What Are You Planting?
May 10, 2023
“Your thinking, more than anything else, shapes the way you live. It’s really true that if you change your thinking, you can change your life.” John Maxwell
In my former home, I spent many a Saturday sitting on my stone path pulling weeds and grass from among the steppables, ground covers that you can walk on. I really didn't mind doing this because gardening, including weed pulling is like Valium to me. It's calming, gives me time to think and the dog loves it, too.
While out there, I often thought of how much the stone path reminded me of my mind. No, not that I have rocks in my head, which maybe true sometimes, but what I sow in my mind is often what I reap in real life.
"How the mind is fed, shapes the life that's led," Christian Simpson (a coaching mentor.)
Like the stone path, or any garden for that matter, it can be gorgeously cultivated or shamefully neglected. What we plant, grows. Just as I used to intentionally cultivate my stone path to keep it free from weeds, allowing the ornamentals to flower and flourish, I need to tend the garden of my mind.
If I don't plant seeds of truth, growth, and possibility, an abundance of weed-like seeds of lack, limitation and mediocrity will take hold and continue to produce after their kind.
I can allow my current circumstances to permeate my mind garden and believe that "that's just the way I am" or "that's just the way it's going to be," or I can plant seeds of expectation of good things to come. I can sow seeds that will ultimately change my life.
I need to remember that my current circumstances do not define me. My current circumstances are the product of what I have been planting in these last years. The very cool part of all this is that I can weed my mind. I am lord over my thoughts and I can change them. And when I change what seeds go in, I change what I become without. Yippee!
To the right is a picture of the stone path. It was so beautiful, but it took constant vigilance to maintain that beauty. (The new owner took the plants out and rocked the whole path:(So it is with our minds--it takes constant watchfulness and care.
What are you planting? What thoughts are you nourishing? How are you cultivating the rich, fertile soil of your best asset, your mind?
This is something for me to think about, as well, as I head out to plant the empty flower pots in my current home.
If you're stuck struggling with old thoughts, I'm happy to coach you out of that struggle!
Thinking great thoughts,
Jan McDonald