Keep the focus on growing your garden

EXERCISE: The Garden Exercise.

The things you grow online are only a small part of your garden. There is so much in life, so much in the world! This exercise is about identifying all of the things in our lives we want to grow, and how we’ll nourish them. Here’s how to do it: 

• • Grab something to draw with and draw a garden. Draw the plants in it that you want to grow. These are the things in your life that nourish and provide for you. You relationships, careers, hobbies, spiritual practices, communities, etc. Include the things you’ve been growing online, too.
  • Then identify your water, your fertilizer, and your sunshine.
    • WATER: These are the actions we need to do most days. They’re practices we want to get consistent with and we’re in charge of them. If we don’t fill up the watering can and care for our garden, it’ll suffer. What actions do you need to do consistently to maintain these things you care about?

• FERTILIZER: These are things you’ll do to change the environment for the better. This might mean getting involved with a community organization to change public policy, or changing structures and practices at work or school. You might change something in your relationship. How can you change in your environment to make it a better place to thrive?

• SUNSHINE: This is something you need consistently but can’t change or control. You can only position yourself in a way to access it. It might be changing where you are to be in a healthier or more accessible community. Maybe you pick up some new hobbies that get you consistent exposure to social interaction. Maybe you’d benefit from a program at school that’s more challenging. What uncontrollable thing(s) will help you grow?

• The next step is to shift the focus of our work to these actions that nourish the garden. For this past month, we’ve focused on making changes and essentially weeding the garden. We’ve been cutting things out. And that’s great. But if you’re looking at the month ahead, what about orienting it around growing the things you want to keep in your life? Each week, I like to identify what I’m growing that week, and how I’m going to water that with actions each day, what I need to change environment, and what supports will help me thrive, that I need access to.

The compulsions just become stuff I don’t have time for because I’m too busy growing my garden 🙂