Are you interested in a big country garden, an acre of land planted with seeds that will feed you and your community? Do you want a small, raised bed garden that will provide a little added flavor to your life? Or are you thinking of a garden full of flowers of every color and scent?
Your answer matters. If you want the flowers but you plant tomatoes, you’re going to miss out on all those beautiful blossoms, and you’ll be left living a life longing for your garden.
And your age doesn’t matter. Granted if you’re my age, you don’t have as many years ahead to clear the land and plant the garden of your dreams, but you can still plant seeds that will bring you the health and happiness you seek.
Whether you are on the cusp of young adulthood, mid-life, or settling into the middle of your senior years, you are free to decide what, where, and how to plant your garden. We can have the garden we want, but first we need to know what that looks like.
If you wake up miserable or happy, tired or energized, dreading or seizing the day, it has little to do with how old you are or your stage of life, but rather, how you measure the life you are living.
If you woke up this morning, happy, sipping on a coffee full of content, it’s likely you’re living life on your terms. Somewhere along the way you figured it out, and you planted the seeds you wanted. You decided early on what you wanted your garden to look like.
If, on the other hand, your coffee sips sour, maybe it’s because your garden looks more like your neighbor’s (the Joneses), you’ve emulated them well. But now the Joneses seem happy with their tomatoes and peppers, while you are longing for a fresh bouquet of flowers in every room.
But there comes a time when we must STOP! In order to live the life we want for ourselves, we must decide that our hopes and dreams have merit, value, even if it that value is only clear to us.
I spent many years working with adolescents and adults struggling with eating disorders. These are deadly mental illnesses, and until the opioid addiction’s crisis, were the leading cause of mental health deaths. Eating disorders are also tough to treat for many reasons, but especially difficult because of how the role of societal pressures impact recovery.
Someone with anorexia nervosa spends an enormous amount of energy each day comparing themselves to others. They spend endless hours measuring their body, trying to determine who’s the thinnest, who eats the least, whose calorie count is lowest. And it is this constant comparison that keeps them a prisoner in their own bodies.
Just as my former clients fell prey to the comparison trap, we get stuck in endless comparisons on an even bigger scale.
We too compare our bodies to others, but we extend it beyond our physical bodies to making comparisons regarding our entire lives. When we’re doom scrolling thinking, “they” have what we want. They have more money, more stuff, more toys, better cars, better jobs, better houses, better gardens, better lives?
Because we lost trust in ourselves. We’ve given up on our ability to think and do independently. We’ve been marketed to for so long, we think we want what the vendors offer. We’ve misplaced our compass, and we think it’s ok that we’ve picked someone else’s up along the way.
That is until our mornings come with dread, the coffee tastes bad, and we’re tired of eating all the tomatoes and peppers we planted, realizing we just really miss the daisies that once grew in the front yard.
Fifteen years ago there was a Lending Tree.com commercial on TV that featured a middle-aged guy, Stanley Johnson, talking about all the stuff he had, a big house, a new car, and driving around on his riding lawnmower saying, “I’m in debt up to my eyeballs, somebody help me.”
Stanley Johnson is the poster boy for living a life that isn’t ours. Did Stanley want all the stuff and the debt that came with it? Nope, but he got it anyway!
We need to decide. We can live like Stanley, or we pick up our own compass, plant the garden we want, and live the healthier, happier life we say we want.
I said simple — this isn't rocket science or brain surgery, it's not complicated, it's simple, it's just not easy.
It’s not easy because it will entail us letting go of what our popular culture tells us about how we should live our lives. It’s not easy because it requires us to have courage to go against what our parents taught us or dreamed for us. It’s not easy because it will require us to let go of our jealousy and envy of what our neighbors, colleagues, and friends have, so that we can savor what is ours.
We must be honest with ourselves. We need to be willing to admit to ourselves and then out loud, what it is we do and don’t want…the big house, the new car, the crazy relationship, the chaos, city life, country life, the corporate job, or whatever is the next big thing.
If we’ll be honest, admit the truth to ourselves, and then be brave enough to live that way, our way, not Stanley Johnson’s way, or the Joneses way, then our garden will certainly grow, on our terms, and will produce life we now know we want.
Thanks for reading this week’s newsletter and participating in my poll. You’ll see the results as they tally. Now let’s get started on growing the life we want!
Thank You for being a part of Planting Seeds for Health & Happiness
I’d love to hear your thoughts, please join the discussion on growing the life you want, just click on the leave a comment button. Let’s keep this conversation going…
If you’d rather not share your thoughts online but would like to engage in the conversation with me, you can do so by emailing me. Just click on the email button below. I will respond to your email.
When your family gathers for dinner tonight, remember the dinner table is a No Phone Zone! Start a conversation that will help your kiddos plants the seeds for the future they want. Everyone eats, participates, and listens to each other’s stories.
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