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Church Psychology
Mental Health Professionals looking at the intersections of social & behavioral science and the formed Christian life. Visit us for free resources and more at www.ChurchPsychology.org
Church Psychology
Pain, Happiness and the Misunderstood Pursuit of Contentment
Are you living a life that's merely happy or one that's contented? Strap in for an intriguing journey as we explore the profound concept of contentment. We strive to go beyond the surface-level chase of happiness, and delve into the search for a deep-rooted sense of peace and satisfaction. We dissect the often misunderstood relationship between pain and happiness, and how not all distress calls for a change in our lives. We provoke you to examine how happiness could be just an attempt to avoid the inevitable pain, and whether that's what we're really meant to do.
We also transcend cultural borders and language barriers, shining a spotlight on non-English vernaculars that embody unique perspectives on contentment. In particular, we unravel the Finnish ethos of 'Sisu' and Sweden's 'Lagom', and how they encapsulate distinctive ways of finding joy and contentment.
Toward the end, we delve into the power of purpose, that transcends our personal desires and yearnings. We contemplate the Christian paradox of seeking sacrifice and glory for God, and how this extraordinary pursuit can lead to a life of contentment. We also shed light on the complex links between depression, trauma, and our emotional state. In essence, we urge you to reflect on your 'bigger why', your ultimate purpose, and how it can set you on the path to finding a more profound sense of contentment. Buckle up for this eye-opening discussion, and set foot on your journey to a life of deeper contentment.
Show Notes:
- Philippians 4:11-12 (HCSB) -Holman Christian Standard Bible
"I don't say this out of need, for I have learned to be content in whatever circumstances I am. I know both how to have a little, and I know how to have a lot. In any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of being content—whether well-fed or hungry, whether in abundance or in need." - Hebrews 13:5 (HCSB)
"Your life should be free from the love of money. Be satisfied with what you have, for He Himself has said, I will never leave you or abandon you." - Sisu - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3oayAB3_XY
- Lagom - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhclKSeK_ZY
Welcome to Church Psychology. This is Dr David Hall. Today, matt and I have a conversation about the concept of contentment, how it relates to what we think about in happiness. What are the things that we do or don't do that tend to increase or decrease our sense of contentment? What does that mean in the context of a scriptural view of healthy Christian formation? All that's going to be part of the conversation today. Now drop in that intro music.
Speaker 2:Welcome to Church Psychology, a podcast of the Nagev Institute. We are mental health professionals looking at the intersections of social and behavioral science in the Christian life. Please connect with our free resources in our open community library at churchpsychologyorg. We would be grateful if you would follow, like or subscribe to Church Psychology wherever you are finding us, and also leave us a review as we start. If we are to love the Lord, our God, with all of our mind, it makes sense to work on our head space. Let's get to work Well. Welcome everybody to the Church Psychology podcast. My name is Matt Schooniman. I'm here again with Dr David Hall. Hey David, hey Matt.
Speaker 1:Good to see you. It's been a few weeks since we've recorded. It may not be a few weeks since between people listened.
Speaker 2:No one would have known that, unless you said something.
Speaker 1:Yes, but it lets them into some of the magic of just the magic of things there's not much magic here, people. There's not much magic, I don't know We've been experimenting with AI tools for podcast editing. That feels a bit.
Speaker 2:Be prepared for some AI conversations, because goodness.
Speaker 1:You can't avoid it. Everyone's having them, though it's funny, I think in a few years having AI conversations, it'll be like the mid-90s, when the Today Show was talking about the internet, the interwebs, the interwebs, the worldwide web, surfing the web.
Speaker 2:What a strange new world we live in.
Speaker 1:It is.
Speaker 2:Speaking of interwebs. This is not. I was trying to make connections. It's not going to work. What are we talking about, David? We are talking about the issue of contentment in our culture. Well, I would say culture, but I think that it's an issue that I will personally speak of as something I deal with. I think that it's rampant in a lot of conversations that we have as counselors. I think it's very much so in the culture as well. We wanted to come and bring this topic to the table to talk about what is contentment? How is it different than what we hear in the counseling sphere of what the stated goal is for our clients, but maybe how it's even the right thing to pursue? Contentment is the topic of the day. As to jump into it, well, maybe let me ask you this question, David how do we jump into the concept of contentment? It's funny With a deep breath is what we do, If you didn't see that online.
Speaker 2:That's it. You just physically did what we should do is just take a deep breath.
Speaker 1:Take a deep breath To shift into the clinical space conversation which you already talked some on, matt. I rarely have clients come in saying I want to be more content sometimes, but it's usually more. It's another word happiness or happy. I'm not happy, I want to be happy. I want my kids to be happy. I just want my kids to be happy. I want for spouse or any number of situations.
Speaker 1:A lot of people invoke this idea of happiness. Sometimes, if pressed on it, they may mean something close to contentment, but they're very different concepts. We're going to talk about both today. The part of what we'll skip ahead just slightly, a little bit.
Speaker 1:Happiness is a goal particularly difficult. In fact, within the sense of Christian formation, I would say it's a kind of shallow thing. I don't think happiness is bad If you look at what that entails. It's not a very deep thing, contentment being something that's much more deeply rooted and something commendable to pursue. In scripture it talks about we should pursue and cultivate contentment.
Speaker 1:I think we have this idea of we feel distressed in our emotions. That's a very general term, but that's what men mostly make a living around is people are distressed in their emotions, whether that's their emotions related to their behaviors, their relationships, whatever, and that brings them to talk with somebody like us in order to move out of that distress. All that no critiques there. I think it's good to want to move out of that, but I do think what's really hard in Matt and I, in preparing for this episode, reflected on what our counseling space that we hold with people, what that looks like, is oftentimes. We have to move people from that more superficial goal of happiness into something further, even helping recalibrate their expectations of what achieving happiness is.
Speaker 2:Real quick. What happiness seems like to me is the antithesis of pain. Usually, when people come in and see us really anybody seeking counsel of any kind whether it's you going to a pastor, you speaking with a close friend there's something that is unsettled in your spirit. There's a pain that you've experienced. Usually, I think, it's related to a relationship that conflict, and distress and pain that you experience is something that is unpleasant and it's supposed to be. We'll talk about, maybe, people that don't feel pain and who they are, but the aspect of pain is a natural and real thing that we all experience and it's not fun.
Speaker 2:I think what people are trying to do is avoid or remove pain, when maybe that's not something that we are called to do. When I think of happiness, it's in a sense well, let me say, not called to do holistically. There are times when it's an indicator of maybe something going on in your life that you need to change, but not all the time. I think that when people are seeking happiness, it's in a sense how can I have that, which is the opposite of the pain that I feel now? It doesn't feel like, at least, or my understanding of contentment. Maybe you can speak more to this, david, but my understanding of contentment is not necessarily the removal of pain.
Speaker 1:David, no, it's not necessarily. It's thriving and satisfaction in spite of it. And again, there's a lot more we're going to unpack right now. But to a thought you kind of brought to the fore of my mind in the counseling space what it looks like for people coming in is it really is? And this is so difficult because oftentimes people want that, they want the removal of that pain, but in some points sometimes it's the removal of that pain at all costs.
Speaker 1:And do we have a culture that we live in, I would say a wider secular culture and a church culture too, that has subtly and even overtly made the experience of all discomfort a problem, that the goal of discomfort is to move out of it as quickly as possible. And if you're experiencing discomfort you're not doing it right. I say in air quotes it can be any number of things. You're not walking out your spiritual walk right, that if things are hard, if you're experiencing pain and we've talked about this in previous episodes, but it goes back to something that's very easy in the health and well sort of space to get into. If you're living faithfully, if you're doing it right, then stuff's going to be easy for you.
Speaker 1:And I go back to the scripture where the disciples see the man who's disabled and they ask Jesus well, was it what he did? Or what his parents did? Yeah, and who's at fault? Because clearly his pain is that he's experiencing has to be because somebody didn't do it right. And to go even further back, I will say that things like that are a function, I believe, of the existence of sin in the world, not necessarily personal sin, but in this idea that the world is not as it should be, the world does not work as it should. We experience disease and disability and things that in an unfallen world I do not believe would be, and so that suggests but to personally ascribe it. But ultimately, what Jesus did in that was he invited them into a different way of considering the pain, which is this idea that pain and suffering can be a means of greater transformation. His response was basically neither but for the scripture in front of me, but for the glory of the Son of man to be revealed, or something good would happen of this. And for people I really admire in the mental health space.
Speaker 1:I think of Elliot Conny, who's a writer in the solution focus space. One of his more recent books, the solution focus diamond is one of his. But one of the things that Elliot talks about is that when your pain has a purpose, it ceases to hurt in the same way, and so I think sometimes we're looking for the removal of pain. I think a deeper look is how to give purpose to the pain. Yeah, exactly, and so, but yeah. So we've got two scriptures we want to dive into that talk about contentment or satisfaction in a different way and, matt, if you would, so we start with. We have Philippians 4, 11 through 12, both of these were reading from the Holman Christian Standard Bible translation.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it begins for 11 through 12 says. I don't say this out of need, for I've learned to be content in whatever circumstances I am. I know both how to have a little and I know how to have a lot. In any and all circumstances, I have learned to the secret of being content, whether well fed or hungry, whether in abundance or in need.
Speaker 1:And then this is.
Speaker 2:Paul speaking in this passage.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and then the writer of Hebrews unknown, but same translation. So we've got Hebrews 13, 5. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Your life should be free from the love of money. Be satisfied with what you have, for he himself has said I will never leave you or abandon you.
Speaker 1:There's an interesting note I was looking at in Strong's, not the source. When you look at Borgens, Concordance says it. There it is. Yeah, In this, looking at the idea of he will never leave you or abandon you. The note was the Greek here uses five negatives in the quote. So a literal translation or a more literal translation is I will never, ever, ever, ever, ever leave her, forsake you, and so this idea of emphatic.
Speaker 1:So, but there are different words that are being highlighted here that they have similar reach, of one of in the Hebrews of where to be satisfied we talked about it and then for the Hebrew in, to be content. But it's interesting in this, both of these, in different ways, kind of harken to this idea of how do we experience and interpret our discomfort or our pain. And I think I know for me, Matt and I would say this for a lot of my clients Is what their pain highlights for them is how deeply out of control they feel, and oftentimes they're grappling to remove that pain is how do I reassert control in this place or this moment? Yeah, I think what I think about in the Hebrews is this idea that our, our satisfaction, our contentment, is from the idea of God holding us versus us holding ourselves.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, this level of God hold. That's a fundamental shift that I think that our culture and this is why, maybe, cultural discontentment is so prevalent is that. The problem with the term that I've heard, as it relates to American individualism, is this concept of rugged individualism. You know this sense of I can do things all on my own, I don't need to support other people. I should be self-sufficient in all things, and that's becoming harder and harder as we go through life, and part of that is because of the, I think, increase in the ability for us to access information, and so what we then experience is not the same as we did 60 plus years ago, where our bubble of influence and understanding was smaller, and so we could become proficient in different things more centralized, rather than the expectation of having all knowledge all the time.
Speaker 2:But to not miss the point of what I'm saying, though, I think that this individualism, though especially promoted by Western civilization, has been a counter to what God is providing in his offering of himself, and we don't have to do life alone. There's this desire to kind of become our own God, but we're never built to do it, and so every time that we pursue it, I think we always run the risk of discontentment because we are acting against the nature of who we are. So God holding us is our design. We are designed, in a sense, to fit into the hand of him, and that, I think, is why that sticks out to me, as you say that, because it's counter-cultural.
Speaker 1:Yes, Though we work in a culture that's constantly trying to reinforce that your life is only as good in as much as you have your hand directly on the dial of everything the temperature of your house.
Speaker 2:That's important to some people.
Speaker 1:I love living in a typical control world.
Speaker 2:Don't give me wrongness.
Speaker 1:But to the core of the and to my emotional state. How do I dial that exactly where I want it? And particularly when we feel overwhelmed and out of control by the emotional pain, how do we escape it?
Speaker 1:So, yeah, why don't you do a quick? I'm a big nerd when it comes to lots of things, but I really like kind of different cultural concepts and I'm very interested. Matt and I are both American, we're both, we both. That's our cultural kind of space background. We assume that most people checking out this podcast would possibly kind of fit in that as well. But I'm always interested in how different cultures not just live like, how they think about things and even how their words affect how they think.
Speaker 1:I love untranslatable words, the words that we don't have a great correspondence to in English because it fits somewhere different. So I want to unpack three words that are non-English words. The first I want to unpack is a sisu. It's a Finnish word and these first two words it's funny they're getting more talked about in certain cultural spaces. Sisu has been one that's been talked about because in Finland, the country of Finland, they in many years they get raided by whoever does this rating as the happiest country on earth. That brings up a question why? Because Finland is a very cold, remote country, some particularly in a safe part of the world. They are a very long land border with Russia and they're very aware of that. But they have this concept and so sisu, like a lot of things, we're going to talk about it. So the English spelling of it is S-I-S-U, but without directing this translation, it basically they wouldn't necessarily describe it by itself as contentment. It's grit, it's a sense of courage and even kind of a cheerful courage in the context of adversity. And I think it's that the cheerful courage, it's the willingness to do something hard or sit in something hard or push against something that's difficult, even without the guarantee of success, and it's that determination that I think calibrates the enjoyment that we can take out of our lives in a day-to-day basis.
Speaker 1:An example of how this plays out like in Finland it's a very cold, not just cold, but because a lot of the country is above the Arctic Circle and even the southern parts of it are near the Arctic Circle, it is dark a lot of the time in the winter. When I've been in more northern hemispheres in the winter, the cold doesn't bother me as much. It's how dark it is and how much that affects our mood. So the Finns are big into, and a lot of Scandinavian cultures are big into, sauna culture. But it's this idea like when it's cold and dark outside, you go sit in a sauna, which is they'll build them outside and these huts often buy water by lakes or ponds or inlets in the ocean, and then you'll be in the sauna for a bit and you go do an ice dip. You go swimming in the winter and go back and get back in the sauna. And it's this idea of invigorating and what do you do when it's cold and it's wet and it's dark? We're going to approach this differently.
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Speaker 2:Well, well, two things that come across to me on that. One is just the kind of grit of of facing challenges head on and almost welcoming challenges, because it's kind of like this I don't know if they would slam it this way, but I almost see it as like a badge of honor but it almost kind of translates deeper into the eastern cultures of honor that are very much more communal based. One thing about more eastern cultures is how it's not the me, it's the we, it's the kind of what I do impacts the whole more than anything else.
Speaker 2:It's not just like my individual path, my interactions with others, my career choice. Everything kind of affects the family tree. It kind of feels that way as it relates to and I'm just kind of speculating now because this, this concept, is new to me, as others are listening as well but this sense of Sisu being more because that the community faces challenges in this way, it encourages other people to do it as well.
Speaker 1:Yes, it is a very us concept of something that we collectively express. It's not just an individual. That person has a lot of this, it's us as a community that does it. And how do we do this together? How do we? And if you read or study anything about Finnish culture, there is this strong sense of solidarity, of how they kind of see themselves and see themselves in context of the community.
Speaker 1:And, but it is funny, you know, in the happiness research around Finland they come back to this concept of Sisu, probably more so than social researchers do. And it's just funny because Sisu itself is not really a word that describes contentment. It describes fortitude or determination and all that, but it has a side of it that reflects contentment. And move on to the next word. So Sisu's first one is Finnish. Go to the country next door, sweden, and they have a word loggum. In English it's usually rendered LAGOM and again, not a great English word for it. The way I describe it to people is loggum means good, but in that tone, like it's you know another way that it will get translated is just the right amount. It's not too much, it's not too little. Yeah, and again, this is very much a social value. It's not just about me as an individual, it's a socially.
Speaker 1:But how this plays out, I'll highlight two very famous Swedish companies Ikea furniture and Volvo cars. Ikea my wife has an Ikea furniture set that she had when she was single and didn't have a lot of money and it's still in our house in one of our extra bedrooms and it's not great, it's not bad. I mean for when you're, it's good enough. And Volvo cars and if you have a, I'm not knocking, if you're a Volvo dealership, yeah, or if you even are Ikea, we love you, or Ikea, like you know, this isn't the needy things, you're bad.
Speaker 1:But if somebody says like, oh, I got a new car, I got a Volvo that doesn't invoke the same things of like oh, I've got a BMW. Or I, it's just the people's space is oh, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Good, Like it doesn't. How did you say it before?
Speaker 1:Like oh yeah, cool, it's not. It's not like oh, matt must be doing amazing, I know. Or versus you say like you know, I bought a, you know a Ford Pinto not that those are things anymore, but like something like I got a Saturn sedan that was on a recall, like, oh, you know you know alone, hey, I was. It's easy to re-knock Saturn because that car brand folded 15 years ago.
Speaker 2:I didn't have one, by the way. You did, yeah, my college years. You know it was a stick shift. It had a sunroof, it was. It's something else.
Speaker 1:But would you have seen somebody roll up in that and think, like he's doing really well.
Speaker 2:No, well, maybe 17.
Speaker 1:I'm not getting anybody.
Speaker 2:It has been successful on how to Saturn. Maybe it's your car of choice, but no, you're right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's just. But yeah, we're not trying to cash-aid on any particular car brands or anything, it's just this idea of like it just. But it represents kind of a Swedish mindset of you want in Lougham, you want enough, you want enough, not in the sense of you don't want the best of something. It's not just you compromise to accept this but you actually don't want to pursue. Because the idea in Lougham is that to have the best house or the best car or the best job or the best. You know they have some issues with that.
Speaker 1:Some of it is communal, this idea that if you have too much, how does it separate you from your neighbor?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I find that interesting because it's such a very non-American concept and I don't go so far as to say that it's a superior concept.
Speaker 1:They're downsides to Ciciu and Lougham, if you really want to get into the anthropology of these words like ways that I don't think are superior. But it's a different angle to think about how, not just to see more and as we talk about, if contentment is about happiness and I'm trying to manage my mood state constantly then what if you pursue something being okay? And the idea in Lougham, if you have an okay house, then that means you're not in too much debt paying for your mortgage and you don't have a lot of rooms to keep clean and the family's able to be together, because not everybody is spread out in the same way. And if you have a job, that's good. It's enough for you to be able to not be working 80 hours a week, because if you have this amazing job, it may take a lot from you. Because of that, you can go to the park or you could spend time with friends, and it's this idea of balance highlights.
Speaker 2:And what's interesting about this concept one, ikea kind of played into this, well, their Swedish design, but even there's a Scandinavian concept of or I think it's Scandinavian, I think I know that's the term of the region, but I think that's also an architecture or interior design term.
Speaker 2:The way it looks is very it's beautiful, but it's very simplistic in like just whites and natural wood tones and these kind of things. And then I think about also the concept of what was a big hit for a while, but like tiny houses and the minimalism movement and these things of you know, and some of it could maybe feel for you as you listen, like man, those are that's way on the other end. But it can feel like a pendulum swing of things of. Well, because the the culture is moving so fast towards overconsumption of all things and pursuit of like perfection which, spoiler alert, is impossible that they swung the pendulum to the other side to say I'm going to go holistically minimal and have no thing. And it's kind of the concept of the Christian realm of I can never say the word right, esticism, yeah.
Speaker 1:Seticism, seticism, thank you.
Speaker 2:And that, you know, the monks would be very much kind of this culture as well, where they would see the culture of wherever they were, say Rome or anywhere around the Mediterranean, and seek out the overabundance of culture, and they would swing the other way and live, you know, without food, without shelter, without and I've even started reading some of what's called the desert fathers writings of these first monks that lived in the desert, and so you have these kind of polar opposites of overconsumption or minimalist nothingness, and what I hear in, at least in the sense of what the Swedes are kind of getting at, is this this kind of in moderation in the middle.
Speaker 1:Yes, it isn't in this stark, you're right, because it's not a seticism and I will say, like a seticism, particularly in the Christian tradition, I think very much has its place and it we're constantly tweaking, you know, as we aim for perfection. You know, as Matt says, it's not attainable, it's not attainable by us. Well, yes, it is. There is no good but God, but there is a good God. That's right and it is, and we're, we see Him, we're in relationship with Him, and so because of that, we have examples of good, of truly good, and we're always, I think, kind of striving towards that and thinking about that.
Speaker 1:To circle back to this idea of it is this kind of balance of how do we enjoy what is good, because there are plenty of places in scripture where it talks about of being joyful being, you know, of celebrating, of acknowledging good things, material things, of food and wine, and you know that to enjoy these things, but it also of this kind of seasonality, and I think part of what contentment embraces in a deeper way that happiness by itself excludes, is the seasonality of contentment and the things that affect contentment, that it happens in different places. So we've come back a little bit so that you know, for those who weren't expecting to get a little language education. So the Finnish word sisu, the Swedish word loggum. And now we're going to the Greek word. That is the Greek word that's used in the Philippians verse that Matt read, but it's artakles, kes, artakas, but it's the and again, yeah, well, let's see, there might be people tweeting at us, biblical scholars, being like oh my gosh, and and that we've lost those.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we probably have the two that we just but, but we have, but it's the but, it's, it's the word that's. We get translated into content in Philippians 4, loving through Jalop, and it is it's, this idea of sufficient in yourself, but not necessarily. And it's important to say sufficient in yourself, but not necessarily sufficient from yourself. Yes, it is. It is not self manifested in that way, but that in what you find it to be, it is. It's also highlights this idea of it existing independent from external circumstances, cause often I'm happy yeah, what makes me happy is very much external circumstances when something good happens that makes me happy and that feels like an appropriate response. But likewise, when something sad happens, that makes me sad and contentment is something, is the stabilizing force that can exist in between both.
Speaker 1:Cause I think oftentimes, going back to what it looks like in the therapy space, people will. I will sit with people that are in one way or another asking how to remove the negative emotional experience that they have in the context of difficult circumstances. Right that you, they've lost a loved one, they are in a hard financial situation, there's conflict in their marriage, there's work is not going well, and they're like how do I, how do I be happy in this? And in a weird way, I feel it's kind of inappropriate Not that they're asking, but like for me to try to give that to them, because, basically, if I was able to accomplish, as a therapist, a way to make your emotions incongruent to the experiences, that's the definition of perverse and it is a.
Speaker 1:It is a is a twisting of that, because when a sad things happen, when something sad happens, I believe sadness is an appropriate emotion. People will get into complex experiences of that that that go very deep and that's where things like trauma and true clinical depression move into something different. But when somebody I love, you know, dies, I should feel sad, right, if I don't, what does that say about me or my relationship with them? Yeah, yeah, and contentment that Paul is invoking in Philippians is this idea of that. I can acknowledge my circumstances, but I will be steady in the midst of that and that being the idea of contentment.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the psychological term that I was thinking of as you were talking about this, that we I don't know if we use these direct words, but it's basically the difference of internal locus of control versus external locus of control. So, external locus of control being that which is the circumstances or things outside yourself are, in a sense, what you rely on to control everything going on inside of you thoughts, emotions, maybe even actions. Internal is in the sense of you have maybe a resolute way of wanting to respond to certain things, and that's the general arc of a journey of some people that come through counseling is that they try to that we help them, or they want to move from a place that I'm tired of the external circumstances dictating who I am and I want to move into a place to where the internal four beliefs have changed, to where now I can respond in ways to any circumstances the way I feel called to in the Christian sense. That doesn't mean, like you're saying, that you can't feel the emotion that the external circumstances is provoking.
Speaker 2:I reference this passage all the time because it's one of my favorites, but John 11 is the story of Jesus knowing what he is about to do to raise Lazarus from the dead and wrestling with the struggling grief of Lazarus' sisters, yet knowing the whole process coming and yet still weeping with them. It even uses a different term. I know Jesus wept as the one verse we always come back to, but I think it was something like stirred in his spirit or his spirit was grieved or something like that. There was an air about him that was feeling the emotions of the weight of loss, but he had an internal control of his core belief of who he was and who his father was. That produced, I think, contentment even in that space, if you will.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think there's that anchoring and in different Christian monastic traditions this is big end for, like a trappist amongst right on this is, or just any Cistercians, but they writing on this idea of being and of course the word is now escaping me as I'm trying to recall of indifference, but we take the word indifference to be bad and this idea of that like to be indifferent to something's beyond caring, but at least in how it fits in the monastic writings, is to be above or disentangled from that, this idea that this thing I'm indifferent from is not my identity. To be indifferent from your position at your job In this idea is good, because this idea of my identity, my personhood, is not tied up into this thing. I practice indifference in it and a different.
Speaker 2:Go on. I think that you will hear probably more in this. In the counseling or psychological realm is differentiated.
Speaker 1:Yes, and to experience that in your external states has a lot of benefit to it. It's not that we are unaffected by them, but I think it's what it is to be a boat in the waves that moves in the waves but does not capsize and does not sink, and so it's not that the waves don't cause movement, but the boat still is able to float and to continue on in it. As we're wrapping up, this conversation want to end with again work of a secular psychologist that I do think is really helpful Talben Shahir. He's at the time of recording. He's a lecturer at Harvard University, israeli American researcher, but writes quite a bit on happiness and he is a great I'm paraphrasing, but he talks about oftentimes people are going for this in pursuing happiness, what they want is the absence of negative emotions and he says the only people that don't experience negative emotions or negative emotional states, or psychopaths and the deceased. And if you want to stay out of those categories, then there has to be an acceptance of negative emotions.
Speaker 1:And as he writes about happiness and this comes from very deep study and this is not from a Christian-informed place, but basically what the conclusions of his research has been that if you pursue happiness, particularly personal happiness, your individual happiness, as your main driving factor in life, you will generally be unhappy. It tends to more or less guarantee that you will not experience a very generally happy state. That cultivating happiness or contentment and he would talk about the sense of like he would overlap, I think, in those terms. But the things that tend to elicit the happiest people are ones that have a sense of purpose in their beliefs and actions and commitment that go, that are above and beyond their own personal desires or wants. And this is very hard in our culture to hear because it's in our individualized language of things.
Speaker 1:It's all about you, and I will say that some of that and where mental health has taken that up is that oftentimes there's been neglect of the needs of individuals, that there's been harm done and there's a desire I think in a healthy correction for people to still have a voice, and so this isn't necessarily about losing your voice, but it's about do I have a transcendent thing in my life and non-Christian research would say this that if your highest thing is your own personal emotional state, that will lead to a very unsatisfied life, but if you have things that are bigger than you, that feel bigger than you in your life, that you're willing to actively step into discomfort and pain for the sake of. I'm willing to experience pain for this higher calling in service of other people, of a cause, of what we would say a transcendent, worthy God that it creates a ordering in our lives that tends to create the circumstances where we are the most content.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, you talk about transcendence and this somewhat applies to that, but another counselor here at our practice has used this question with men in group settings and I love it so much. So simple in nature but difficult to. It's not easy, but is assessing what is your bigger why at the core of our motivation. What are we pursuing? If it's happiness for ourself, it's going to leave us wanting more. But if it's transcended to some level whether you know, if it's a non-Christian that is merely just trying to find how do I care for my family in new ways? Or if it's bigger in the sense of like this is for the good of others, maybe they find more contentment.
Speaker 2:You know the monks as we were talking about before. Their greater why was for the glory of God in all things, and so they became probably the most content people with the littlest amount of worldly goods, because their bigger why became so large that everything they did touched that. And I think that that's what our challenge can be is what is our bigger why? As we pursue contentment as believers, as Christians, we have a large anchor in our life that we can abide in, as we've talked about in previous podcasts, and so I think the leaning into Christ and into who he is as our anchor in all things, in the glory of him and all things, becomes somewhat of a bigger why. But I think that ultimately you have to identify that for yourself of kind of what, and that's somewhat somewhat comes back to the calling aspect of a person, and so that's what I would kind of comment as it relates to what those bigger things are.
Speaker 1:It feels like a paradox, and I think that's why we keep on coming back to these conversations, collectively, as believers, therapists, individually Is it about the collector or the individual? And the paradox of the Christian life is that he who gives up his life will find it that it is in this sense of this deliberate willingness to gain sacrifice or to pursue worthy sacrifice, that we are able to transcend. Because when I sit with people that don't have this deeper sense of purpose, particularly in faith but even you know, I've worked with people who are non-believers that still have transcendent beliefs that get them closer, that move them in these directions, but when I work with people that they're just, I just don't feel happy, but they're everything in their life, the highest thing that they have is their own emotional state it's really hard for me to move them and to give them guidance of how to move further, because they keep on, because basically, what they're aiming for is something entirely too low, and CSLUS talks about. You know, you aim for heaven, you get the earth included, but if you aim too low, you miss it all. And so hopefully this conversation and what we've brought up and hopefully this is Sparks of Ideas, hopefully this is, you know, got people looking up CSU and log them on YouTube and there's a lot of stuff on that or kind of unpacking, just even kind of thinking of. You know what does it look like in your own life?
Speaker 1:And my challenge is, I would say happiness is not a bad thing, it is just a very illusive thing and it's not a particularly deep thing. And we're not called at any point in Scripture to pursue happiness. We are called to pursue contentment. You know the verse in Hebrews, you know that's a different word than the octarchus, but it is a. It more has to do with that sense of love, of money or sufficiency in money, but or another way, sufficiency in provision. And throughout Scripture there's this idea of how we think about how we will be cared for, what will be, will we be given enough and to trust in God, to be our enough, whether it feels like it in this moment and we've talked on this before in episodes we've talked about in grief, but this feels, as I'm trying to land this plane, an important thing too.
Speaker 1:I don't want this to be a shaming thing for people that if you're in a deep place of unhappiness, there could be a lot there, that it's not just that like, you need to change your mindset. Depression is a real thing. Depression is when, outside of our circumstances and outside of so many normal experiences that it's almost like a gear is stuck and that we cannot move in a meaningful way out of this emotional state. And there are chemical imbalances that can be affected positively by therapy, by medication, and we do not want this to be a shaming process for people who are in the place of depression or for people who've experienced complex trauma and a similar way keeps them stuck in a certain place, or even people that are experiencing a deep grief in their life and contentment feels too. They definitely don't feel happy and contentment feels like too far of a stress.
Speaker 1:We do not want this to be a discouragement to you all, but to give a paradigm that this idea of what we're aiming for in that is, what is the centering that God calls us to ask Him for and what are the habits and the relationships in the communities that are life giving towards that. Are you in a community that reinforces your sense of sufficiency in God? Are you, do you have friends that do that? Do you have people that speak into your life? And if you don't, we hope you're fine and we want to encourage you in that, because those really are life giving in those matters. So, anyway, we can land the plane now. But I didn't want to end in the sense of like, well, you just need to buck up and quick complain it because, no, that's never the answer.
Speaker 2:But I appreciate your words, david, and I appreciate all of you that listened through this episode with us and continue to be a part of this journey. We look forward to further episodes in the future, and maybe it'll be next week that we record, or maybe it'll be in a month, but you will never know.
Speaker 1:You'll hear us next week.
Speaker 2:That's right, but join us again next time and we look forward to talking with you again then. Thank you again for being a part of our latest episode of Church Psychology. If you have enjoyed it, we hope that you will share this episode with others in your life, and please do remember to follow, like and or subscribe to Church Psychology wherever you're finding us, and leave us a review. We look forward to connecting with you again soon.