Cultivating Contentment with Brenda Yoder

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If you’ve ever wished you could make life less complicated, you’re going to love my guest on today’s podcast. Brenda Yoder is here with me talking about contentment - what it is, how to cultivate it and what is keeping you from feeling satisfied with your life.

Brenda is a licensed mental health counselor, school counselor, speaker and educator. She is also the author of Uncomplicated: Simple Secrets for a Compelling Life; and Fledge: Launching Your Kids without Losing Your Mind.

She’s the cohost of the Midlife Moms Podcast and Facebook community. She also hosts and writes the Life Beyond the Picket Fence podcast and blog, covering a variety of topics on faith, life, and family beyond the storybook image.

Uncomplicating Your Life

Brenda lives in a small Amish-Mennonite community, and sees how tourists flock there because there is something in that lifestyle that they want in their own lives.

How many of us watch Hallmark movies at the holidays and long for those quaint towns and communities? We’re drawn to the uncomplicated, less chaotic, less busy way of life. 

Visitors to Brenda’s town think they would have to be Amish in order to have that simplicity and satisfaction. But contentment isn’t about where you live or what you have or don’t have. It’s more internal - how you view the world and what you value. 

As a working mom to 4 kids and now a grandma to 3 little ones, Brenda understands that there’s more to an uncomplicated life than just “slowing down”. She says, “It really is a sense of values clarification.” 

Clarifying our values, modeling them and seeing them lived out is not as common as it was in previous generations. Instead, we’re inundated by technology, social media and other distractions.

In Brenda’s book, Uncomplicated, she outlines ten virtues, mindsets and behaviors for an uncomplicated life: resourcefulness, practicality, fidelity, equanimity & forbearance, stewardship, interdependence, being grounded and humble, foresight prudence and, of course, contentment.

A Culture of Discontent

Brenda defines discontentment as “that one thing that’s always out of your reach.” Maybe it’s always looking to a new goal or experience as soon as you achieve something. As a parent, you might find yourself constantly looking ahead to the next stage, wishing for your kid to have better grades or better behavior. 

When you are discontent, you’ll always be looking at what’s out of reach, rather than seeing  what you already have that can fill you up. You take things for granted, and nothing ever seems to be enough.

Finding contentment comes back to asking yourself, “What if today is as good as it gets?” Can you be content and satisfied with what is here? 

Brenda explains that many people confuse contentment with happiness, but they are not the same. She says, “Contentment is a sense of ‘I am full, and I don’t need more’.”

In helping moms raise emotionally healthy kids, contentment is huge. We don’t want our kids to grow up and be people who are chronically dissatisfied with their life. Our kids pick up on what we model and how we view our lives.

Obstacles to Contentment

Many aspects of our society tend to steer us toward discontent. Social media (and lots of other types of media), ads and algorithms want us to feel unsatisfied so we keep buying. And there are some common thought patterns that you’ve probably fallen into yourself.

Performance. In our American culture, we are driven to perform. It can even make us fear contentment. There’s a belief that we can’t be satisfied with what we already have because it will make us lazy. We think we always need to be doing more, being more and achieving more. 

Doubt. This is the if/when type of thinking. If I can…I’ll finally be satisfied. Or, when I achieve…I’m finally going to be at the place I want to be. You’re relying on something outside of yourself to make you feel better. 

If you can find contentment first, then you can pursue something more, better or different knowing that you already have everything you want and need. You don’t need anything from that next step.

Putting off contentment. Maybe you think you’ll finally be content when your kids are older and more settled or when you’re retired. But there are no guarantees in life. What can you do to cultivate a sense of content and gratitude right now, in this season, exactly where you and your family are? What can you jump into and enjoy?

Cultivating Contentment

Feeling content requires the ability to hold two things at the same time. I can be sad and okay. I can be disappointed and be okay. I can want more but be okay with today. It is hard for your human brain to do that, but you really are capable of it.

Here are some tips to bring more contentment into your life.

Recognize your discontent. Brenda says, “I think a lot of discontentment is driven within our body. In quiet spaces, when we're not busy, we're uncomfortable. Those tasks that we tend to do kind of shelter our brain and our heart from all of the worries and thoughts pinging back and forth.”

When we truly let ourselves rest, our minds might wander to places of discontent. So we reach for the phone or a quick dopamine hit to soothe that discomfort. We're seeking something to make us feel successful, alive, better. If we could feel deeper contentment, being alone in that quiet space wouldn't be so uncomfortable.

Have a replacement. It’s great to say you’re not going to reach for your phone when you feel that discontentment pop up, but what will you do instead? What else can you put in your environment that you enjoy? Brenda loves using a gratitude practice. You can place your journal nearby or simply an item that you touch while you think of a couple things you’re thankful for.

Create a marker in your day. Decide when and how you will make space for contentment and gratitude. Brenda prefers early-morning journaling but realizes not everyone is an early riser. Consider turning off the radio on your way to school pick-up and practicing gratitude while you wait in the car line. At the end of the day, think about everything that happened and what you really loved. 

Make a big deal about small things. Even though Brenda had published two books, earned a Masters degree and had many other successes, she could only focus on what she hadn’t done yet. Now, she preaches making a big deal of those things we often tend to overlook, celebrating all the beauty in your life

Drive in the middle lane. On the highway of life, you don’t always have to be in the fast lane, speeding past people. There will be times when you need to steer around an obstacle, accelerate for a little while or pull into the right lane and slow down for a bit. But after those shifts, return to the center lane and to a sense of balance. Trust that if you have to pull off at a rest stop, you won’t live there forever. You can always put your foot on the gas, and you can always let it go.

Find a role model. When you think about contentment, who in your life comes to mind? What about them do you want to emulate? When you want to feel more content, envision that person. 

Look for evidence. Years ago, when my husband and I were struggling in my marriage, I challenged myself to complete the sentence, “I am happily married because…” It was so powerful. I found areas where things actually were good enough and a few very specific areas that weren’t. When I knew what those problems were, then we could have a conversation about improving them.

You can use this same kind of prompt to find the truth about other areas of your life, too:

• I am a good mom because…
• I am a success in my career because…
• My house is good enough because…
• I am fairly healthy because…

Brenda uses a similar exercise in which you draw a t-chart and list out lies in one column and truth in the other.

When you see the evidence and truth laid out, can it be good enough? What if it already is? 

In parenting, what if your kid’s behavior isn’t as terrible as you think it is? What if we want our kids to make mistakes? What if a meltdown is the best thing that could happen today? What if it’s a chance for connection and learning and growth?

These are all great ways to reframe discontented thoughts.

I’ll leave you with this perspective from Brenda: 

“To another person, our lives are always a cup that’s more full than someone else’s. When you're in the busy seasons of raising kids, it is just hard. The last thing you want to do is reflect because what you're living is not what you had thought you were gonna be living. But the bottom line is that what you're experiencing is not the end of the sentence. It's not the end of the story.”

My invitation to you today, Mama, is to chase contentment. Choose it. Figure out how to bring more of it into each moment. You’re already good enough.

You’ll Learn:

• Why there is more discontent in our current society that in past generations
• How contentment and happiness are different from each other
• Common challenges to feeling content
• 7 strategies for bringing more contentment into your life
• The exercise I used to create more contentment in my marriage

Connect with Brenda Yoder:

• Find her online at BrendaYoder.com 
• Follow her on Instagram and Facebook
• Read Uncomplicated: Simple Secrets for a Compelling Life
• Read Fledge: Launching Your Kids without Losing Your Mind
• Check out the Midlife Moms Podcast and community
• Listen to Life Beyond the Picket Fence