Living offline feels great, especially if your life offline is better than your online presence. Here is how to be content with life and decrease your stress!
It is hard to be content with life in this age where people can easily fake a good life because no one is required to be real on the internet.
You can be whoever you want and everyone will be too busy faking their own lives to even check the facts, so you are safe.
But there was someone who said something like, if who you are and who you show to the world are two different people, you will feel conflicted and that will result in identity crisis and unhappiness.
That is why you should learn how to be content with life, and here are some ways:
- Lessen your social media use or quit it.
- Cut off people you are uncomfortable with.
- Sell or throw away the stuff you bought only because other people have it.
- Get to know yourself better and do the things you genuinely like.
- Spend time offline. Be a digital minimalist.
Let’s begin.
How to Be Content With Life and Decrease Your Stress
If you want to learn how to be content with life and decrease your stress, you need to be comfortable going against society. Live your life according to your rules.
I get stressed out from time to time, but I still feel happy deep inside. Quitting social media and focusing on emotional pursuits have made this possible.
I don’t have the latest gadgets, and only a few of my possessions are really important to me. I live a minimalist life, and I declutter from time to time.
I could survive even if I only had my phone, my tablet, and my laptop plus a few clothes. I need them so I can work and earn money, which I need to survive as a person on this planet.
Overall, I am content with life. A lot of people are too focused on thriving in the materialistic side of life, but I was there for years and that was a stressful phase in my life. I struggled internally, too!
Vox says that materialistic people are sad and even terrible people.
There are too many people who may seem to be living better lives than others, but they are not happy deep inside. If you are on the other side, are you happy?
On this side where I am, life is peaceful because I only have myself to think about.
And I think I feel this way because I have released the negative emotions that had turned me into a toxic person in the past.
My past self was shallow and wanted to be better than other people in shallow aspects of life. When I stepped out of that world and looked from the outside, I saw sparkles but it was empty.
The sparkles that I saw were the bright flashes that people used to hide their dark insides. There was nothing deep inside. I was nothing deep inside.
That is a sad life, isn’t it?
If you are one of those who emit a fake glow in hopes that your ugliness doesn’t get discovered, learning how to be content in life may resolve your issues.
1. Lessen your social media use or quit it.
I quit social media for good, and I felt better when I did. I rarely feel unstable because I am not exposed to things that might trigger my insecurities.
I still have insecurities.
There are a lot of posts on social media that were posted simply to make people envious or feel bad about their situations. And almost everyone does that, so the competition has no end.
It is stressful to take part in shallow competitions like that, and it is also expensive.
Of course, if you want to be better than others and you feel the need to show it to them, you will buy the latest iPhone to take pictures of what you eat in a 5-star restaurant in a foreign country that has a high cost of living.
Social media just made you spend thousands of dollars, which you may or may not have! *shrugs*
According to the New York Post, many people flaunt possessions that were not bought with their own money on social media.
If you are simply living your life without a care about your social media friends and presence, you can own an almost 5-year-old Android phone and eat cup noodles at home, and that is fine.
I have that phone and eat spicy noodles at home, and I am fine.
Social media is not bad if you can control yourself and your emotional responses, as well as if you don’t take everything seriously. But if you tend to be insecure, you should quit social media even just for a month.
It would be hard to be content with life if other people’s actions affect you.
2. Cut off people you are uncomfortable with.
I have friends I still talk to, but I talk to them mostly if we meet in person or if we are planning to meet in person.
But on normal days, I don’t talk to anyone. I am not attached to my friends. I am literally out of reach.
I am also not attached to my family relatives, which is why I can cut them off. You don’t need to keep the connection with people if you don’t want to, even though you are connected to them by blood.
I am very much introverted. I prefer being alone in my room, doing things that don’t involve talking. Good thing, my brothers are introverts, too.
They can leave me alone, and I can do the same to them.
Introverts love their alone time. If you are an introvert, Psychology Today has suggestions on what to say when you want to be alone.
I can cut people off without feeling bad about it, so I can go against society and be content with what I have even if other people raise their eyebrows at me.
I am generally unattached, so I am not interested in people in the first place. I cared about what they thought, but that was during my teenage years.
I had low self-esteem and felt like I needed to get the approval of others, which was true in many cases. I needed to please my professors to get good grades.
But the point is, if there are people around you who trigger your insecurities intentionally or unintentionally, cut them off if you can.
3. Sell or throw away the stuff that you bought only because other people have it.
I was an impulsive buyer, but I already fixed that. Or my financial situation back then fixed that. I went through a stressful financial problem in the past, and I learned a lot from that.
I still buy things that I don’t need, but it’s not because I bought them just because other people have them. I bought them because I thought I liked them, but I ended up not using them as much as I thought I would.
But back in college, I was buying a lot of books for #bookstagram. I had an Instagram account where I posted books, but I never read those books, so I sold them for a lower price, of course.
Social media is really expensive even though the applications are free.
I am a fan of minimalism. In fact, I think of ways to reduce the stuff in my room from time to time. I know that there are things here that I don’t even touch.
The Minimalists says that being a minimalist means having less than 100 material possessions.
That is because of my impulsive buying in the past.
If you want to be content with life, part of it is decluttering. You should pay attention to all the things that you possess and let go of those that have no use and must be thrown away, sold, or given to others who need them.
4. Get to know yourself better and do the things you genuinely like.
If we are surrounded by the loud noises of other people, we forget who we really are and what we really want to do. You will never be content with life if you don’t know yourself, so get to know yourself.
Once you have found those things and activities that are close to your heart, think about which ones are doable and then do those. You can also try to do those that seem impossible in reality.
If your beliefs are limiting you, this simple guide by Develop Good Habits might help you overcome your limiting beliefs.
I have several personal projects (including this blog) that I do simply because enjoy them. That is why, even though I am not earning a decent income from them, I am not stopping. Money is not a motivation.
I actually started this blog in particular when I was dealing with a financial problem. My lack of money didn’t stop me from pursuing this. I was frustrated because of the bills to pay, but this was what kept me going.
That is why I can’t lose A Lover in Disguise. This is more important than any person that exists in the world because this is basically me in the digital world.
5. Spend time offline. Be a digital minimalist.
I am incorporating offline hours into my everyday life because I know that it is important to my well-being and contentment.
I am limiting my work hours and the hours that I spend on my passion projects, and I am adding hours for language learning, painting, and working out on my schedule.
Living offline feels great, especially if your life offline is better than your online presence. If you are the kind of person who has a fake good life on social media but a terrible life in reality, you will not enjoy being offline.
Whenever I look around, I see a lot of people looking at their phones. I am not surprised because I was one of them, but it makes me wonder when they will realize that social media steals time.
New York Behavioral Health says that when someone spends most of their time on social media, they don’t get the experience needed to develop real-life social skills.
I was a social media user, so I know that scrolling is addictive. Good thing, I was aware that it was bad, so I did something to break away from that addiction.
Months later, I am here, feeling content with life.
But based on that, I think having a pleasant life outside of the internet is needed to be truly content with life. If you are truly content, you can look up at the sky, not down at your phone’s screen, and you can smile.
Last Words
How to be content with life?
Embrace individuality over societal norms. Don’t be afraid to disappoint people if your choices or you want to make choices that go against their desires.
There are things that I am not fully comfortable doing. Other people might have opposing opinions, and their reactions might affect my peace.
I want to protect my peace, which is part of my individuality, that is why.
You just learned how to be content with life!
If you enjoyed reading how to be content with life and decrease your stress, here is a video of me talking about contentment and happiness:
