PTP:091. How to Be Discontent

Brad Miller 0:00
pathway to promise podcast with Dr. Brad Miller Episode Number 91. How to be discontent Hi, I’m Jeff Brown from the read to lead podcast and every great leader not only reads but is committed to overcoming any barriers to their vision. The pathway to promise podcast with Dr. Brad Miller will help you do just that. You’re on the pathway to promise with Dr. Brad Miller Bradley’s every person has a god given promised life of peace, prosperity and purpose, and that you must have a plan and a guide to get there. The pathway to promise podcast Not only is your guide through the wilderness of depression and disappointment that stand between you and your promise life, but also brings you insights and direction from inspiring successful thought leaders who have transformed their lives. Welcome to the pathway to promise now here’s Brad Hello, good people. Welcome to pathway to problems with Dr. Brad Miller. Thank you so much for joining me today as we have some conversation about important matters in life about how to be happy or how to be not happy. Today we’re going to talk about what it means to be dis content, which I believe is a malady that affects a lot a lot of people in our world, people who are unsatisfied, who are not content with their state in life, and who are searching for meaningfulness and sense meaning less deaths in their life, which is indicated by being unhappy or being discontent with their life situation. Here at the pathway to promise podcast we are all about helping you get through times like that. There are circumstances we all face, we like to call them are adversities or add various conditions. Things like death in the family are having a disease diagnosis or at being a geek being in debt or going through a divorce or a breakup of a relationship or depression, these things which can put us on the sidelines, which can make us discontent if we choose it for them to and the pathway to promise we believe that God has given you an opportunity to have peace, prosperity and purpose. And our podcast episodes on our blog pathway promise, calm is here to be helpful to you in that process to help you find a pathway. A way to get through we like to call it a 40 day way. So head on over to our website pathway promise calm, get our free gift there and get connected with our community. Dis contentment. Have you ever been discontent? I bet you have. And if we allow ourselves to we can stay stuck in discontentment. So I’m going to share with you a few thoughts today on how to be discontent if we want to be. Well let’s talk about then what it means to be content because the opposite of that would be to be discontented. So, contentment is not about containing my emotions. So, if we want to be discontented, we let our emotions go crazy go rapid, we ruled by our emotions that contentment is not maintaining the present situation or the status quo. So, be discontent means we choose to stay stuck to accept the status quo. If you want to be discontented, we need to understand that the definition of contentment is about, of contentment is not about attaining more possessions. So, just contentment would be about thinking that getting more stuff will somehow solve our inner life or issues of discontentment. That’s not the case. Webster’s dictionary says that happy that happy enough with what one contentment means. One is happy enough with what one has not desired something more or different, satisfied. If you’re feeling unsatisfied with your present situation, then you are just content.

I like I’m a pastor church and so I like to draw some lessons life lessons out of the Bible. And Phillip Ian’s chapter four, it talks about some things I just want to share with you now, whether you’re a person of faith or not, I think there’s some good things that you can control out of this. And Paul says, finally, Brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely. Whatever is a good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, let your mind dwell on these things. The things you’ve learned and received and heard and not seen in me, practice These things, and the God of peace shall be with you. I can do all things through Him who strengthens me. So those words there help us understand and what contentment is not what contentment is. So I want to share with you this bit of a formula debt is the secret of contentment. And so if we do the opposite of that, damn, where we’re discontent in this where a lot of people are at, the first thing is attitude. That is how we think right? So we want to be discontent. We have stinking thinking, as I’ve heard, it said, we don’t think about good stuff. But you want to think about good stuff and you can be to be and you can be content. Then you add to that action, action, attitude plus action and that is doing the right thing. So if you want to be discontent, do the wrong thing. And most of the times we know what the wrong thing is. It is making that bad decision at work or on our relationship or saying the wrong thing or and somehow out. throwing a fit can be a way of indicating our discontentment. If we take positive action that can lead us to contentment. And then that leads us to a sense of adequacy mean at the beat to have enough that’s the feeling right? That’s the emotional piece. So if we don’t feel right, if we allow our emotions be in turmoil, then that’s going to mess up everything else we could choose and whether where you are contented, or dis contentment. So let me unpack this a little bit further. I believe that contentment is a quality that is learned. So if we want to be discontent, then we choose not to learn. We choose not to read. We choose not to think we choose not to listen to great teachers, whether it’s live or into the classroom setting or in a podcast or, or other forums where we can learn from others. We want to stay stuck, we want to sit closed off, we want to stay walled in. Like in the Bible scripture read, Paul said, I have learned to be content. So that’s an active thing to do. Learn to be content. So I want to invite you to think about that. If you want to stay discontented. Don’t learn. Don’t pick up a book, don’t do anything else to give yourself the opportunity to expand your brain, expand your sense of the resources that you have.

contentment does not depend on our circumstances. So that means if we are discontented, we are ruled by our circumstances. We feel like, man, all this bad stuff happens to me. Things just don’t go right for me, and sometimes saying things don’t go right. But they are circumstance Bad things happen to all people. They do. You can have all these things we like to call the adversities, the five DS of adversity we talked about here on the pathway to promise. Those are things like the one D is depression, another one is debt. Another the third D is disease and other DS divorce or rather large relationships and breakup. And the fifth D is death is the death death of a loved one, or thinking about that. We can get stuck in any of those places. Those are all circumstances that happened to all people, but our level of contentment or discontentment depends on how much we are ruled by those. We choose that Ben Franklin said to be the D to the discount discontented man, no chair is easy. So I will continue friends, we believe from the pathway to promise that God has given you a god given life of peace, prosperity and purpose. And so if we’re Be discontented, then we don’t believe that. We don’t believe that good things can come to us. And we understand that contentment means we draw strength from a power greater than ourselves. We draw strength from I like to feel about God. And as a Christian is Jesus Christ who I draw, draw strength from. It works like this friends, there’s four stages for gifts I believe that God gives us that help us to overpower discontentment. One is the bold is to take bold action, and we talked about that. That’s the formula like to say it’s the Be bold action. Take taking action is an antidote to being stuck. The second thing is drawing on a higher power. That’s the PBP power means that we draw in a higher power than ourselves. That means we have a meditative life we have an inner life. I like to say say we have a spiritual life that we draw on a higher power. And those of us who are people of faith, we draw Our power greater than ourselves that we know that on our own, we just can’t do this. And the then the next thing is love. We need to have a love of self love of others. I love a family and friends that helps fuel us, strengthen us, give us the energy in order to overcome our circumstances, overcome our adversity. And then that so there’s a B for bold action, the P for power and the hell for love. And then the fourth element here, the fourth gift from God is D for discipline or self discipline. That’s the cognitive piece. That’s how we learn action. We do habits and other things that happen that we can do actively. It’s the implementation of the action that we take in order to be content with our situation in life. It’s looking to get better, not better, and doing the things we need to do. For one things I like to do is journal. The things I like to do is be in prayer. Another thing I like to do is be in conversation, deep conversation, as we try to do here on the pathway to promise. These are some things that can help you. If you choose to be discontented, your choice, you can do it. I just gave you the formula or the or the the recipe for that. But I think you know, that the choice is really up to you, whether you’re going to be content, or discontent, and our next episode of the pathway to promise we’re going to talk about how to enhance and to develop and to strengthen our contentment. So I invite you to tune in to Episode 92 for that. So until next time, friends, this is Dr. Brad Miller. Just want to encourage you to keep your promises because there’s power, get a promise kept. Thanks so much for taking the pathway to promise with Dr. Brad Miller as a subscriber, you’ll be a vital part of the pathway to promise community visit us on the web. pathway promise.com until next time, remember to stay on your pathway to promise

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