You can only leave a situation once you have learnt to love it

You can only leave a situation once you have learned to love it, find the love in it, the gift, the lesson, the wisdom in it.

Gratitude is the quickest way to your freedom. A good question to ask yourself is “what would I need to believe about this, in order for me to feel grateful about it?”

At one stage, I used to live in a small agricultural town. Some people don’t really mind where they live geographically, as they are so busy with work, family and other activities that their surroundings don’t affect them much. For me, however, my environment makes a huge difference. I prefer wild natural places, I love mountains and forests. As you may have guessed, I had a very hard time making peace with living in that particular town. For the first two years, I resisted it and fought against it. I was unhappy with where I lived. 

All I would do was complain about the things I disliked, what was missing, what was wrong. I kept comparing it unfavourably with the beautiful places I had previously lived in. Until the day I had enough of being unhappy, and decided to find a way to enjoy living there. I focused more on noticing how easy it was to live in the small town, as there were no traffic jams, and there were always more than enough parking spaces available. Doing the groceries was a very quick and simple affair as the shops were literally just two minute’s drive away. 

As I focused more of my energy on finding ways to enjoy life there, one thing led to the next. My husband and I joined the local Saturday Parkrun running group. That gave me a sense of belonging to the local community, as otherwise I was very much the foreigner. Then we made it a habit of having breakfast at the Golf club after our run, so it was a sweet getaway time just the two of us. Our private treat, with a great view of the golf course surrounded by beautiful trees and local vegetation. Time to just be and enjoy life. 

I have traveled all my life, and normally have no problem fitting in different environments, but that one small town was my biggest struggle. I believe it was there to teach me how to shift my relationship with it in a very conscious way and notice how things change radically when your intentions are clear.

Setting an intention to find the love in anything is a strategy that works with anything in life, really. The challenge is to remember it when we’re feeling down in the dumps. We all go through periods of “spiritual narcolepsy” as Colette Baron-Reid calls it. Times when we are too busy being angry, frustrated and upset with life, to remember that all it takes to change it all, is to change our attitude to our circumstances, and keep the intention of finding the love in it. 

Just that little shift is all it takes to start a whole series of positive changes.