What You Focus on Grows

A Garden Metaphor: How Does Your Garden Grow?

What are you planting in your garden of life? Life is like a garden, and what’s growing in our lives is that which we’ve planted. Sure… some of it is weeds we didn’t ask for. But what you focus on grows, so focus on the good and you’ll have more of that.

In this Covid-19 era, now more than ever, we need to focus on what we want rather than obsess over fearful things we don’t want.

Plant the seeds you want to grow and tend them well. The more they grow the less room for weeds. Whether in this garden metaphor or in your life and work… what you focus on is what grows more fully in your life.

“Focus on what you want, not on what you don’t.”

Table of Contents

• A Garden Metaphor: How Does Your Garden Grow?
  • Audio Article: Garden Metaphor
• What You Focus on Grows
  • Reframe the Weeds
  • Dreams Come True with Focus
• Crowd Out the Weeds
• Reframing Fuels Your Growth
• You’re the Master Gardener of Your Life
  • Don’t Give Up!
• Reframe the “Weeds” of Stinking Thinking
  • Tilling New Ground
  • What Do You Need to Reframe in Your Life?
• Face Your Fears and they Disappear
  • The Power of Practice
• Growing the Garden of Your Life
• Wisdom from the Community

Audio Article: Garden Metaphor

What you focus on, grows.
~Multiple authors

What You Focus on Grows

Your garden grows what you plant. What you plant stands to thrive if you focus on its care. Don’t focus on the weeds you don’t want. Make the good weeds into food and medicine and get rid of the rest.

When it comes to the weeds in your life… those annoyances that detract and get in your way, don’t lament them… just get rid of them. If you can’t get rid of them, learn from them and reframe negatives into positive fuel.

Reframe the Weeds

Your “weaknesses” (weeds) can actually be strengths when perceived differently. In the garden, weeds are often edible and medicinal. Weeds can also inform us as to the health of our soil. However if our weeds take over, it’s time to replace them with the plants (plans) that we choose.

AFFIRMATION:
“I focus on what I want in life, and that is what I have.“

Dreams Come True with Focus, Planning and Effort

Now notice we’re not saying what you dream about or wish for is what you’ll have. Focus implies steady, persistent concentrated effort over time.

Like a well tended garden, what you focus on is what grows more fully in your garden of life. What you focus on thrives, so be sure you’re focusing on the good that you have and the good that you want, because without a doubt, what you focus on is what will grow in your mind and in your life. It’s simple physics… the law of cause and effect.

“Remember your dreams and fight for them.”
~Paulo Coelho, Brazilian novelist, author of The Alchemist

Crowd Out the Weeds

To reframe the negatives, ponder the benefits hidden there. Then focus on what you want to grow most.

Whatever is holding you back… whatever your fear, don’t let it stop you.  Fear never really disappears completely. It’s just that by focusing on your strengths and what you want to grow, the good crowds out the bad.

Focus on your strengths and your courage will grow stronger than your fear. Your garden will flourish and outgrow the weeds.

“Do that which you fear to do, and the fear will die.”
~Ralph Waldo Emerson, essayist, poet, 1803-1882

Reframing Fuels Your Growth

When it comes to the metaphor of weeds in the garden, some weeds are actually edible and medicinal, so these too can be useful. Those that aren’t can make good compost. Reframing, fertilizes the garden of your life.

Many weeds nourish the soil and plants of the garden, and some thwart pests. Weeds also teach us about our soil. In this garden metaphor, our weeds (weaknesses) teach us about our strengths, because each strength has a weakness… a flip side of that coin, and vice versa. Each weakness has a strength to be nurtured.

For example, an introvert may be a good writer with a great sense of humor that she normally keeps to herself or shares with a small circle of friends and family. Turn her loose to write and she comes alive with a whimsical wit which weaves wonderfully into whatever she writes.

That “weakness” of not feeling comfortable being an introvert around people, reveals a strength of powerful internal dialogue that can convey very well in the written word. Introverts are often inner extroverts. Ask any writer with their bevy of characters crashing around in their head.

Weeds then… those things that may appear unattractive to the meticulous gardener, also serve their purpose. It’s the same thing with fear. Pull the weeds of fear that get in the way.

Like compost for plants, you can use your fears to fuel your growth.

“We become what we think about most of the time.”
~Earl Nightingale, speaker, author, 1921-1989

You’re the Master Gardener of Your Life

If you want to create video content for your art… your brand, but think you’re “not good” on video, you are the meticulous gardener now, criticizing the imperfection of “the weeds”.  However, there are other ways to grow your brand and build a tribe, some of which can lead you to creating video more easily by focusing on your strengths first.

There are some areas that you may never wish to develop. Some weak areas (weeds) that simply need to be ignored or even removed. We all have those.

If you’re not interested in developing a particular area, all the better. To ignore it will allow you to focus on what you wish to grow. If it’s a must do or must-be-done kind of thing, such as bookkeeping or marketing or website maintenance, then if you must, do it until you’re able to outsource it.

Don’t Give Up!

However, if — as in the video creation example mentioned — it’s something you want to do but assume you can’t or shouldn’t, don’t give up. Adopt a learner’s mindset and give it a try. Most of us aren’t good at anything the first few times.

You’re the master gardener of your life. You decide what to plant.

Focus on your strengths… the “plants” you want to grow, and as they grow, the “weeds” of your life will diminish.
~LeAura Alderson, writer, editor, creator iCreateDaily.com®

Reframe the “Weeds” of Stinking Thinking

Some weeds need to be pulled out by the roots and tossed. The others can be converted into food, medicine, tea and fertilizer. For continuing this garden metaphor, we’re correlating weeds to negative thoughts and “stinking thinking” that you can convert to something better.

🔥 REFRAMING
Stinking Thinking: “I’m not good at that.”
Reframe: “What do I need to do to become better at that?”

Solution: Not being good at something almost always means that we simply haven’t practiced it enough… or, we’re not interested. If it’s something you want to do, keep at it. If not, let it go.

🔥 REFRAMING
Stinking Thinking: “I’m not good on video.”
Reframe: “How can I ease into creating video content when I’m not comfortable in front of the camera?”

Solution: If you want to create video content, there are simple ways to get better at it. Specifics depend on your goals, but start a goals list, then brainstorm things you can do, but some ideas follow.

Tilling New Ground

If you like to write, you can start there. You can then read/talk some of your written articles into video. Those are called video blogs or “vlogs”. You now have a blog article on your website, and you’ve created a video—a vlog—that will expand your reach and exposure to a larger audience.

Not so hard, and if it is, you will improve with a little practice. Reading your article on camera has given you a simple structure to share something on video. You can even read your article as voiceover to visuals, if you don’t yet want to appear onscreen yourself.

For the garden to flourish, you need to till new ground. This is the harder work. But this is the work that expands your ability to grow more, do more, and serve more. And remember, what you focus on grows, so focus on what you can do and do more of that.

To push against your boundaries expands your capacity, and thus your freedom to choose.

“It’s normal to have fear of failure; just don’t let it stop you.”
~LeAura Alderson, writer, editor, creator iCreateDaily.com®

What Do You Need to Reframe in Your Life?

🔥 REFRAMING
Stinking Thinking: “I’m afraid and so I procrastinate trying.”
Reframe: “I’m eager to take on new challenges and I love how I grow through them.”

Solution: It’s actually always harder to make excuses or live in fear, than to do the hard thing. If you shy away from something because it’s hard, you have to make excuses or be disappointed in yourself.  Neither of those help you make the progress you seek, until… until the pain is enough that you can’t not.

There’s a story of a dog lying on the porch of his home, moaning. The owner is sitting on the porch with a friend who asks: “Why is your dog moaning?”
Owner: “Oh, he’s lying on a board with a nail on it. The nail is poking him but he’s too lazy to move.”

When the pain is enough, you will move. Or… you can move sooner.
~LeAura Alderson, Cofounder-iCreateDaily®

Face Your Fears and they Disappear

With practice, you will act sooner to change your circumstance and turn it around. When the pain of fear is greater than the pain of that feared, you will turn it around.

As you become increasingly clear on how you have the power to change yourself, your life and your circumstance, you won’t wait to eradicate fears—new and old. When you face the fear, its shadow grows weak and eventually evaporates into nothingness.

When the pain of fear is greater than the pain of that feared, you will turn it around.
~LeAura Alderson, Cofounder – iCreateDaily.com®

The Power of Practice

With practice, you can even sidestep a lot of your own growing pains of learning through painful experiences.  By becoming a student of observation you can learn from the experiences of others in addition to your own.

Mentors, parents, friends and acquaintances can all serve to guide you along the way through the wisdom of their experiences. To learn from those who’ve been there before is like consulting a master gardener for advice, which cuts way down on the learning curve. Wouldn’t we if we could?

“Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re right.”
~Henry Ford, magnate, founder-Ford Motor Company, 1863-1947

Growing the Garden of Your Life

“As ye sow, so shall ye reap”, is ageless wisdom that’s applicable here. What you focus on is what you’re sowing in the garden of your life.

When you focus on what you want in your life, you will have more of that. It’s just such basic common sense that it’s often overlooked. It’s easy to miss the obvious

Whatever weeds may grow in your day, focus on the good, and more good will grow because what you focus on is what grows more fully in your life.

So be a conscious gardener and tend the crops and orchards of your life, and they will bear good fruit for years to come. Our privilege is to create art… words… craft… commerce… AND… to create our lives… our way.

We are here to grow more fully into our SELVES.

“When you face the fear it evaporates. Shadows cannot withstand the light.”
~LeAura Alderson, writer, editor, creator iCreateDaily.com®

The Way of Transformation and Growth

Gratitude is the fastest way out of stinking thinking, negativity, victim and even depression and ill health. Gratitude is free and available to anyone anywhere at anytime.

It’s so simple it’s easy to dismiss, to overlook, and yet gratitude has unlimited power to bolster your own unlimited abilities. When we focus on our blessings we amplify them.

If we focus on our struggles… guess what? Yep. We amplify them. It’s vastly better to amplify the blessings and overlook the negatives.

Never underestimate the power of gratitude to empower you to turn negatives to positives.

The attitudes of inconvenience are learned through conditioning. And… like good pets, they can be retrained.
~LeAura Alderson, writer, editor, creator iCreateDaily.com®

Wisdom from the Community

iCreateDaily community member, Lynne Hundley, had this observation:

Lynne: “I’m working on my response to all the little ‘shoulds’ and ‘musts’ do. Yesterday I went to vote – but the road was closed (the city is putting in a bike path and this week is bridge-close week). So it was detour time – over the river and through the woods, as they say.”

“My take-away is that the detours – and hijackings – in our lives, aren’t detours on the path. They are the path, not interruptions in the day. They are the day.  So I get to have the same satisfaction at finishing them as I do at finishing the planned stuff.”

“That’s a game changer for me.”

Absolutely!

Following a stroke at age 42, musician Dave Kim asked himself:

[ASK YOURSELF]
“Is this a chance to be a victim or to bring a message of positivity?”
~Dave Kim, musician, stroke victim turned survivor^[1]https://www.heart.org/en/news/2019/05/23/with-grit-and-gratitude-stroke-survivors-songs-play-on

The View from a Lighted Mind

The sun disperses the shadows in the garden and calls the plants to grow. The light of your positive, grateful consciousness is the sun in your life that will encourage the good to grow for you.

“Focus on the good and the seeds of good will grow more good.”
~LeAura Alderson, writer, editor, creator iCreateDaily.com®

The more positivity we set in motion the less the darkness holds sway.
~LeAura Alderson, writer, editor, creator iCreateDaily.com®

“Life is like a garden, and what’s growing in our lives is that which we’ve planted.”
~LeAura Alderson, writer, editor, creator iCreateDaily.com®

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