News

WEEDING YOUR LIFE

By Lloyd J. Thomas, Ph.D.

Summer is here. Many of us have planted gardens. Most of us enjoy the “renewal of nature." New leaves have emerged from the branches. Seeds have germinated and sprouted. Crops have begun to grow. Gardens have been planted with the hope that food and beauty will develop. And in almost every garden, unwanted plants always emerge. We call them weeds. Our lives are like gardens. We were born into one kind of garden. We spent our childhood learning how to survive and function in that first garden. As we went through adolescence, we moved away from that first plot and began turning the soil for our own personal, grown-up garden. As adults, we are the gardeners of our own lives. We create and live within the “custom-built" reality gardens we have grown. As the gardener of your own life, you have special talents, skills and abilities. Cultivating the soil (becoming receptive to new changes, ideas and habits); planting seeds (incorporating new thoughts, new feelings, new values, new perceptions and beliefs); watering and feeding (nourishing your mind and body); and harvesting (reaping the consequences of your choices and behavior)…all are necessary gardening skills for a great garden (life). Most of the really hard work involved with having a healthy garden is weeding. A garden full of weeds is difficult to spade, virtually impossible to seed, and usually provides a sparse harvest. Weed-filled lives prevent us from being receptive to new ways of thinking and feeling; wastefully uses up our nourishment and energy; chokes out new beliefs and behaviors; and all we generally reap from weed-filled lives are the thistles and seeds of hopelessness, helplessness and despair. The most common weeds in our living gardens include: toxic relationships; negative beliefs and attitudes, and self-defeating behaviors. Our minds and hearts, our relationships and lifestyles, easily become filled with weeds. There are some people with whom we have contact whose behaviors are toxic to our health. Criminal and immoral behavior, hostility and anger, criticism and complaints, negativity and cynicism, are the qualities of the typical garden-variety social weeds. With too much contact with these people, we allow our lives to become cluttered and poisoned. Negative beliefs and emotions are intimately connected with illness and disease. Feelings such as anxiety, depression, fear, panic, worry, rage, resentment, guilt and despair are also huge weeds in our psychic garden. Such beliefs and emotions need to be weeded out and replaced with positive beliefs, appreciative thoughts, and delightful emotions such as humor, joy, happiness, gratitude, hope, delight and contentment. The weeds of self-defeating behavior are probably the most deeply rooted in our gardens. Procrastination, laziness, negative self-talk, anger toward yourself and others; avoidance of challenges; perception of yourself as always the victim, over dependence on others, over protection or control of others, are all examples of self-defeating weeds. Self-destructive behavior is a more obvious weed in our lives. Misuse of drugs, driving recklessly, eating too much or the “wrong foods," smoking, taking dangerous and unnecessary risks, abuse of our bodies (e.g. never resting, stressing ourselves beyond our level of endurance, etc.), and never taking good care of ourselves, are the huge weeds in our living gardens. In springtime, weeds begin to grow in every garden. In order to have a weed-free life, you may consider: 1) avoiding toxic social contacts; 2) Planting and growing new emotional habits and attitudes; 3) supplanting self-defeating and self-destructive habits with new ones which are self-enhancing; and 4) actively filling you mind with thoughts and images that are positive and healing. Each of these four methods have been “proven effective" in weeding your life and growing a reality of joy and delight in which you can truly thrive.