BEFORE:
Stinking Thinking is a lot like weeds. You don't intentionally plant them, it is often a mystery where they come from, and if you aren't paying attention they choke out all of the good stuff. Strolling past my side garden I was horrified to find my rosemary bush overrun by weeds. I had planted this little bush to add fragrance to the garden and to spice up my cooking. Clearly I needed to pay attention to the weed problem. It was time to get my hands dirty.
I tackled the project by evaluating:
What is good?
What is bad?
What can I do to prevent this from happening again?
While I was hard at work on weeding the side garden, I turned to my mind garden. Borrowing the negative thinking from last week's post I tackled that project as well:
I evaluated my stinking thinking:
What is good? It is good for me to assess my motivation and behavior when stepping on the scale yields unexpected results.
What is bad? It is unhelpful for me to shame myself. Name calling and "Always" and "Never" statements are rarely truthful. Being mean to myself does not help me behave in healthy ways.
What can I do to prevent this from happening again? This was the trickiest part of weeding for me, in both gardens. I had to make a Loewe's run to get good soil for prevention, and yanked out a rotting rail road tie that was past usefulness. With my stinking thinking I brainstormed some options: Track on paper instead of on my phone so I can add notes to myself, shop for seasonal fruits and veggies because I have burned out on grapes and carrots, get a new pedometer to motivate my movement, weigh in without watching the scale so changes have time to register, talk to my meeting leader to get more ideas . . . the list continued while I sweated through the side garden.
AFTER:
That feels a lot better! Notice that the rosemary bush is leaning a little from the stress of growing around all of those unwanted weeds. We do that too with the negative thinking in our mind space- it makes us very vulnerable to the elements.
Empower your personal growth- I wish you luck weeding out the stinking thinking in your mind garden this week!
Thanks for the fabulous advice that I really needed to hear. Now I have a gift for you: If you'd like to weed your mind garden some more, I won't mind if you weed my real garden.
ReplyDeleteYou can weed your friends, you can weed your garden, but you can't weed your friend's garden. Thanks for the offer Brandi, hope that it helps you with both of your gardens!
DeleteThanks for reminding us we all need to weed our mind-gardens from time to time and giving practical steps on how to do it. And my "real" garden could also use some weeding about now.
ReplyDeleteGo for it Dee Dee. A little quiet time in the dirt has always helped me.
DeleteLove the visual of the leaning rosemary - pushed around by the bad stuff, still standing, slightly changed - probably hardier. And I'm in if you're doing a weeding-your-garden tour!
ReplyDeleteThanks for commenting Shel. I think we are all a little tilted by life, but as long as we are open to learn we will still grow.
DeleteI think you can add some pebbles as well. They can protect your favorite plants from being surrounded by the weed. And of course, you can also do regular plowing, just make sure that you do it before the grass flowers bloom; you’d just be likely helping them to spread.
ReplyDeleteMelva @MPDT.com.au