That Fine Line Between Content & Complacency

scrolling through social media and you are hit with posts in bold fonts exclaiming -

DO NOT BE CONTENT WITH YOUR CURRENT POSITION.

BETTER IS NOT GOOD ENOUGH

my very first thought is, I wish they chose better fonts, and that is quickly followed by, am I doing enough with my life? if time permits, I even find someone to compare my life with.

Now, I’d like to come clean about something right at the start of this piece - Linkedin gives me anxiety. The constant, here’s-my-confetti-popping-or-my-airplane-soaring, new job or promotion announcements give me anxiety. There I said it.

they trigger a ‘DO NOT BE CONTENT WITH YOUR CURRENT POSITION’ kinda feeling for me, that can be exhausting.

Here’s why that declaration is revenant…

All my life I am been given contradictory advice - don’t settle, aim higher, stay ambitious but also, be happy with what you have, acknowledge what you have is better than what was. and so, all my life I continued to do this little song and dance. fast forward to 2018, where I uprooted myself and moved to another continent and here I started my own new song and dance featuring content and complacency.

how do you identify when you are being too content that it begins to turn into complacency? is there a stipulated time period for being content? Can content co-exist with continuous ambition, hustle, and drive?

That’s the current struggle. I want to stop and take in my achievements. I want to celebrate the milestones and goals that have been accomplished. 16-year-old me would be pretty proud of the life I’ve built so far. however, more often than not, I’m plagued with thoughts of - am I doing enough with my life, or have I slipped into the cauldron of complacency?

I built a comfort zone in a faraway country, I built a coping mechanism that has empowered me to assimilate, and I am learning to compartmentalize my emotions in different aspects of my life. I am by every definition of the word - content.

Simultaneously, there is a constant cloud of worry that pegs the question - am I being productive enough? Do I still have that ‘drive’ that ‘ambition’

I wish it was as easy as my kindergarten teacher helping me identify the blues from the reds, but alas, the beauty of adulting.

I do not come with some grand solution, advice, or declaration, I am no expert. However, I carry with me some key pieces of advice/observations that help me get that recommended 7 hours of sleep every night, that I’d like to share:

1. wise words from my dad that have really stuck - ‘you are never going to have everything you want at the same time, but if you are honest in everything you do and more importantly honest to yourself, you will get everything you want, just at the time you really need it’

2. a lesson I picked up by simply observing my husbands 8-year journey here in Canada - you can be content with what you have while working at your pace towards what you want to do next. This pace will not match up to anyone else’s, it will be yours and yours alone. it’s up to you to see how much of the outside noise you want to let into your house. (figuratively)

3. a realization I’ve had from watching a close friend navigate his life - complacency will always come knocking, and when it does, be bold enough to acknowledge it and reinvent yourself, even if it’s one tiny step in the direction you want to go.

4. therapist’s advice - make a gratitude list and compare it against goals you set at any point in your life. time is irrelevant here.

5. I do not exactly remember who said this to me, but it helped - push yourself, but take a beat to listen to what your body is trying to tell you - sometimes it’s signaling you need to slow down. you must take heed.

6. me to me - don’t grumble about it, if you are literally doing nothing to change it.

there is a fine line between content and complacency, but that line can only be defined by you, your goals, your experiences, and the situations you are in. Your family, friends, well-wishers, and society at large cannot draw that line for you. You have to draw that line and then delicately dance on it.

“Many people lose the small joys in the hope for the big happiness.”― Pearl S. Buck