It is amazing how nature ALWAYS has ways of reminding us about how to better ourselves and our lives. Even simple activities like gardening offer critical life lessons that can make a significant impact on the quality of our lives.
I love gardening and the pleasures it offers – I find pleasure in growing vegetables in my vegetable patch every summer, in watching the flowers bloom, in watching the butterflies hovering around the flowers, watching the fall colors on the trees and the feel of dirt on my hands as I plant a new plant or seed and the anticipation of watching it all grow and come to life.
Amidst the pleasures, I have also had the opportunity to learn some vital life lessons that have not only served as gentle reminders but also proven as a strong framework to ground myself and thereby move forward.
The lessons that have impacted me are:
Nourishment – in gardening, the most important step before any planting is to prep the garden bed in the right manner. This may involve loosening the soil by tilling or other means, pulling out old roots, adding fresh soil, fertilizing the soil with compost or other plant food. The important part of this process is to ensure that the soil is ready and in a state to provide the right nutrients and water to the seed or plant when it is planted in the soil. Similarly in life, it is very important to nourish our body and minds. We nourish our body with food (hopefully healthy!) and exercise, but we often neglect our minds. Our minds need to be constantly nourished with great food such as inspirational thoughts, thoughts that stir us and move us towards our passion, thoughts that inspire us to bring out the greatness in us through reading material or audio. Another essential form of nourishment for our minds is meditation. Meditation helps in bringing more clarity and focus.
Weed/Pest Control – Another important activity in gardening is, weed control – taking measures to prevent weeds from sprouting and eating up our plants, and measures to remove the ones that are already present. Some of these activities involve spraying bug control or putting pest control pellets, or putting up small fences or enclosing the garden bed in a net, to name a few. The important thing with these activities is, that they need to be repeated again and again over periods of time and it is not a one time activity. Similarly, it is vital for us to rid our minds of weeds and pests that arise in the form of negative thoughts, self-limiting beliefs and negative emotions. Daily doses of meditation, gratitude and reading good books are crucial in nipping negative thoughts and beliefs in the bud as a preventative measure. In order to get rid of the negative thoughts already in your minds, again the above mentioned processes are highly effective, but a little guidance from a coach or a professional can do wonders to faster progress.
Cross pollination – I learnt that an important element for certain vegetables and fruits to be produced in addition to good nutrition and pest control are external agents such as bees to cross pollinate the cucumber and zucchini flowers. Without these agents, the flowers would bloom and wither away and the plants would not produce fruits. So it was essential to plant other bee-attracting plants around the vegetable producing plants as well. Similarly in life, we need external agents to feed us with ‘pollen’ so we can move forward. This can happen via a support group, a mastermind group or a coach for example to constantly be exposed to our own support network of people who can keep us moving towards our goals. The accountability structure that can come with a support or master mind group, is critical and can cross pollinate our minds with different ideas and stir and move us towards taking action.
Fruits of labor – In gardening, the amazing thing is the tangible results you can see in the form or flowers, fruits, vegetables or plants. I love the feeling of accomplishment i get when i pluck my tomatoes, chilis, bell peppers,zucchini, cucumbers and okra. There have been times when I have not plucked these vegetables at the right time and they have gone bad and un-usable. Similarly in life, it is important to enjoy the results of our hard work and effort. While it may not necessarily mean plucking a fruit it could mean having different experiences as a result of our labor. So for example, the effort that you put in at your work is compensated monetarily and you can use that money to experience different things such as traveling and seeing different places, having different culinary experiences, meeting new people or indulging in materialistic things that again offer some kind of an experience. The point is to enjoy the money in this example and not have it only stacked up in the bank.
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