Finding my happy place in Montenegro

​This has been a revelation to me. Not one I was expecting at all.

​You see, I have always loved the thrill of travel. Seeing new and interesting places. I made it a rule never to go to the same place twice, because I believed that if you have had a great time you are probably not going to duplicate it again next time and will be disappointed.

No, new and exciting was always the way to go. ​

Excitement versus contentment

But the roots of this thinking went a bit deeper than that really. I had a need for exciting things.

​Not the I’m-going-to-throw-myself-off-the-side-of-a-bridge-only-attached-by-a-piece-of-elastic sort of exciting. But I needed the thrill of an exciting trip to look forward to. I never felt content with the now, unless the now involved planning something new and exciting in the future.

Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with planning and having something to look forward to – I absolutely still do that now and love it. Anticipation of something after all can be as rewarding as the actual event itself (if not more so sometimes!)

I needed the thrill of an exciting trip to look forward to.

​But what I am talking about is the constant state of restlessness I felt, where the exciting and new would be the only thing I felt that could make my life better. It promised to make me feel fulfilled – but rarely ever felt enough in the end.

My father worked in the Foreign Office when I was younger, so travel was always a big part of my life growing up.  ​By the time I was 7, I had lived in 4 countries on 3 different continents. I’d had 7 homes as a child and have lived in over 28 different homes in total in my life. The longest I’ve ever stayed in one home is 6 years (when I was a teenager).

That’s a lot of moving and a lot of different places.

And I loved it. I still weirdly love the whole exciting process of moving house. Discovering a new corner shop fills me with great delight.
​But I guess my background may have accounted for why I seemed to have a kind of insatiable need for the new and different.

But going back to Montenegro all these years, staying in the same apartment, visiting a lot of the same favourite haunts – interspersed with a new one every now and again to shake it up – has shown me a new side to life that I’ve never experienced before.  It has uncovered a softer side in me that instead of scorning the familiar, has gradually enabled me to appreciate something simpler. To experience a different sort of happiness. To discover how to be content.

Learning how to be content

I still love to explore new and interesting places (and I’m certainly still a work in progress). But Montenegro has taught me that I don’t have to have big excitement to be happy.  ​I have found that I can appreciate the beauty around me even though I have seen it many times before. I can enjoy the people I’m with and simply relax in the moment without feeling I’ve got to impress anyone (including myself) with the new and exciting things I am doing or have planned.

Before I believed that returning to the same place was what people did when they were afraid of the unknown. They didn’t like trying new things and therefore stuck with the tried and tested predictable path that involved little risk.

​There is an element of truth in this for many people, certainly. But I realise now that returning to the same place doesn’t have to mean something negative. For me this has been a revelation.

Finding my happy place

Through my visits to Montenegro I have started to learn how to be content. I have discovered my happy place. It doesn’t mean I don’t still value the thrill of discovering a new totally new (to me) country and taking in all the new sights and sounds.

But I don’t need it in order to feel happy.

As I look back over the photos of my many trips to Montenegro, I feel a warm glow.

Research has shown that the money spent on experiences give us so much more for bang for our buck than money spent on material items alone (unless those items deliver an experience).  That is because the happy feelings continue long after the money is spent and the experience has past. We can have them again and again, as we remember happy times and relive nice memories.

​I can certainly vouch for that.  I have gone many times to Montenegro with very little expectation of any major excitement or thrill. A short week off-season to principally have a cheap break and check on the apartment.

But looking back now, I realise those have been the happiest times of all.