Those principles include:
- What we put our attention on expands,
- Treat others as you would like to be treated and
- Take time each day to connect with spirit.
These simple practices help you stay connected to what is important, balanced, and often sane.
This past Sunday the opportunity to attend my church of choice presented itself.
I put on my denim shorts, t-shirt, hat and shoes. I found my gloves and basket and opened the door to my favorite place to connect with spirit – my garden
We have been traveling a lot this summer, so my yard was not only abundant with zinnias, sunflowers, basil and tomatoes; there were also at least two bushel of weeds – woo hoo!
Believe it or not, I enjoy weeding. Even though they are green, lush and invasive, there is something cathartic in pulling them out of the ground. Whether it is clothes, books, relationships or weeds, I feel space opening up for more of what I desire, when I remove what no longer serves me.
As I was yanking and grabbing, the familiar thought of how weeds are like thoughts appeared.
When you put attention on what you are reading, watching and thus thinking about daily, it is easy to remove the weeds, aka“negative thoughts.”
However, when you begin to live by default and no attention is put on ridding yourself of internal or external negative influences, you feel the results of the weeds growing immediately.
That may show up as low energy, frustration, fear, disappointment and/or sadness and depression.
This is a place of contraction.
The crazy thing – we do it to ourselves.
All of a sudden the weeds are out of control and it feels overwhelming to deal with them. In the garden, you can hire someone to pull them for you.
In our mind, the equivalent to this would be asking for help. Sure, you could hire a coach or maybe a therapist, which can be seen as a Gardner for your mind.
The trick is to not allow those weeds to get out of control.
So what is Roundup for your spirit?
What I share with my coaching clients are the following practices. Yes, practice is the key word here. Creating a more positive and optimistic mindset, weed free, is something that has to happen everyday.
I am not saying you need to monitor every thought, that would make you crazy.
The three most important things you can do to keep your mind weed free is:
- Begin each day with thinking something positive. I wake up each day and say, “something great is going to happen today!”
- Spend a few minutes before important activities, visualizing things working out even better than you expected. Clarify your vision of what you desire for that day and see it in your minds eyes.
- At the completion of your day, spend a few minutes thinking about what went well for you. This is the complete opposite of what you did not accomplish. Remember, it is very rare that everything will be off of your “to-do” list. Put your attention on what you want more of and you will feel good and thus attract it.
When you begin to implement these simple strategies for positivity, you will notice that you have more energy to accomplish what is important to you, your relationships will get better and as Stuart Smally once said, you are good enough, smart enough and gosh darn it, people like you.
Yes, these are simple strategies, but sometimes not always easy to begin. Use the one day at a time system, beginning with making a commitment to not let your weeds get to of control. They are always going, your job is to be the Gardner of your soul, so you can enjoy the beauty of living a life you love every day.
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