Andy Stanley - The Contentment Challenge
Hi everybody, welcome to "Your Move," where we help you make better decisions and live with fewer regrets. I'm Andy Stanley, and today we're talking about something we all want more of, but have a hard time finding. Something that we can't get enough of, but the little bit we do have keeps being stolen by our incessant scrolling. And no, I'm not talking about money. Today we're talking about contentment. The state of being happy with and satisfied by who we are and what we have, contentment. It's living in the state of life is good, I don't have everything there is to have, but I have what I need, and it's more than enough.
Content people, and here's why we're talking about it, content people are happy people. Content people can genuinely celebrate the people who have more and get to do more without being jealous. Contentment isn't, it's not a lack of ambition. Contentment is a deep sense of satisfaction with the here and now. But as I said up top, contentment is hard to find and it is even harder to maintain once we find it. And the reason is we all live in the land of er, er as in E-R. The land of er, you may not be familiar with that term because well, I made it up, but you know what I'm talking about. There's always somebody with more er. They are richer, skinnier, smarter, taller, prettier, hipper, fitter, or their girlfriend is er, their job has more er, their opportunities are er.
And then in our dark moments, we look at somebody with less er so we can feel superior-er. Of course, some of us don't wanna be er at all. We wanna be est, E-S-T, right? We wanna be the richest, we wanna be the smartest, the healthiest, the cutest, the most promoted est, all of which of course promotes and fuels discontentment. I mean, every X, every Insta, every Facebook post reminds us what we'll never look like, what we'll never drive like, date like, marry like. And social media whispers, isn't this true? It whispers you need what they have to be respectable, acceptable, likable, maybe even lovable. And so you know, all of those folks that we compare ourselves to, did you know that they live in the land of er as well? Because there's always somebody with more er.
Now, you may be thinking, yeah, but so what? Is this really a problem? It is, because every minute you spend, think about this, every minute you spend focused on what you don't have, who you don't have, and what you haven't accomplished is a minute you could be doing something productive. Now be honest, discontentment, come on, discontentment doesn't motivate you to be more productive, does it? In fact, it makes you wanna give up sometimes. It's distracting, it's demotivating, why? Well, because you're comparing yourself to somebody else who isn't you. And chances are, you're actually watching a highlight reel that's been doctored to look better than it actually is. And I think we all know that.
So yeah, this is a big deal. Discontentment, envy, jealousy, it's like a disease of the soul. In fact, this is amazing, one of the wisest men who ever lived, King Solomon, referred to envy as a bone disease. He writes, "Envy rots the bones". And as you know, this is not a problem once and for all solved, it's attention to manage. Attention, well, it's attention we all manage. The way you manage it is to create a mental line of defense, a place to go mentally when discontentment begins to unsettle you, raises its ugly head. When it whispers, "Reach for the card, click Apple Pay, post something critical about him or post something critical about her". Truth is, we all need a place to go in our heads when we begin drifting in the direction of envy because envy creates discontentment.
Discontentment destroys our peace, peace with ourselves and ultimately peace with the people around us, often the people closest to us. Now, fortunately, wise King Solomon doesn't just diagnose the disease, he actually provides us with a daily prescription that will take the edge off of our pain and it may eliminate your symptoms altogether. He writes this, he said, "I saw that all toil and all achievement spring from one person's envy of another". In other words, he says, "I looked around, and I realized that everybody was competing with everybody else around them, that everybody was determining where they were and where they weren't based on where everybody else was". And then he says this, he says, "This too is meaningless". We would say, "It's ridiculous".
What does it accomplish? Nothing, as I constantly reminded my children when they were young, there is no win in comparison. There is no win in comparison, you gain nothing, but you lose your peace, you lose your peace of mind. Comparison destroys contentment. Solomon says this much, but he says it better. And he actually provides us with a mental picture and I find this to be so helpful. He writes, "This too is meaningless". And then this line is great. "This too is meaningless, a chasing after the wind". I love that imagery, chasing after the wind. What would you think of someone who came running by you in their business casual attire, and you shouted, "What are you doing"?
And they look back over their shoulder and they said, "I'm chasing after the wind". Again, that's ridiculous, you can't catch the wind. Solomon would smile and say, "Exactly". Envy, comparison, it's like chasing the wind. It's a race with no finish line. And most of the time, it amounts to a competition with people who don't even know there's a competition. And in some instances, isn't this true? We compete with people who don't even know we exist. It's exhausting, dissatisfaction guaranteed. We waste time and mental energy that should be put to use doing something productive.
So here's the antidote. When you catch yourself drifting into somebody else's lane, somebody else's life, when you sense your piece is starting to get rattled by what somebody else has, who somebody else has, say to yourself out loud, seriously out loud under your breath, "That's chasing the wind. I don't chase the wind. That's chasing the wind. I don't chase the wind". In fact, I'd like for you to say it right now out loud with me, okay? Ready? Come on. "That's chasing the wind. I don't chase the wind".
Now, something you should know about King Solomon, he accomplished more in his lifetime than anyone who lived during his lifetime. He accomplished more than most people who've ever lived. He was not passive. Actually, he was very ambitious, very productive. So this is not an invitation to being passive or lazy or unproductive. Just the opposite. And to ensure he's not misunderstood, listen to what he writes. He wrote, "Fools, fools fold their hands and ruin themselves". In other words, nonproductive is not the way forward. And then he writes this, "Better one handful with tranquility than two handfuls with toil and chasing after the wind".
I love this. We don't use the term tranquility very much. Tranquility is inner peace fueled by contentment. King Solomon's point is this. Less is more when the less you hold is what you were created for. Better one handful with tranquility than grasping and striving and pretending. So according to one of the wisest men and one of the most accomplished men who ever lived, a heart at peace gives life to the body, but envy rots the bones. You cannot compare or compete your way to peace. To put it simply, you can't win chasing the wind.
There's no win in comparison. It always robs you of something. It does not provide you with anything. Look to others for inspiration, but not imitation. You have your own race to run. You have your own life to live. So count your blessings, not your neighbors. So when emotions start to get the best of you, when you find yourself looking around, scrolling around, when discontentment begins to rattle your peace, just stop and declare, "Envy only rots my bones. That's chasing the wind. I don't chase the wind". And if that becomes your habit, your escape, you'll become the best possible version of you. More importantly, you'll become the person that God created you to be. And now it's your move.