The Grass is Greener Where You Water It – Invest In The Present (Short Read)
Estimated reading time: 3 minutes
The grass is not always greener on the other side. The grass is greener where we water it.
The Spiritual Danger of Looking Sideways
It is easy when we look at colleagues and friends, at other people’s situations, at celebrities or neighbours, to think how much better things are for them than for me.
Maybe you think if you just had that different job, that different place to live, a different car or bike or TV or…. The list goes on. The belief that what other people have is better than what we have.
From a psychological point of view, this is, of course, an error.
We fool ourselves into believing if we can just have X then we will be a better person or feel happier or be with the person we fancy. We need X to be complete. It’s a lie we tell ourselves, born of mimetic desire and the fear of inadequacy. If you get X, you quickly find the grass is no greener than it was before. You might even wish you could go back!
The truth is, the grass is greener where we water it.
Where Our Heart Is, There Will Our Treasure Be
The thing we give our time and attention to, if it is something that brings us joy, is where we will find green grass shooting up. It’s where we will get new life.
The trick is to reframe some of our thinking. Rather than always looking for the next thing, the myth of progress driving us to succeed so we can feel better about ourselves. We should instead focus on where we are, here and now, and what we currently have.
Water the grass you are standing on.
Plant some new flowers to see some brighter colours. Take time to develop a practice of gratitude and acceptance for what we have right now.
The more we can focus on what we have now. The more we can see the value in where we are, what we are doing, what we have, and who we are with, the happier and more joyful we will become.
Find Joy By Focusing on the Now
This is one of the key elements of growing a joyful life. Learning to love and accept where things are now, even in the middle of the struggle.
The more we commit to the present moment, and the less we live in our imagined alternatives, the more we will be free from jealousy and despair.
The grass is greener where you water it. So get watering your grass.
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