The thing is April.
At the beginning of the year I made a commitment to myself to slow down just a little. Don’t get me wrong, I love my fast paced life, but I felt like life was going way too fast for me to make time to notice if I was enjoying it or not. Every minute of every day was so busy and full, that there was no time to ponder, reflect, or even have a meaningful conversation with anyone but my own internal dialog. Everything was always a rush.
As the universe would have it, I had an accident in January resulting in me having to have knee surgery. So, for the past three months, I have had copious amounts of time to do loads of pondering and reflecting, and I certainly have not been able to rush!
The thing is we all need to take time to reflect and take things slow sometimes and be more grateful.
Hurting my leg has given me a great lesson in being grateful for what we have. These past weeks I’ve realised I have been focusing on what I don’t have instead of what I do have and it’s a very easy trap for us all to fall in to. Hobbling around, my thoughts can’t stop with “I wish I had two legs again”, “I wish I could get my own cup of tea”, “I wish I could put my own pants on”, instead of being grateful for having my health, having family and friends who are helping me daily, and having an amazing team who are taking care of the office.
Anyway, it got me thinking, why did I always look in the mirror wishing that my leg was skinnier, stronger, more toned, or less hairy? Why wasn’t I satisfied? Why did I wish I had a new one back then? Right now, I’d give anything to have my old leg back, and it goes to show that we often don’t appreciate what we’ve got until it’s gone. Even the simple things in life we take for granted like having two imperfect, old, but functioning legs.
Many of us live a very blessed life that we aren’t grateful enough for it. It’s so easy to go to the negative and think that life is hard, life is unfair and life is not where we want it to be when we are ‘wanting’ all the time.
Being in hospital, being in pain, being dependent on others, and sitting on my couch has not been good for my mojo. But it was in these moments where I sat, helpless and observed my world, that the reality of how good my life actually is set in. I have a safe place to live, I have family and friends that love me, good health albeit a sore leg, and clean water and food. This is all that really matters-and I am truly grateful for this.
Anything above these basic needs really is a bonus, and we need to control our ‘wanting’ for more.
Life is a lot happier when we stop the ‘wanting’ cycle, and move to a place of satisfied and grateful. This is a place where we are satisfied and grateful with our home, car, body, lifestyle, work, relationships and ourselves. It’s going to take some time, but this is my aim, to stop the wanting, and be more satisfied and grateful with what I have and not take it for granted. I hope you will join me.
