Cultivating joy and contentment is a skill that requires practice rounds in life, often mirrored by navigating the uncertainty of a psychedelic experience. This process builds faith and trust in your own trajectory, allowing you to feel you are exactly where you need to be, even when parts of your life seem wrong.
Key Takeaways
- Safety Precedes Joy: Like Maslow postulated, the ability to experience joy is contingent upon our basic needs being met, like food, shelter, and a sense of security.
- The Contentment Trap of Comparison: Modern American society fosters a paralyzed, lonely existence by leveraging Social Comparison Theory. This environment constantly directs finite attention toward what is missing and unrealistic goals, like the edited lives seen on social media.
- Psychedelics Model Emotional Navigation: The process of navigating a psychedelic experience serves as a practical model for life. It requires the cultivation of three critical skills for maintaining contentment amidst difficulty: courage to explore hard aspects, establishing a seat of safety, and accepting that everything is temporary.
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We find that the search for happiness often yields to a deeper quest for joy (high-energy, immediate feeling) and contentment (low-energy, sustained inner peace).
Achieving this contentment is significantly hindered by modern American society, but that doesn’t make it impossible. Citing Maslow’s work, we see that our ability to experience joy is dependent on meeting basic security needs; however, current economic realities keep many people rooted in anxiety and loneliness.
Forces like social comparison and the Attention Economy distract our focus toward wanting more, thereby eroding internal satisfaction. Psychedelics, in this context, are seen as a powerful tool for developing the necessary skills for contentment.
By fostering creativity, which acts as the antidote to anxiety by forcing us into the present moment, and by serving as “practice rounds” for navigating life’s uncertainties, psychedelics help us cultivate courage, security, and acceptance of impermanence. Ultimately, we believe that experiencing contentment is a valuable skill and a deliberate choice we must make to fully engage with life.
We are driven by a deep desire for happiness, yet often what we truly seek is joy—the intense, immediate high—and contentment—the steady, long-term state of inner peace. Why is this steady contentment so hard to achieve in modern life, even as technology connects us all? Join us as we dive into the core obstacles blocking well-being in our modern society.
First, we explore Abraham Maslow’s crucial insight that joy can only be felt from a seat of safety. When basic security, such as the ability to afford shelter, is constantly under threat, our minds are trapped in anxiety, preventing access to higher states of fulfillment.
Then we’ll analyze how modern society, fueled by social media, uses Social Comparison Theory to direct our finite attention toward unrealistic projections and a perpetual sense of wanting more, leaving us paralyzed and lonely, chasing highs instead of establishing a peaceful baseline.
And of course we will investigate the unexpected role of psychedelics. You’ll see how it’s not just about the trips, but about providing practice rounds for life. By sparking creativity and curiosity, they force us into the present moment and teach us the essential skills of courage, feeling safe, and accepting impermanence needed to navigate life’s inevitable challenges.
Find out how viewing contentment as a skill and using joy as an act of defiance can empower you to reclaim your sense of belonging and trust your own path, even when parts of your life feel wrong.
This article is inspired by our insightful podcast episode hosted by Psychedelic Passage co-founder, Jimmy Nguyen, which you can listen to on all streaming platforms.
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Psychedelics have garnered a lot of attention for their abilities to help one heal from their trauma, but to be honest, the limits of their potential are unknown. From neuroplasticity to creativity, we’re just now starting to see their potential come to life in research studies around the world.
Most people find psychedelics in their search for happiness—to be better, feel better, and show up better in their lives. Happiness is a fickle aspiration for many of us, and if we look a little deeper, what we may actually be seeking is joy and contentment.
What’s the Difference Between Joy and Contentment?
Happiness is a sort of umbrella term, lacking tangibility and accessibility. How does one achieve happiness? The answer is unique to each individual and most likely not as straightforward as we’d like it to be. Joy and contentment can be seen as arms branching off of happiness, joy usually being categorized as high energy excitement or elation related to a specific event or condition. A major component of joy is that it’s focused on the immediate.
Then we can think of contentment as more of a slow burn, it may not have the elevated excitement that joy can, and comes from an overall feeling of satisfaction that can carry over a long period of time. Contentment can be related more to tranquility or a sense of inner peace, whereas joy is more closely related to the accentuated parts of our lives where we feel bouts of heightened happiness.
While they may seem like they’re on opposite sides of the happiness spectrum, they’re actually intertwined. After all, what’s the use of joy if we just return to a baseline of discontentment? Some folks constantly chase peak experiences through psychedelics, but if all we hope to achieve is moments of joy, then our whole lives can turn into chasing those highs instead of working to achieve a constant state of contentment that we can return to after moments of joy.
Losing Touch with Joy & Contentment in America
I don’t think many would turn down an opportunity for a little joy in their lives, and it’s no secret it’s getting pretty difficult to achieve long-term contentment, especially in this society. We live in America, the Corporation after all, as I like to call it. So why is loneliness, isolation and even depression on the rise even though technology has supposedly infinitely connected us? In a survey done by Batanova, Weissbourd, and McIntyre in 2024, it found that those in the lowest tax bracket are the loneliest at 29%, with people between 30-44 years of age reporting being “frequently” or “always” lonely more than any other age group.
A study done in 2025 by Brody and Hughes, found an overall increase in the prevalence of depression in adolescents and adults from 2013-2023, and yes, I’m sure the pandemic had a lot to do with it, but depression was already on an upswing before COVID-19 hit, so where does that leave us now? We may be able to glean that answer from the famous American psychologist Abraham Maslow, most famously known for creating a hierarchy of needs for humans, which was inspired by Blackfoot Nation and indigenous wisdom.
He describes all of the needs of a human being funneling into each other like a pyramid. One need must be met before the next need can be met. Below we can see that in order to experience joy, a few things need to happen first. For one, a basic sense of security must be met. This means having food, water and shelter accessible to us. From there, we can focus on our health and wellbeing, etc.
There are a million reasons one may not experience joy. To start, there isn’t a single city in the United States where a minimum wage worker can afford a 1-bedroom apartment. Buffalo, New York is the closest, where it would take 1.28 times the minimum wage to afford a 1-bedroom apartment, while Atlanta, Georgia is the worst at 4.38 times the minimum wage. It’s really no wonder why we’re lonely, depressed, and anxious. What it boils down to is safety. Joy can truly only be felt from a seat of safety. Not only is it the physical things like money and shelter, but our culture can also attribute to our lack of joy. Us Americans have a tendency to reach for unattainable goals. Bigger is always better, right? No amount of money is ever enough. Right?
Leave it to the capitalists to make you feel like you need more to be happy. What’s worse is when it comes to options. “We need more options!” We scream, before realizing more options lead to a funny little thing called choice overload, leaving us to settle for the default option or no option at all. Add all this to our old adage, “the grass is always greener on the other side,” and what are we left with? A paralyzed, lonely society based on comparison.
Social Comparison Theory
In the 1950s there was a social psychologist by the name of Leon Festinger who proposed the social comparison theory. This theory centers on the belief that individuals strive to gain accurate self-evaluations, and one way we do that is by comparing our opinions and abilities to those of other people. Like most things, there’s healthy and unhealthy ways to do this. Looking up to role models can obviously be quite helpful, but then we get to the TikTok era of social media, where everyone’s Instagram is full of their achievements, or edits to make things look better than they are. At the end of the day, it’s a projection of the life we want people to think we’re leading, setting unrealistic goals for everyone else, and adding to why we lack contentment in our lives.
The Attention Economy
Not only are we living in a society that loves to compare, but we also find ourselves living in an attention economy, where social media monetization creates a fight for the attention of its users. Attention is a finite resource, we can only focus on so many things at a time or in a day, but it happens internally as well. While we’re focusing on comparing ourselves to others, we lose the opportunity to focus on more important things.
And if our attention is rooted in wanting more, then that’s where our focus will go. Where’s the room for joy and contentment? We also don’t hold joy and contentment in that high of a regard, are happier people considered more successful? Not in this economy! Only when we see someone’s job title do we rank their success. Therefore, joy and contentment in this society require effort, it seems like every day it becomes more like a privilege than a right, but you’re the master of your own life, and you can change your point of view if you want to.
Take Pleasure Activism by adrienne marie brown for example. In her book, brown discusses how rooting ourselves in pleasure and joy can be an act of resistance in a world where contentment is stripped from us and replaced with a handful of coins. In using joy as an act of defiance, we reclaim it as our own, and begin to live a life where we can engage much more fully.
How Psychedelics Can Help Us Rediscover Joy & Contentment
In a society that doesn’t prioritize our happiness, psychedelics give us an outlet to explore, interact with, rediscover, and feel comfortable in expressing joy and contentment. Psychedelics can cause mood elevation, positive body sensations, happiness, tranquility, peace, and the feeling of interconnectedness to name a few (take the afterglow effect for example), but psychedelics can bring joy and contentment through an entirely different avenue. By the act of navigating a psychedelic experience, we mirror finding joy and contentment in everyday life. The sense of creativity and curiosity that psychedelics spark can cause us to lean into novel and new experiences while revisiting the childlike wonder we once had.
Recommended Reading: Psychedelic Healing Through Art, Story and Play w/ Mareesa Stertz
On an episode of The Telepathy Tapes, a podcast dedicated to exploring the extraordinary abilities of nonverbal autistic individuals when given the chance to communicate, creativity is described as the antidote and antithesis of anxiety. If we think of depression as being rooted in the past and anxiety as rooted in the future, then the act of being creative—producing or creating something, posits us directly in the present moment, where there’s little room for anxiety if we are actually present.
“If we can navigate these experiences that have uncertainty, that have unknowns, that have an edge of fear sometimes for folks, then it also creates a pretty interesting model for us to navigate the life experience, which I call the universal skills concept.” – Jimmy Nguyen, Founder, Psychedelic Passage
We’re experiencing instead of judging or analyzing, and truly engaging with what’s in front of us. There’s plenty of room for analysis in the integration phase, long after the effects of the substance have worn off. If you start to slip into “judgement mode” during a psychedelic experience, focusing on your breathing can be a great tool to root back into a state of presence, which usually gives way to perspective shifts and natural connections.
What About the “Bad” Trips?
A challenging or difficult psychedelic experience doesn’t necessarily negate the possibility of learning from the experience and bringing that knowledge into everyday life as a navigational tool. Leaning into the difficult aspects of a psychedelic experience definitely takes courage, and it is so important to be reminded that we are safe even when it doesn’t feel like it. Something like a traumatic memory could arise that pulls a journeyer out of their seat of safety, whatever it is, reminding ourselves of our safety can give us the courage to explore the scary parts of our trips and of ourselves, and in that we find joy and contentment.
It can also be helpful to remind ourselves that everything is temporary, even the difficult parts. Have you ever eaten so much of a good meal that you start to feel sick, and you wonder to yourself— when will it end? When something like that happens to me I remind myself that if I don’t continue to eat, I will only get less full as time goes on. It’s reassuring to know that in 5 minutes you will feel a little less full, and 5 minutes after that even less than before, until finally you don’t feel sick to your stomach anymore.
There have been many people who’ve gotten the feeling that they’re “stuck here forever” during a psychedelic experience, but lo and behold, eventually they find their baseline again. So if we can remember these three things: courage to lean into the difficult parts, reminding ourselves of our seat of safety, and understanding that everything is temporary, we can begin to bring what we learn from psychedelic experiences into our everyday lives, like exercising a muscle.
Our Final Thoughts
Experiencing joy and contentment is a skill, and even if you aren’t a “cheerful” person with a sunny disposition, you still deserve and are capable of feeling and reconnecting to your joy and contentment. It’s also a choice, so remember to give yourself permission to find joy in the world, and don’t be afraid to find joy even when it’s nowhere to be found, or when you feel like you don’t deserve it because of the negativity, pain and suffering in the world. On the other hand we have contentment.
We like to think of contentment as feeling like you’re exactly where you need to be, doing exactly what you need to be doing, that you’re moving in the right direction in the trajectory of your life, and that you are with people who can create or co-create a sense of belonging. Now before you start getting overwhelmed, just know that contentment is a tall order. If you’re feeling one or two of these things, it’s a great start. At the same time, we’re working to cultivate a sense of trust and in faith in what you’re doing and who you’re doing it with.
This is especially true for those whose lives don’t exactly look how they want them to look. Even if parts of your life are missing or feel wrong, taking a leap of faith and trusting that it will work out as time goes on can be incredible for ensuring that it does in fact work out. Because guess what? As one of my favorite quotes goes, “What once was will never be, everything is temporary.” And it’s up to us to make the most of it.
Finding Joy in Research
What, you don’t think research can be fun? Let us prove you wrong!
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Frequently Asked Questions
1. What is the difference between Joy and Contentment?
Joy is a high-energy excitement or elation related to a specific, immediate event. It is a temporary, accentuated bout of happiness. Contentment, in contrast, is a slower, tranquil burn—an overall feeling of inner peace and satisfaction that can last over a long period. They are intertwined, but one is a momentary high, while the other is a steady state.
2. How does the current economic situation in the U.S. undermine a person’s ability to experience joy?
Joy can only be fully experienced from a seat of safety. When basic needs like shelter and security are not met, people are left feeling anxious and depressed. Since there is no city in the U.S. where a minimum wage worker can afford a one-bedroom apartment, a basic sense of safety is often unattainable. The lack of fundamental security prevents people from accessing the higher levels of well-being required for joy, aligning with Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.
3. How do social media and comparison make it difficult to achieve contentment?
The Social Comparison Theory suggests individuals compare their opinions and abilities to others to gain self-evaluation. In the age of social media, where people project unrealistic, edited versions of their lives, this comparison sets unattainable goals for everyone else. This constant sense of not measuring up—the “grass is always greener” mentality—directly leads to a lack of contentment and a “paralyzed, lonely society based on comparison.”
4. Why is creativity described as the “antidote and antithesis of anxiety”?
Depression is rooted in the past, and anxiety is rooted in the future. The act of being creative—producing or creating something—forces an individual directly into the present moment. There is little room for anxiety to exist if we are focused on the present, making creativity a direct countermeasure to worry and future-focused distress.
5. What is the relationship between attention and contentment in the modern economy?
We live in an “attention economy” where social media fights for users’ focus. Attention is a finite resource. If one’s attention is rooted in comparing oneself to others or perpetually “wanting more” (as promoted by consumerism), that is where all focus will go. By constantly focusing on lack or external comparison, there is no mental room left for cultivating the internal states of joy and contentment.
6. What three things can be learned from a challenging psychedelic trip that help cultivate contentment in daily life?
A difficult experience can be a valuable navigational tool if we can remember three things:
- Courage: Have the courage to lean into the difficult parts of the experience or of yourself.
- Safety: Remind yourself of your seat of safety, especially when something (like a traumatic memory) pulls you out of it.
- Temporariness: Understand that everything is temporary, including the difficult parts, and that you will eventually return to your baseline.
References
Batanova, M., Weissbourd, R., & Mcintyre, J. (2024). Loneliness in America: Just the Tip of the Iceberg?
Brody, D., & Hughes, J. (2025). Prevalence of depression in adolescents and adults: United States, August 2021–August 2023. National Center for Health Statistics, 527.
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