“Wherever you go, there you are”
What I love about this quote is that it means everything I do, everywhere I go, every experience I have; it’s all me. It comes from me, it’s all about me, it is created, experienced and even interpretted by me. No matter what I do, where I go, or what is going on, I’m always there because it’s all about me.
So many of us get caught up in the idea that things external to us are the cause of our happiness and the cause of our pain. If something isn’t working…a relationship, a job, our house, our community, whatever…we blame that thing for our unhappiness. Sometimes we’ll stay stuck and keep complaining and sometimes we choose to change it or leave it thinking that ridding ourselves of it will make us feel better. But either way it doesn’t change. Complaining just becomes wasted energy if it doesn’t motivate us to change. And choosing to leave something old that isn’t making us happy, to embrace something new in hopes it will make us happy, inevitably leads us right back where we were before. Why? Because we are always where we are.
It’s not the job, it’s not the relationship or the house or the city or whatever, it’s us. Whatever we’re feeling comes from inside, not from the things we are doing, being or having. So, when we hate the city we live in, it has less to do with the city than it does with us. It’s easier to blame it on the job, our partner, the community, or whatever but ultimately, that holds us back from what we really want in our lives.
There are times when change is necessary, when it’s important to move forward, when we feel inspired to take action, or make a move to change our situation. When that happens, we are knowing it’s time to move forward into something new, which is a very different feeling than being unhappy and feeling the need to get as far away as possible from something that’s not working.
How often do you find yourself in situations that have different characters or scenes, but ultimately feel the same yucky way inside? How often do you think about changing the circumstances in your life because you’re longing to feel happier?
If you’re just making the external changes to situations in your life, it rarely has the lasting effects we desire. In fact, usually the next time around, we tend to feel even more angst than before and it just keeps feeling worse and worse as we go along. But, when you stop to look at yourself, make a small shift, look at things a bit differently, the changes that can happen can be monumentous and more fulfilling than you even imagine.
Wherever I go, I’m always there.
So, I ask you…Is the place you are right now, the place you really want it to be?
