You Might Already Be What You're Looking For

"Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it."

- Rumi

One of my favourite stories is from one of the late greats, Earl Nightingale. He has a story I'm particularly fond of, "Acres of Diamonds". You see, I always try to get people to understand that we are all sitting on our own acres of diamonds. I do this through storytelling:

There was a man who lived in a village in Africa. He was a farmer who owned about 3-5 acres of land. At this time, there were rumours and stories about diamonds in the area. Diamonds everywhere. He bubbled over with excitement and the joy of possibly finding these diamonds. He decided to sell his farm and go on a voyage to find them.

The years went by and he didn't find any. As he continued his search, he had no luck. Eventually, wrought with dismay and disappointment, he threw himself off of a cliff.

Now, another man bought his farm after he passed. This man was out one day by the stream and saw a funny-looking rock. It was dark, but a little shiny. He picked it up, cleaned it off, and brought it to his friend who identified it as a diamond. Together, they started mining the land and the farm. They found that not only was it filled with diamonds, but it turned out to be one of the biggest diamond fields in the continent. He became very rich.

In one case you have someone who sold what he had to go look for something elsewhere, not knowing that what he wanted was right under his feet. In another case, you have someone who found extreme value in working with what he had. The very resources, wealth, knowledge, or love, that we want are either inside of us or right under our feet. See, a lot of times we look elsewhere. We look at things and we compare ourselves to other people.

How do we compare goals, dreams and desires? We often make this mistake instead of cultivating, watering and pouring into ourselves the things that we already possess. We look elsewhere and think the grass is greener on the other side. We think that our diamonds are on the other side. We look elsewhere for our riches when the very thing that we are searching for could very well be within us. We just have to take the time to dig and seek it out.

If we could pour our energy, love and resources into the things we already have, I guarantee you that they will grow and yield tremendous results. It’ll give us our acres of diamonds. But it's up to us. We've got to look inside ourselves and stir ourselves up. We've got to get ourselves to buy into this gold. So cultivate your mind, relationships, dreams, passions and desires and see what they get you.

-JH 

Like this post? Want to make a donation? Click here for more information on how you can get involved.