You Get What You Plant
Do you plant happiness in your Life Garden?
“Why are you surprised at the way your life is today? Did you think you could plant self-pity and blame and harvest happiness?” My grandmother said that to me one day when I was a teenager. I was huffing and puffing and rolling my eyes, adopting the universal 15-year-old-girl stance. “Life is sooooo unfair!” [whine] “Why do I have to [take out the trash, do homework, stay home tonight, help with dinner]!?”
I suppose we could cut our little princes and princesses some slack. Our teens are being mugged by their hormones. They are ill-equipped to figure out how to handle the mood swings and emotions that flip them in and out of happiness and despair, sometimes within the span of two paragraphs. But, such is the job of the grownups: teach them how to navigate this crazy and very unfair world. My mother’s usual refrain when I wandered into self pity was, “No one ever said the world was fair! Only that it is ROUND!” In other words, babe, Deal With it!
This behavior is expected in teenagers. It’s a lot harder to handle when it’s a co-worker, boss, neighbor, friend or sweetheart. It’s not all that easy to send a co-worker to a Time Out, though I have been tempted.
As we age, we realize that our lives are a compilation of every choice we have made, and every thought we have planted. Not all of our fellow grownups have figured this out yet!
So what do you do? Easy – leave them alone and work on yourself. I’ve heard it said that we sometimes choose friends based on the the flaw we need to work on in ourselves. If every friend of ours has the same flaw, we may need to check in the mirror to see why we are attracting or seeking that. But here’s the REAL truth, and understanding this helped me heal some old wounds:
Everyone has something absolutely amazing they can use to make the world better because they were born. And every one of us also has something flawed that we need to face and work on. This applies to celebrities, your family, your best friends, and… YOU.
Think of it this way: we are all a work-in-progress, and we all can make changes by planting different kinds of thoughts in our brains. Knowing that makes it easier to work on ourselves and not get worked up about someone else who ‘drives us nutso!’
You’re born.
You die.
That space in between is up to you. Plant something special and meaningful. Pull out the weeds that have cluttered your heart and your brain and toss them in the trash. You’re worth more than you think. You may not make a huge difference in the world. But you do make a difference to some people and they need you as much as you need them.
Blessings,
Take care of yourself, we need you!
I like this. Sometimes we forget that we created our own messes. But we created our own success too. Thx?