I am in awe of all of the beautiful gardens I see this time of year. Healthy, green, vibrant plants bursting with fresh food or gorgeous blooms are one of my favorite parts of summer. The gardens themselves look almost effortless in their beauty. There are not weeds, the plants are evenly spaced and look truly luscious. I suppose once in a while we hear someone talk about weeding their garden, but mostly I think that the term “weeding” is considered to be a part of gardening.

I am getting ready to do some work on my yard and have been thinking a lot about creating a space that is easy to maintain as well as beautiful. That’s got me thinking about the plants that are growing that I haven’t planted, otherwise known as “weeds”.

There are a few ways we can approach weeds in my book. We can pull them after they have grown, we can prevent them or we can do a combination of pulling and preventing.

A metaphor from weeds

When we take the time to set up our garden spaces and outdoor living areas, we take the time to create beauty we can successfully maintain and enjoy. We try to keep the weeds down so we can enjoy only the plants we have purposefully included. Do we do the same for our lives?

When we approach weeds as a metaphor they are the things that get in the way of the life we really want to be living. These things might be ways we waste time, money or energy. The weeds of our lives might be things that make us directly unhappy that we just ignore.

Pulling weeds in your life

Are there things that are bugging you, weighing you down or causing you stress? What are some ways you could pull those weeds? Perhaps you could be more proactive and prevent things that cause you stress. Maybe you could be honest with your loved ones about what your needs truly are and how you would like those to be met. It might be that spending your time differently in ways that match the things you value would be a solution.

Spending time in ways that matches the things I value took me a long time to figure out. But once I did, I am capable of getting a ton of things done and I feel happy, energized and fulfilled. It’s really my secret to success. I try to spend my time doing only the things that match my values. It’s one of the areas I’m most proud of in my new book of journal prompts, “Know Yourself: Journal prompts to help you get in touch with your own inner truth to support fulfillment, inner peace and happiness”. By beginning to look at what you value, you can figure out how you want to spend your time.

Weed barrier for your life

Creating a weed barrier for our lives is just as efficient as putting one down in our gardens. It won’t prevent all of the weeds, but it sure helps to minimize them.

This means, as we look a the same metaphor, that we put systems in place to minimize the things we don’t value. Maybe it means deleting a social media app off of your phone. Saying “no” can be really helpful and sometimes is the most important word we can say. It could be that spending time with only those people who make you feel energized is the solution. Sometimes simply creating a system so that things can become automatic is the key. Automate your bills, automate your cleaning by sticking to a schedule, automate whatever it is you need to automate so that you can take back some brain power and let go of stress.

Keep in mind that one person’s weed is another person’s beautiful flower. If something brings you joy, that’s reason enough to keep it in your life.

Can you see that there might be some things you could do to control the weeds (stress, unhappiness, discontent, feelings of unworthiness) in your life?

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All my love,

Brenda

XOXO