The Grass Is Greenest Where You Water It

“People think that the grass is always greener over there, the grass is greener where you water it.”

Wolfgang Puck

“The grass is greener on the other side.”

It’s a phrase often used to describe the idea that someone else always has it better than you. This phrase describes that we, as humans, are never content with what we have. We always look at what someone else has and want it for ourselves.

This phrase originates from an American song written in 1924 called “the grass is always greener in the other fellow’s yard” by Raymond B. Egan and Richard A. Whiting. The chorus of the song goes like this:

“The grass is always greener

In the other fellow’s yard

The little row

We have to hoe

Oh boy, that’s hard.

But if we could all wear

Green glasses now,

It wouldn’t be so hard

To see how green the grass is

In our own backyard.”

This chorus suggests that if we look at life through a different lens, we realize we actually have it pretty good ourselves. 

People who suffer from the “grass is always greener” syndrome usually have commitment issues. The media would always have us believe that there is always something better that we are missing, and we get FOMO. 

So instead of working through challenges in our relationship, our job, whatever the situation may be, we get the feeling something better exists in a different yard, and anything less than perfect won’t do.

Yet, the fact remains that, Perfection doesn’t exist. 

Working through challenges is what life is all about. Accepting imperfection in all its flaws is an integral part of life. 

The greener grass is usually a fantasy based on our own fears or projected fears from others, may it be — fear of commitment, boredom, oppression, or not being able to shine in all our true colors and be the person we really are.

The Grass is Greenest Where You Water It

It’s not up to another person, place, or thing to make us happy. Happiness comes from within, and it takes work and consistent action. The grass isn’t greener on the other side. The grass is greenest where you water it.

Are you watering your grass? How often are you doing so? Are you loving it & nurturing it? Fertilizing it? Are you planting seeds for your future growth in it? 

Water your grass, and watch those flowers grow.

It takes work to keep the grass green. If you want to live the kickass life of your dreams, there will always be someone doing it better than you. But that’s not the point — because there’s always someone out of the 7+ billion people on this planet that can do something better than you. 

It takes work, and sometimes that may be why we find it temporarily easier to envy others and whine about why they have it so easy or why they just had success “handed to them.”

Rise above that and water your own grass instead of looking at the neighbors. Get your tools out, get some knowledge, break a sweat and earn your own success that you can — and will! — create for yourself.

The lesson here is that by spending time worrying about and focusing on what everyone else’s yard (i.e., life, career, relationships, etc.) looks like, you’re wasting time that could otherwise be spent on watering your own yard. 

The result is a whole lot less confidence in your own work, a whole lot more overwhelm with the world around you, and a whole lot less progress in your own yard.

So forget about comparisons, keep working hard, and keep your eyes on your own yard.