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Food for Thought- Satisfied?


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When I was a student at Mount Union College in Alliance, Ohio I was a Resident Assistant. Every year during our fall training we would be given countless pieces of paper and other resources with ideas and suggestions on how to help the students in our building become the best students they could be during their time at MUC. During training my junior year we were given resources that focused was self-care, priorities, and life-skills popular college campus topics. One of the resources we received was a teal colored piece of paper; on the top of the paper in big bold letters it says “HOW TO BE HAPPY”. The rest of the page consists of 16 bullet points of ideas on how to achieve this happiness. Well really 15 and 1 blank space for you to add your own idea. When you read this list it can be over whelming. Some of the ideas are not easy for example one I found difficult then and continue to struggle with now is “develop a life purpose; give back to our world”. WOW if I had to check that off my list of things to do every day I am not sure I could do it. If you think about happiness only in regard to checking things off a list, you could wear yourself out before you decide you have reached happiness.

Every so often, even years after that particular training, I pull out this list and I focus on one bullet point for a period of time. That is what I would like to offer to you today. One thought that might help make you a little happier, even if it is only for the day. “Practice being satisfied with what you have”! You will notice it doesn't say, ‘be happy’ with what you have, but ‘be satisfied’. If you are a word person you might know that happy and satisfied as well as content, pleased, fulfilled, and many other words are all synonyms. We use words like happy, content, fulfilled to share our feelings about different life circumstances and situations. You know the feeling, the one that tells you all is right with the world, even if only for a moment. Being satisfied doesn’t mean that you won’t eventually begin to yearn for something new or different. Being satisfied doesn’t mean that you won’t ever change your mind about what satisfies you. Being satisfied means-taking a look at the whole of your life, everything from your family, friends and home to your career, hobbies and finances and saying “all is well, at least today.”   Here it is your FOOD FOR THOUGHT 

We can’t imagine happiness into our past, we can’t wish it into our future, we can simply look at the present and “practice being satisfied with what we have”.




If you have a “food for thought” topic you would like me to write about please let me know! 

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