The Real Reason the Grass is Greener on the Other Side

The grass is always greener on the other side. Today, especially with people my age, there’s a lot of discontentment. We believe this myth that there’s a party going on somewhere and we never got an invitation. Our Instagram-filtered lives and 140 character tweets are meticulously designed to cultivate a persona that keeps up with the Kardashians and the Kennedys (forget the Joneses).

We trade our relationships when they lose that new car smell. We trade our jobs when we realize the years required to achieve success. We trade friendships for new cities. We are constantly searching, finding, consuming, and yet never satisfied.

We keep searching and trying to find satisfaction, contentment, and fulfillment, yet we come up empty-handed. We keep searching for greener grass, chasing rainbows for pots of gold that we hope will pay off our student loans. All the while we avoid a truth more inconvenient than Al Gore could ever handle: If the grass beneath your feet is brown, it’s not the grass’s fault. It’s your own.

There’s a reason why everywhere you go, every new job, and every new relationship leaves you feeling the same. And the truth is simple but profound: Everywhere you go, there you are.

The grass beneath your feet didn’t start out brown. It was green once. And then you showed up. And you quit working to maintain it, quit striving to improve it, and you got lazy. You had arrived. There was nothing else to work for. And, in the midst of your laziness, you assumed that it would always be green. You assumed that once you’d lost weight, you’d keep it off. Once you got that promotion, you could coast. Once you got married, you didn’t have to date.

So, quit blaming the grass, the soil, and the environment. Because the reason the grass is no longer green is you. It’s your mindset. It’s when you quit being grateful for all of the things you had. It’s when you started complaining. It’s when you had four things to complain about for every one thing you were thankful for. It’s when you forgot how lucky you were.

It’s when you got too good to be kind, too right to listen, and too proud to learn.

That’s why the grass is greener on the other side.

The grass is greener on the other side of hard work, determination, and focus. The grass is greener on the other side of gratitude. The grass is greener on the other side of working through problems with people you care about. The grass is greener on the other side of failure and being wrong and losing your ego in the process. The grass is greener on the other side of doing the job no one wants to do to get to the place everyone wants to go. Because the grass was never green or brown or anything other than what you made it in the first place.