A life of more peace and freedom starts with understanding and knowing precisely where your “enough setpoint” is. “Enough” in this context refers to a level of lifestyle where all of your needs are taken care of to a point that you can happily live the rest of your life without feeling like you are lacking anything or depriving yourself while knowing very clearly that you do in fact have enough without continuously or obsessively striving for more.
Many people living in today’s culture haven’t had the insight that defining their “point of enough” is so crucial and actually preliminary to a life of peace. They are living in a perpetual state of needing and chasing more, regardless of how much they’ve accumulated, how much they’ve achieved, or how much success (in a culturally-defined sense) they have reached in their lives. They always feel that they need more.
If a person hasn’t identified where their lifestyle and needs have reached their “point of enough” – a level of their lifestyle that is unique to them that fully supports their joy, wellbeing, basic needs, health, and preferences without much unnecessary excess, they will keep chasing more endlessly and keep feeling a sense of lack, turbulence, and discontent in their lives, regardless of how much they get or achieve. People who haven’t defined their point of enough in terms of shelter, food, relationships, activities, hobbies, material possessions, and essentially their lifestyle and haven’t yet quantified these needs and expenses in terms of the income they require to maintain will almost always keep blindly chasing more money, more and better things to fill an inner void, keep seeking more and novel ways to keep spending (and often wasting) their money, and will feel a perpetual sense of lack. Unfortunately, they will never feel completely satisfied with what they have, regardless of how much they get. They will have serious trouble being truly content and at peace with themselves and their lives.
The erroneous idea that people are fed by modern Western culture is that they always need more and need to always be going after more, regardless of whether what they currently have is objectively enough for them. More stuff, a better life situation, a more luxurious lifestyle, more extravagant experiences, more activities, more people, more prestige or fame, and a general feeling of just needing something more that never really gets satisfied for long once obtained.
Regardless of how much people make in terms of income, people in modern culture are implicitly taught to upgrade their lifestyle materially in any way they can as soon as their income allows for it. People are essentially chasing the goal of happiness though more, through things that their hard-earned money and limited life energy that went into it earning it can buy. You got a raise? Great, now you can afford a brand new and fancier car model that has even steeper monthly finance payments over a 7-year contract. You have some extra money leftover at the end of the month? Well – why don’t you spend it immediately on more clothes, gadgets, accessories, home upgrades, restaurants, and services that you see advertised everywhere?
What people are discouraged from realizing and understanding clearly and precisely is that more in terms of stuff and lifestyle will not usually or even reliably bring more peace, contentedness, and happiness. If your baseline needs of shelter, food, water, a way to get around, purposeful activities, a way to do what you love (whether you get paid for it or not), and some form of connection or community are taken care of, more stuff that money can buy may not bring you the peace and happiness you seek. Actually, it may take away from it. In fact, naturally, pursuing and attempting to acquire more is often met with more stress, more obligations, more worry (because there is more to lose or maintain), and more work hours to be put into a job that you may or may not tolerate in order to be able to maintain the ever-increasing baseline of lifestyle that people are taught to believe is so vital for their joy and wellbeing.
If a person hasn’t actually quantified their needs and expenses that allow them to live happily and peacefully (though ideally minimally and frugally) with an actual number, they will always feel that their enough point where they will be satisfied is somewhere in the future when some condition that involves more of something is met. Unfortunately, this condition on one’s peace and happiness also keeps receding endlessly into the future and gives way to a new, further away condition once the current one is met. This is the way the untrained and “autopiloted” human mind works. This is also the materialist modern rat race trap that so many people are in. People fail to clearly recognize and realize when they’ve actually reached this unique setpoint of enough for them, where it actually is for them specifically in terms of lifestyle, and how much income is actually required to maintain it.
If someone isn’t happy with their life while driving a 2008 Honda Civic that still works and drives fine while living in a modestly-sized home or apartment that is comfortable enough to sleep, dine, and rest in, a 2025 Mercedes Benz and a 10 000 square foot mansion unfortunately won’t make them much happier, if at all. The old Civic or the modest home isn’t what is causing their unhappiness. This is counter to modern culturally-influenced ideas and hunches that are the result of pernicious programming. But, the basic reason why more won’t create more happiness is because joy, peace, and happiness don’t arise in the mind as a result of things acquired outside of itself. Peace and happiness is actually generated from within. It is generated when a person can embody their presence, be at peace and truly content with where they are in life while feeling that it is enough, lets go of unnecessary attachments to things or people that don’t serve them, and then spends more of their time on things that actually bring them peace, meaning, and fulfillment (that modern corporate work so often fails to provide). The activities that you find purposeful, meaningful, and most giving of energy, as well as the people or community that truly enhance your joy don’t have to reap a financial reward in a traditional sense in order to bring you the peace and joy you seek. Making money itself doesn’t have to be coupled with meaning or purpose. In other words, the things you find meaning and purpose in don’t have to be monetized or give you a return in a traditional monetary sense. You can do them for their own sake. If you are able to monetize your meaningful activities that you would happily do regardless of whether you were getting paid for it or not, that is a great situation as well, but it doesn’t have to be this way in order to find fulfillment and enjoy your favourite activities.
From a Buddhist perspective, joy, peace, and contentedness can be argued to be inversely related to the amount of attachment one has to things, people, ideas, concepts, and even one’s own sense of self. The less mental attachment one has to things, ideas, and self, the more one can naturally have access to their innate peace, joy, wellbeing, and an exuberant and deeply content state called samadhi. It is a state that is inherent to one’s essence when one has truly let go of excessive attachment to things and can finally enjoy themselves and their natural peace within because they truly don’t need more. Their mind is at peace, they are happy with what they have, and their peace is no longer heavily clouded by excessive desire and continual need. They know that they can maintain their “setpoint of enough” without burnout or exhaustion.
Once someone knows that they have enough and that they are enough as they are, doors may fling open in their life for different lines of work that are more aligned with their preferences, talents, and gifts. Or, it can simply allow for having to put in less hours at tedious jobs because they have now quantified where that enough setpoint is for them and just need to maintain this lowered baseline of income, freeing up their energy to be used on things that they find more fulfilling or enjoyable. This can create a strong and solid sense of peace and security within that has one feeling confident that they can earn a certain amount comfortably and without excessive stress done through a permanent state of exhaustion. This security replaces the frantic feeling of stressing about always not having enough and needing to earn more to keep trying to reach the ever-increasing baseline of income and lifestyle upgrades that are still on a pedestal. If knowing one’s “enough setpoint” allows for less work or for work that is more fun or more naturally rewarding (even if it pays less), this can be a great gift as well that can give a person more free time to do what they wish to do and also hopefully give them the feeling of looking forward to their day upon waking in the morning instead of the all-too-familiar dread and countdown to the weekend that is the cornerstone of corporate work life.
Defining your “enough” often involves seeing where you can cut your expenses and get your needs met in cheaper or free ways, and then making a conscious effort not to increase the expenses that this more minimal lifestyle requires (unless the increase in lifestyle is truly worth the extra income required to maintain it and is in line with your deepest values). This is not an act of deprivation or lacking. It can definitely seem like that at first when downsizing, though. But once in practice, defining your baseline of enough and striving to make it as frugal and minimal as possible that is fitting into your sense of what is enough for you is actually usually experienced as increased freedom, peace, security, and fulfillment. The trouble is that one’s expectations are heavily influenced by what culture has glorified, idealized, and put on a pedestal of “normality”.
Ordained Buddhist monks live by this principle of clearly knowing that they have enough. They own very little – usually just a robe, a bowl, sandals or shoes, and basic household items like a toothbrush and razor. Admittedly, their shelter and food costs are null because they are provided by their community. But on top of these needs, they do not seek more in terms of lifestyle and are discouraged from doing so by their teachings and their “sangha” – the pali word for their community. They’ve understood that on top of basic needs like food, shelter, and community, their happiness and peace is up to them and how they traverse and balance their minds, not up to things that they can acquire outside of themselves. Their energy is therefore devoted to developing their minds through meditation that promotes tranquility and clear-seeing, through practicing simplicity, letting go of unnecessary attachment and desire, and striving to be ethical and kind to others. They do not even usually handle money. Although their basic needs like food and shelter are provided to them for free, which is not a possibility for most people, Buddhist monks’ absolutely minimal lifestyle and the happiness and peace they exude and generally abide in is a great lesson to Westerners in modern culture about how much one truly needs to be at peace and experience happiness. If monks can be truly at peace while owning almost nothing, why can’t you with your current life situation? For the typical Westerner, their life situation is often too expensive and foolishly extravagant, in which case downgrading in some way by either moving to a smaller home, buying an older car, or removing unnecessary things or expense leaks in their budget can create a bigger gap between income and expenses, allowing them to save substantially more for retirement that could occur at a much earlier date than they thought was possible with their previous unnecessarily-expensive lifestyle.
Living beneath your means while knowing that your lifestyle has reached your “setpoint of enough” can be a great gift of peace, security, confidence, and wellbeing. Leaving behind the frantic feeling of trying to keep up with a lifestyle that you’ve been taught to chase that is often far beyond what you actually need to be content and at peace, you can settle into real freedom, security, peace, and contentedness that can come rather quickly after defining your unique setpoint of enough.
