“Just be satisfied with what you have,” I often hear people saying. The danger in that sentence is by no means in the word “satisfied”, but in the word “just”. If we would all “just” be satisfied with what we have, the implications on civilization would be severe. Allow me to explain…

You can be unsatisfied with each and every aspect of your life. In that case, something is wrong with you, not with the world around you. I have never met anyone who has the right to be unsatisfied with every aspect of his or her life. There is always a jewel somewhere, you might just have to look for it and focus on it. It is easy to focus on what isn’t right, but with a bit of willpower and training you can as easily focus on the good stuff.

You can also be satisfied with each and every aspect of your life. Everything is good, nothing needs change, nor improvement. Initially, that seems to be a great thing. But what if everyone looks at life like that? There would be no desire to look for cure of disease, no desire to solve some of the major problems we face these days and there would be no advance of human life on earth. In fact, it might halt a big part of our evolution.

Of course, the latter scenario is not possible in real life. There will always be people around who experience what advertisement icon David Ogilvy described as “devine discontent”.

It has been said by great thinkers over and over again: Those who manage to appreciate life and be satisfied with the beautiful things around them, but at the same time experience an ambitious type of discontent to change the world around them, are the ones who do.

Live ‘Wow!’ by counting your blessings, but at the same time always aim for improvement of whatever is just not right.