It is generally agreed that excessive greed is unholy, thus the source of misery and unhappiness. Individuals as well as collective groups fight one another over personal and local-scale desires. It is the fact that people do not feel what they have as enough that they continue to seek more. The more they gain what they seek, the more those gains will be at the compromise of others, especially if their actions are carried out without any causal consideration whatsoever.

As such, spiritual enlightenment in general advises us to learn to be content – be content with what we have. Being content does not mean simply stop wanting more or suppressing our desires, which usually ends up leaving us with pent-up frustrations that will become the last straw at some point, and so all such a suppression does is it brings about an adverse effect, because people do not know why. Rather, being content is synonymous with gaining a deeper understanding of what causes unhappiness and learning one of the most valuable qualities that makes a decent and wholesome human being: Gratitude. Becoming aware of the fact that, even though you may feel bad about your own life circumstances, thinking that you are poor and miserable as you see you are worse off than so many people in society, you should know that around the world, there are, on the contrary, millions of people who are in even much lesser situations than you, such as people whose nations are in the state of war, underdeveloped countries where people do not have enough food to eat and suffer water scarcity, etc. Even in your own society, there are poor homeless kids and people dying as they lack the means to access medical care. Knowing about the world around you is to make you realize how well-off you are compared to countless people out there who are literally suffering. Therefore, setting a point of sufficiency for the self is important, as it means you are truly grateful for what you have, especially health to those who have it unscathed.

With health and a bit of luck, you can change your life; those are the two greatest possessions a person can have. With health, a poor person can make a living; with some luck, such as favorable circumstances, one can easily make their way of out poverty and/or even become rich. On the other hand, without health, even a constantly-ill man cannot enjoy his life despite his riches; a serious lack of health is also the worst luck to anyone. Thus, knowing this and that there are always people worse off than you should make you feel grateful for what you have and be totally content without frustration, not mere suppression of desires without understanding the roots of the problem.

In short, being content, for exactitude, means being grateful as you are fully aware of how the world works; it is not supposed to strictly mean “no more”. You can still be an ambitious person while knowing how to be content, in that you know what is utterly necessary and important to focus on to set goals for higher achievements, not things such as obsession with excessive materialistic possessions at the cost of unnecessarily damaging your relationships with other people in your life.

Life is not solely about anyone. None of us is the center of the universe, and so we actually do not matter that much as we like to think we are, because without us, the Earth still spins. One should be in control of their selfish wants, for once they get out of hand, all personal gains are always at the detriment of others’ well-being by serious degrees.

As long as you make demands with reasonability and do things with decent/good work ethics, you can always ask for more, but even then, things should have a stopping point, or else you would exhaust yourself from an endless pursuit, which in itself is an ephemeral deed by nature, for you and anything relevant to you will perish eventually, hence no need for pointless extremes. Once you have well comprehended all said things, your heart will be calm and it will generate positive behavioral tendencies that will dictate the right actions be made. By then, you are already practicing rightful contentment.