Learning to Appreciate the Things you DON’T Like
Story time first! Once upon a time… JUST KIDDING! LOL
Okay, so I live in Wyoming and it gets crazy windy here. I used to love the wind when I first got here. Everyone who lived here for a while would complain about it and at the time, I would just smile to myself thinking how much I enjoyed it.
As time passed, I began to dread it like the rest of the seasoned Wyomians. Just recently, I remembered how I used to enjoy it & and why. How could I like something that could be such a nuisance? Making my hair crazy, blowing my clothes up unexpectedly to show my mom stomach! (Hahaha, and so on).
Then, just recently, I went and sat outside during a normal windy day. The sun was shining and the wind… well, the wind was blowing. I noticed it was like waves in the ocean on my lawn (and yes, it was in need of mowing), how the wind reminded me of the sound of ocean waves and breezes, how it made the flowers dance, how it made my hair dance (better way of looking at it for myself LOL), how it cooled me off being in the sun, how it helped spread seeds for new plants and new life to spring up everywhere. In that moment, I realized I had stopped appreciating these things I once loved and respected. My appreciation and gratitude for the wind was renewed!
We do this with so many aspects of our lives, like when a 3-year-old continuously asks “why, why, why”? Instead of being annoyed having to answer WHY for the 100th time (trust me, I get it! LOL), turn that around and try to appreciate their curiosity. They are seeing how you see the world & then they are seeing it through their own eyes.
Or when your teenager messes something up for the 100th time and, instead of being annoyed, (again, I get it!! LOL) using that mess-up or wrong decision as an amazing learning experience and life lesson. Why not teach them now and help them learn in this small instance rather than when it could become a much larger one later?
So, for all those things that annoy us or the ones we don’t like… could we look at them in a different, more positive way to help us appreciate them more. If we didn’t have that particular thing anymore, how would it change things; what would it mean to us?