HOW DOES YOUR SOUL GARDEN GROW?
Picture your soul as a garden.
What does it look like? Has it been well kept? Is it overgrown? Is the fence dilapidated? Is anything growing in it besides weeds and a few wild flowers? Who’s been tending to your garden? Have you been expecting other people to come and till the soil and labor to plant seeds?
If you are not consciously working on creating the soul-space you desire, I can guarantee your soul is a free-for-all-shit-show of unmanaged feelings, unmet expectations, unfulfilled needs, and unrelenting fear/pain/rejection/anxiety.
Sound familiar?
If you stand back and watch your garden deteriorate while you analyze every withering piece or if you turn your back on it and pretend it’s not really there, you do yourself no service. You may feel knowledgeable of the condition of your mental/emotional state, but it’s an illusion.
You are the only one on the earth that will ever be able to clean up, recreate, and maintain stability in your soul (mind/heart/emotions). So, who have you been trying to pass off that responsibility to–your mom, your partner, your kids, your friends?
Here’s a quick picture of what a SOUL Garden is made of:
Fence (boundaries)
Soil (connection with self/inner child)
Seeds (relationships)
Water/Sun (time/energy invested)
Planting/Pruning (commitment to self)
Harvest (ultimate joy/fulfillment)
YOU are the gardner and the first step to creating the kind of garden (life) you want, is to take an accurate assessment of the condition of your garden.
What weeds, wild animals, and toxic elements have you allowed in? What kind of fence (boundaries) do you need to put into place so you can begin to work safely in your soul space?
Start with those two questions then you can move to the next phases of reshaping your soul.
After you have spent time cleaning out the negative influences in your life (toxic relationships, smartphone addiction, substance abuse, etc.) and you have created a healthy practice of regular self-care (self-soothing, journaling, yoga, clean diet, exercise, boundaries), THEN you get to think about the kind of life you want to live.
This is where you get to set practical methods into place and plant healthy relationships, emotional wellness, and maintain a commitment to self in your life. (This is where you really begin to feel the shift in joy, endorphins, mental wellness, and self-worth.)
And after all that hard work, your job is to maintain the beauty and serenity you’ve created.
You watch tenderly over your soul and keep out any robbers (of joy, peace, or kindness). You feed what you have so consciously planted in your space and you care for your relationships with compassion and intention. You prune and clean up those connections as they grow and stretch, staying committed to having difficult conversations when needed, not avoiding intimacy, and paying attention to their growth as well as your own. And you let those blossoming elements feed you right back and sustain you, tethering you to this life and humanity, constantly reminding you that you are ALIVE. You are WORTHY. You BELONG here.
So, how does your garden grow? What care can you take in cultivating a life that satisfies you instead of suffocates you?
Don’t worry, this is just the first installment of SOUL Garden talk.
XO,
MK
