Jane Witherspoon is a Canadian expat adventurer, yoga instructor, and passionate rambler who recently relocated from Panama to Denia, Spain.
Our thoughts are powerful and like a garden are the seeds that grow in our minds. We can plant positive and supportive thoughts that will bloom to create a beautiful garden that we surround ourselves with.
Negative thoughts are like weeds that can spread and suffocate your happiness. Like a garden, we must tend to our minds and what we think daily.
So, what are our mind weeds that can sprout when we stop tending to our mental garden? Self doubt, anxiety, worry, fear, anger, guilt, blame are all automatic negative thoughts that we are all susceptible to and can take over if we do not consciously become aware when these mind weeds fill our thoughts.
As humans, our brains have been hard-wired through evolution to have these thoughts as a survival mode, keeping us safe. We would learn from negative experiences when the world was full of predators and help us by thinking about all the things that could go wrong in order to keep us safe the next time.
Today, we don't live in a world where there are those constant dangers and though we may not eliminate those mind weeds we can train ourselves to overcome them.
We will always have negative thoughts, and we can't just ignore or will them away. We need to grow a habit of mindfulness, recognizing the negative thoughts and learning to let them go. Not to get stuck in them, believing them to be true.
We need to practice self compassion and remember to be as kind to ourselves, giving ourselves the respect we give others. We need to take in all the good offered to us, nurture it instead of the negative, cultivate the positive, and balance our mindset.
So that is the heavy lifting part of this post.
To end on a lighter note on our minds, thoughts, and gardens. Did you know that the connection to our thoughts and feelings and expressing them through flowers has been around for centuries?
Victorians were especially partial to this connection and used the "language of flowers" to communicate their feelings. The official name is Floriography, the art of communicating through different flower types. All flowers hold various meanings, often based on the type and color of flower.
And so my Sole Sisters, as you ramble out into your day, I offer you a bouquet of yellow roses and chrysanthemums representing female friendship, optimism, joy and long life. Imagine your mind as a garden and . . .
Your thoughts, the seeds you plant.
You are able to choose which seeds
you plant in your garden. You can
plant seeds of positivity, love, joy and
abundance or you can plant seeds
of negativity, fear and scarcity.
You can spend your time caring
for the gardens of others, or you
can work on making your garden
lush and beautiful. The more beautiful
your garden is, the more you will
Attract other beautiful people. - Unknown
READ MORE > Jane's Mindful Musings, Rambler Cafe Blog
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