Is the grass really greener on the other side?

Fight your biology.

In December 1944, Private Bradford Freeman went to Paris. 

Freeman, a member of the famed Easy Company from “Band of Brothers,” was from Lowndes County, Mississippi. By 1944, he had spent two years in the military. He had faced avalanches of gunfire, hailstorms of mortar fire and bitter cold where it was too dangerous to build a fire. 

He had lost friends. He had seen death. He had just turned 20.

During a break in combat, Bradford was one of the fortunate few to get a pass to visit Paris. 

After years of training and months of fighting, it was an opportunity fto blow off some steam — see the world, have a drink, meet a girl.

Forty-six years later, here’s what Bradford said about his visit to Paris:

“I didn’t care for what I saw, so I went back to camp.”

In life, you never know what the grass is really like on the other side.

The idea that the grass is greener is rooted in human nature. It’s a principle known as the focusing illusion.

The focusing illusion is simple. Our brains can only work through 3-5 data points at a time. That means our limitations stop us from considering all relevant factors in a situation.

And that’s a problem. Because most decisions have a lot more than 3-5 considerations.

But the focusing illusion causes us to hone in on the 3-5 most important considerations. Meanwhile, dozens more fall by the wayside.

And to take it a step further, those 3-5 considerations will almost always be negatives. 

See, for most of human history, survival meant identifying and navigating threats. Naturally, those threats took up most of our mental bandwidth.

And if you’re alive today, that ancestral defense mechanism worked.

So that instinct that allowed your bloodline to thrive and survive got more ingrained each generation.

And it ended up in your DNA. 

So even though we face fewer threats than our ancestors, our biology forces us to focus on eliminating the negatives.

But there’s a real problem with that: It comes at the expense of appreciating the positives.

When we think the grass is greener, it’s because our brains are trying to solve the 3-5 biggest issues we perceive in a situation. But those situations often have dozens of positives.

But because of the focusing illusion — because of biology — we forget about the good and we focus on the bad.

And sometimes, when you touch that grass on the other side, it’s a little drier than you expected. And it’s faded, not emerald. And you’ve addressed the negatives, so the positives you ignored become more clear.

Focusing on the negatives is easy. In fact, it’s in your blood.

Focusing on the positives is hard. But in life, most worthwhile things are.

Sometimes, the grass is greener. And sometimes it’s not. You can’t know until you travel to the other side.

So yes — take risks, bet on yourself, trust your gut.

But remember to identify the green flags along with the red.

Remember that the alternative isn’t guaranteed to be better than the present.

Remember to appreciate what you have.