Contentment is a state of being where one is satisfied with their current situation, and the state of affairs in one’s life as they presently are. If one is content, they are pleased with their situation and how the elements in one’s life are situated. Contrary to popular belief, it is possible to be content with one’s life regardless of the circumstance, regardless of whether things are going as one expected or not.
General
Many religions have some form of eternal bliss or heaven as their goal, often contrasted with everlasting torment or dissatisfaction. The source of all dissatisfaction appears to stem from the ability to compare experiences and then infer that one's state is not ideal.
In the Bible, there is an account that man's fall from his paradisal state was caused by man eating the forbidden fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Man's eyes were opened to know the distinction between good and evil (Genesis 3). In other words, when man becomes intellectually developed to distinguish between good and evil, he realizes there is a gap between what he considers good or ideal and what he is experiencing. The perception of this disparity is what creates psychological and physiological tension.
In the Tao Te Ching, this development of man from his primal state of consciousness called Tao is similarly expounded in this manner: "When the Tao is lost, there is goodness. When goodness is lost, there is morality ...". Morality is the intellectual discernment between good and evil. There is a belief that one can achieve contentment by living "in the moment," which represents a way to stop the judgmental process of discriminating between good and bad. However, attempting to live in the moment is difficult because a person's attention is not only distracted by sensory stimuli but also psychological processes that conspire to make them think subconsciously or consciously. This thinking process is involved with memories; hence, the attempt to stay in the present is a ponderous one given that there is a subconscious struggle to break away from memories, especially unhappy ones. For this reason, specializations in this pursuit to live in the moment are found in various religious and mystical schools, manifested in forms of meditation and prayer. Various studies have shown prayer to promote well-being in religious people.
Practicing contentment as an attitude is another way for a person to obtain it in their lives. Practicing gratitude is another way to understand what contentment as an attitude is about. Seen in this light, contentment is not an achievement but an attitude that one can adopt at any time.
The American philosopher Robert Bruce Raup wrote a book Complacency: The Foundation of Human Behavior (1925) in which he claimed that the human need for complacency (i.e. inner tranquility) was the hidden spring of human behavior. Raup made this the basis of his pedagogical theory, which he later used in his criticisms of the American education system of the 1930s. In the context of present-day society, the multidimensional leisure culture evinces the desire of man to return to his core state of contentment by letting go of his hectic outer activities.
Contentment and positive psychology
In many ways, contentment can be closely associated with the concept of happiness and satisfaction. In positive psychology, social scientists study what might contribute to living a good life, or what would lead to people having increased positive mood and overall satisfaction with their life.
Happiness, in positive psychology, is defined in a twofold manner, which in totality is referred to as subjective well-being. How much positive emotion (positive affect) as opposed to negative emotion (negative affect) a person has, and how one views one's life overall (global satisfaction) are the questions asked in positive psychology to determine happiness. Contentment is closely related to a person's level of satisfaction with his or her life (global satisfaction).
In the 2014 book Lucky Go Happy : Make Happiness Happen!, Paul van der Merwe uses a chart to illustrate how being content for long periods of time, can yield more happiness than being ecstatic during a short period.
Positive psychology finds it very important to study what contributes to people being happy and to people flourishing, and finds it just as important to focus on the constructive ways in which people function and adapt, as opposed to the general field of psychology which focuses more on what goes wrong or is pathological with human beings.