A Moment You Felt the Most Satisfied With Your Life - Day #8

 Blog Challenge - Day 8
A Moment You Felt the Most Satisfied With Your Life

A moment?

Okay as I started to dig deep and really think when that moment would be I came across several that I thought I might use...(and a few others that I Ieft off)

• Graduation from college with a Bachelor's Degree
• Each time I gave birth to one of my five sons
• Getting accepted into Med School (well, Dave did but it was a team effort!)
• Being awarded Utah's Young Mother of the Year
• Moving into my dream home that we designed and built ourselves
• When my boys accomplish something amazing
• Completing my first full marathon

 I learned something interesting as I contemplated each of the above possibilities and which to choose to be my one moment...

• I am grateful I have a Bachelor's Degree, but now I want to earn a Masters
• I am wishing (now that my nest is emptying) that I would've had a couple more children
• Medical School was a long haul
• I never feel worthy being called "Young Mother of the Year". I realize how many mistakes I have made as a mom and it's a hard title to live with once you have teenagers!
• I still love my home, but there are so many things I wish we had done differently now
• I am thrilled when my boys excel, but it still crushes me when they don't
• Running just one marathon isn't satisfying enough.  I am now planning my third

It seems that no matter what I achieve, I am not satisfied enough with that accomplishment, but always yearning for more.  I never feel fully satisfied.

When I publish my first book, when I qualify for the Boston Marathon, when my house is 100% completely organized, when I am caught up on my blog, scrapbooks, photo albums, etc., when we remodel the house, when we travel the world.  When everything in my life is perfect.  Then I will feel like I have arrived.  The sad truth is, most of these things aren't ever going to happen. 

In the process of these thoughts, I am ignoring the person I am right now --- spending a night at home with my family around me and my cat curled up on the chair, my boys, though spread across the world, are all healthy and doing good things --- all because I have decided I am not complete yet.  That I have to be more in order to deserve this wonderful life I have been blessed with. 

  

I know it's a common thing to not feel completely satisfied all the time and it has it's good points because if we are completely satisfied with our lives then we would never strive to become more, to reach higher.  But, we have to also remember to be aware of all that we DO have.  It is a balancing act for sure.

One of my my favorite quotes has always been, "It's about the journey, not the destination."  We need to enjoy the present moment and not always be looking into the future for our happiness.  The "I'll be happy when...." thoughts will stifle away the joy that is available to us right now.  There's so much joy to be found in each moment.  It's there all around us, just in the little things, but sometimes we have to slow down and really seek those moments out. 

I read an article tonight on this same idea and in it I found this great quote by the Dalai Lama.  He said: “…our moment-to-moment happiness is largely determined by our outlook.  In fact, whether we are feeling happy or unhappy at any given moment often has very little to do with our absolute conditions but, rather it is a function of how we perceive our situation, how satisfied we are with what we have.”

Once again it comes down to how we CHOOSE to feel.  In this case, it's how we perceive our situation, which is ultimately a choice in itself.

If we can learn to desire what we have...NOW... not what we want to have in the future, but what we have at the present moment, then we will find satisfaction.

I had a quote hanging in my laundry room when my boys were little that said, "I am enough, I have enough, I do enough."  I really needed to hear that because I never felt like I reached "enough", that there was always more to do, to be, to get.  But the truth is, we really are all enough where we are at THIS present moment.  We just have to slow down enough to enjoy the enough-ness!

After thinking about all this, I am pretty sure there isn't just one moment that I could choose where I felt completely satisfied with my life. Each moment is going to be in the running from now on as I strive to feel satisfaction from each and every moment.  

Wish me luck!