№05|We give dissatisfaction too much credit

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I remember the days I prayed for everything I have today. That phrase hangs above my bathtub in my Texas home. The place I go to rest, reflect, and get away from it all. And every time I walk into the bathroom, I look at it, and it makes me smile. Not because it's a saying to hang on the wall, but because it's true. My Texas home was the little cabin I prayed for years ago. My car was my dream car from when I was 10. The career I have today was the vision that once seemed unreachable, and now here I am writing to you.

And yet, there's a little glimmer of superstition that sneaks in sometimes. A quiet belief that if I become too satisfied with the blessings I have right now, I might just become less capable of receiving more of what I want into my life. I catch myself, and it makes me wonder if I'm creating a feeling of restlessness to make sure I don't miss out on something good that might be around the corner. Or could the wishes already fulfilled be the very thing that carries me further, if I only stay present with satisfaction?

I followed my curiosity down the research rabbit hole and was pleasantly surprised to find out we all might be giving dissatisfaction too much credit.

What Happens When the Wish Comes True

You probably have your own version of that phrase, even if it's not hanging above your bathtub. Something in your life today once lived entirely in your imagination. The work. The house. The relationship. The freedom. The money. The confidence to make a decision that you once would have agonized over. And then one day, somehow, it stopped being the thing you wanted and became the life you were standing inside.

The funny thing is, we don't usually stay amazed by the life we once wanted. The kitchen you couldn't believe was yours eventually becomes the kitchen with the countertops you desperately want to change. The job you hoped someone would finally offer you becomes a regular morning. The freedom you wanted so badly becomes a calendar you occasionally complain about. Nothing necessarily went wrong. Something became familiar.

Researchers have seen a version of this happen on a much larger scale. In a long-running German study, more than 13,000 people were asked how satisfied they were with their lives and how satisfied they expected to be five years later. Researchers then compared those expectations with what actually happened.

One of the findings caught my attention. When people's lives turned out better than they had expected, their expectations for the future rose too. The good thing happened, and then their expectations caught up to it. What had once been "better than I hoped" became normal. And once it became normal, they expected more.

That's the part I find fascinating. We spend years thinking, If I could just get there. And then we get there. We live there for a while. Eventually, what once felt like an extraordinary possibility simply becomes the life we're used to. That doesn't make us ungrateful. It may mean the mind is remarkably quick at adjusting to what is now true.

Yesterday's wish becomes today's normal. And once it does, the next better thing can start to feel necessary before we even realize the standard has moved. That may be where dissatisfaction starts getting more credit than it deserves.

The Part We May Be Misreading

Dissatisfaction has absolutely earned some of its reputation. It gets our attention. It can be the feeling that finally makes us admit something isn't working. The job really is too small. The conversation really does need to happen. We really do want something different. I've made important changes because I was dissatisfied. You probably have too.

But because dissatisfaction so often appears near the beginning of change, it's easy to start believing it was responsible for everything that came after. I felt restless. I moved. Something changed. And somewhere in that sequence, the restlessness gets promoted from messenger to mastermind.

The feeling itself didn't make the difficult decision. It didn't learn what you needed to learn or keep showing up when nothing was working yet. It didn't create the idea, have the conversation, take the risk, recover from the disappointment, or keep believing in something before there was much evidence that it would work.

There was more happening than dissatisfaction. There was desire, curiosity, imagination, and something in you that could see a possibility and wanted to know what might happen if you moved toward it. Those parts of us are quieter than dissatisfaction, which may be why they receive less credit.

Dissatisfaction announces itself. Desire doesn't always arrive with pressure. Sometimes it's a quiet pull toward something new.

Staying Present With Satisfaction

This was the part of the research I was most curious about. If we actually let ourselves feel good about where we are, does some essential hunger to grow disappear?

The research can't answer that question as neatly as I wanted it to. There's no study where scientists take thousands of ambitious adults, remove their dissatisfaction, and come back ten years later to see whether everyone is still getting things done. But there is research suggesting that feeling satisfied with progress doesn't necessarily bring movement to a stop. In one study following university students through their own goals over a semester, greater satisfaction with progress predicted more progress later.

It's one study, with students, over one semester. I wouldn't build an entire philosophy of life around it. But I like what it allows us to consider. Maybe satisfaction and movement were never opposites. Maybe we learned to pair dissatisfaction with ambition because we experienced them together so many times.

You can appreciate where you are and still feel interested in somewhere else. You can love the work and still have another idea. You can be proud of what you built and still want to build again. You can sit in the home you prayed for and still imagine another adventure.

The wanting doesn't have to disappear. What can disappear is the quiet requirement that something about now must be wrong before something about later is allowed to call you forward.

The Wishes and the Wanting

I don't think the answer is to want less. I certainly don't plan to. And I don't think we need to force ourselves into some permanent state of positivity where we're never frustrated, restless, disappointed, or ready for change. Dissatisfaction still has a place. Sometimes it's telling the truth.

This, to me, is part of what it means to be the CEO of your energy. It isn't about eliminating dissatisfaction or convincing yourself to be satisfied with everything you have. It's about recognizing what is actually directing your energy. Sometimes dissatisfaction is useful information. Other times, it's simply the familiar pressure we've learned to use to keep ourselves moving. The difference matters, because you can respond when something truly needs to change without requiring your life to feel insufficient in order to keep becoming.

I think we can stop requiring dissatisfaction to sit at the head of the table. Because there's power in recognizing what has already happened. The answered prayer that became an ordinary afternoon. The thing you once hoped for that you barely think about anymore. The person you worked so hard to become, who now just feels like who you are.

The phrase above my bathtub is still there. So is the list of things I still want. I'm beginning to understand that one doesn't threaten the other. Maybe that's what we give dissatisfaction too much credit for. We assume it's what keeps the future open. But perhaps we can fully receive the life we already have, the answered wishes, the things that have already arrived, and still remain available for whatever wants to come next.

Practice

The next time familiar restlessness shows up, pause before turning it into a plan. Ask yourself: Is something actually asking to change, or did the standard move?

If something needs your attention, listen. And if not, look around for a moment. Something in the life you’re standing in may already be an answered prayer.

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The phrase above my bathtub, the countertops you suddenly want to change, and the quiet belief that being satisfied might cost you what's next. This week's podcast asks why yesterday's wish becomes today's normal, and whether we really need dissatisfaction to keep the future open. Listen on YouTube, Apple or Spotify.

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