourselves has made us sick” – Alain de Botton

Joy is not going to be making 20 million dollars

Even many of the richest superstar’s report feelings of ‘not having enough’, which reflects discontent is a mindset. They never feel like they have enough.

We need a new message about success being ‘contentment.’ The ancient wisdom texts of yoga, and other wisdom traditions like Buddhism and Stoicism echo this message – that accepting the richness of this moment and making the ordinary extraordinary, is the key to true happiness and feelings of fulfilment.

Contentment means we can be kind to ourselves whether we are flourishing or falling apart. Contentment means we are OK with life being a bit ordinary. Contentment means we are OK to fail – that we can still be there for ourselves in those moments of struggle. Contentment means we are also OK with uncertainty, and not really knowing how it’s all going to pan out.

In this light, ‘joy’ is not going to be making 20 million dollars, joy is going to be more like a walk through the port hills at sunset, appreciating the pastel colours of the sky and the soothing light of the brown hills. Joy is going to be a meal that turns out just ok, or a day, where you get to the end where there’s been no crisis, or no one’s died and everyone’s more-or-less alright. And ‘being in love’ is not going to be perfect like we see in the movies, but more a soothing chat with someone who understands a bit of you and has tenderness toward your hardest moments. Joy is our ability to let that be OK.

The middle path

Of course, a bit of ambition is fantastic. Being content in life, is not about being passive. We can still pursue our goals while simultaneously be grateful for what we have.

We also need a bit of get up and go, and we need to take action toward our life purpose (See this blog here on finding purpose). This is the nuance of the ancient wellbeing wisdom. It’s not an all-or-nothing, black-or-white approach, but more about having the wisdom to take the middle path. We create a vision for our life and take steps to align with that each day. As well, we take time to notice and let go of the stories we might be carrying that lead us to live in a way where we are never satisfied with what we have (See this blog here on re-writing your stories).

The middle path means ‘a bit of this, and a bit of that.’ The Yin and the Yang. We know to practice gratitude for what we have, and to take responsibility for our own life - to be a bit more courageous and ambitious. It’s like a dance between keeping up with the practical parts in our modern life, and as well having connection to our deep moral values…and regularly turning toward our wisdom traditions to help us rebalance when we need.