Generosity Over Greed: Contentment, Simplicity, and Margins

``The word that came to me in this passage here was the deceitfulness of wealth. You see, wealth promises things that it simply can't deliver on. Money is good, but wealth promises things that it simply cannot hold onto. It promises love and identity and security and peace and joy and happiness and value and self worth. But it's deceitful as Jesus said because we know that these things can only be found in god. [00:51:46] (35 seconds)  #DeceitOfWealth

It's striking to think about it that in the West here, we live in the most affluent generation in all of human history. We have the most comfort. We have more choices than ever before. We have more wealth than ever before. That should lead to happiness and joy. But in the West, we have the most worried people, the most anxiety, the most loneliness, the most unsatisfied desires in the West. This lie just doesn't add up. The lie that we so often take in that more means happiness, more means more joy is simply not true. It's a lie that keeps us chasing but never arriving. [00:47:46] (56 seconds)  #AffluenceNotHappiness

And the third way I think that we can move from we can move towards generosity and away from greed is to simply to make room. And to live a life of generosity, we need capacity. It's a real challenge to be able to do good and to move towards generosity if we don't have capacity, if we don't build margins in our life. We need margins in our finances because it's hard to be able to give your resources away if you are at full capacity. And so if I earn a £100 and I spend a £100, then it's pretty impossible for me to be able to to do anything of any good financially. [01:03:14] (51 seconds)  #MakeRoomToGive

And the world around us has learned how to exploit this lie in extraordinary positions. And that's why we have the constant cycle of sales. January sales, just finished Christmas, you've hit the January sales. My wife said to me, darling, we can go shopping. It's January sales. I said, darling, there's always sales. There's the spring sales. There's the Easter sales. There's the summer sales. Then it moves into the autumn sales. Then it's the Black Friday cells. The Cyber Monday cells. The pre Christmas cells. The Boxing Day cells. It just never ends because the human heart has been pruned into the myth of more. [00:43:12] (52 seconds)  #EndlessSalesCulture

And more recently, we we've had the introductions of algorithms that sit quietly behind our screens watching what we do, watching what we like, watching what we pause, what we search for, what we say. Our data has become the detailed map of our habits, our preferences, our vulnerabilities, and our longings. These algorithms are designed to not merely show us ads, but to show us personally the ads that most likely will move us into a place of purchase. [00:44:44] (36 seconds)  #AlgorithmicConsumerism

Billions are spent on advertising. We're constantly bombarded with adverts. We've on billboards. We've relaxed on the roads, on bus stops, on commerce between commercial TV ads, on our phones, on our laptops, on our tablets. Adverts are woven in to our daily lives. Experts estimate that the average person sees between 3,005 ads every single day. I told Grace that I think hers is double. Right. [00:44:05] (39 seconds)  #AdOverload

And the first one is to pursue a life of contentment. Contentment is the inner satisfaction, one of the most underrated virtues. If greed is a desire for more and more and more, contentment is simply the opposite. It's been deeply happy with what we have. It's been free from the desire for wanting more and more and being happy and being grateful for what we have. It's countercultural to the world that we live in today. Content people are often more generous. [00:56:22] (45 seconds)  #PursueContentment

And this idea blows my mind, blows may blow some of our mind because it's simply counter cultural. The disciplined pursuit of less, sometimes referred to as simplicity, minimalism, simple living. It's not about being poor. It's about having enough and recognizing and deciding to live with less. [01:00:51] (27 seconds)  #ChooseSimplicity