I saw this on pinterest tonight, which inspired me to write: be okay with where you are, even if you know you want to change. The last few weeks I've been grappling a lot with my feelings about where I am in my life. Specifically, the choice I made to move to America to do my Master's. When I was still in the UK, I wanted to move here so badly and I did everything I could to make sure that happened. I was so unhappy at home - I disliked the place, the people, who I was. A few months after I moved here a friend said to me "the grass is not always greener..." and boy, was she right. It's not that I regret my decision to come here, I think it's just not what I expected. I think I had an idealistic view of what America would be like. ALL countries have issues. Also, leaving one country for another is not going to sort out the problems you had in the beginning; the feelings of unrest. So first lesson: do NOT have expectations. About anything. You will spend your life expecting things to be a certain way - they almost never are. This has definitely been a hard lesson for me to accept. And one I'm still learning.
So that leads me into my second lesson: learning to accept things for what they are. For so long, I have fought what is. And looking back, it was a LOT of hard work. Stress, upset and anxiety that I just didn't need. Now I'm not saying that I am able to accept every single, little thing. Sometimes you have to fight for what you believe in. But the stuff that really shouldn't be resisted; I am trying really hard. I've thought about it and reflected on it a lot and I see how pointless it is. Whether I'm happy, sad, angry; it doesn't matter. It's going to happen anyway, so it's better just to accept it and get on with life. What a lot of time I've wasted! I think it really clicked the other day. I was driving to Connecticut from Jersey and it took me 3 1/2 hours instead of 2 (due to a lot of traffic). I was miserable in the car and very unhappy! I realised that I had a choice: I could be miserable and unhappy, or, I could just accept it. It was going to happen either way. Was it really worth the hassle of working myself up into an unhappy state of mind. NO! The difficult thing was trying to change my feelings once I was already in that negative mindset. I think that's the next lesson I need to learn. Actually, if I could prevent those feelings in the first place then I could avoid that step altogether.
Finally, lesson 3, the "easiest" lesson for me to learn: being grateful. Whether it's for small things, like someone giving way to you when your driving, or big things, it's so important to be grateful. I think it's helped me to focus on what I have, rather than what I don't have. And that's not easy to do in todays materialistic world. We're constantly bombarded with advertising that tells us we need this or that to make us look, or feel better. IT'S ALL LIES. Self-worth is intrinsic, not extrinsic, like we are lead to believe. Anyway, back to being grateful. The other thing it has helped me to do, is to be more positive. I think together, these things have helped me to attract better things into my life. Maybe you don't think like that or think it's a load of rubbish. Maybe your right. Or maybe, we should all give being grateful a go and see what happens. Maybe if we are more grateful, we won't feel the need to strive for these things that we can't afford/these things that we are lead to believe will make us feel or look better. What harm can it do? You never know....
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