What You Focus on Grows

A Garden Metaphor: How Does Your Garden Grow?

What are you planting in your garden of life? Strengths are like the plants in your garden. You plant the seeds you want to grow and tend them well. The more they grow the less room for weeds. What you focus on grows, whether in this garden metaphor or in your life and work.

Audio Article: Garden Metaphor

What you focus on, grows.
~Multiple authors

What are you planting in your garden of life? Strengths are like the plants in your garden. You plant the seeds you want to grow and tend them well. The more they grow the less room for weeds. What you focus on grows, whether in this garden metaphor or in your life and work.

 

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 ones into medicine and get rid of the rest.

When it comes to the weeds you don’t want, don’t lament them… just get rid of them, or reframe them into positive fuel as food and medicine.

Reframe the Weeds

Your “weaknesses” (weeds) can actually be strengths when perceived differently. To reframe the stinking thinking around your weaknesses, you can ponder the benefits hidden there. Then focus on what you want to grow most.

Focus on what you want and you will have more of that.

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, a Brazilian lyricist and novelist, author of The Alchemist

Crowd Out the Weeds

Whatever is holding you back… whatever you fear, don’t let it stop you.  Fear never really disappears completely. It’s just that through focusing on your strengths and what you want to grow, you strengthen these such that your courage grows stronger than the fear. How? By doing hard things.

Do that which you fear to do, and the fear will die.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson, 19th century American essayist & poet, 1803-1882

Whatever is holding you back... whatever you fear, don't let it stop you.  Fear never really disappears completely. It’s just that through focusing on your strengths and what you want to grow, you strengthen these such that your courage grows stronger than the fear. How? By doing hard things.

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. Reframing, fertilizes the garden of your life.

Many weeds also 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 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 extrovert 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.

Weeds then… those things that may appear unattractive to the meticulous gardener, also serve their purpose. The same thing with fear.

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

We become what we think about most of the time, and that’s the strangest secret.
~Earl Nightingale, American radio speaker and motivational 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.

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

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.

However, if—as in the video example—it’s something you want to do but you 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.

Focus on your strengths… the “plants” you want to grow, and as they grow, the “weeds” of your life will diminish.
~LeAura Alderson, author, entrepreneur, co-founder-iCreateDaily

Your “Weeds” Reframed

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

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 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, and to ease into it. You can even read your article to visuals, if you don’t yet want to appear on screen 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, serve more.

To push against your boundaries expands your freedom to choose.

It’s normal to have fear of failure; just don’t let it stop you.
~LeAura Alderson, author, entrepreneur, co-founder-iCreateDaily

What are you planting in your garden of life? Strengths are like the plants in your garden. You plant the seeds you want to grow and tend them well. The more they grow the less room for weeds. What you focus on grows, whether in this garden metaphor or in your life and work.

 

🔥 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.

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, author, entrepreneur, co-founder-iCreateDaily

What Do You Need to Reframe in Your Life?

When you face the fear it evaporates. Shadows cannot withstand the light.
~LeAura Alderson, author, entrepreneur, co-founder-iCreateDaily

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 it evaporates into nothingness.

 

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, it’s shadows grow weak and eventually evaporate into nothingness.

When the pain of fear is greater than the pain of that feared, you will turn it around.
~LeAura Alderson, author, entrepreneur, co-founder-iCreateDaily

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, American business magnate, founder-Ford Motor Company, 1863-1947

What are you planting in your garden of life? Strengths are like the plants in your garden. You plant the seeds you want to grow and tend them well. The more they grow the less room for weeds. What you focus on grows, whether in this garden metaphor or in your life and work.

Wisdom from the Community

iCreateDaily Mastermind 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. They aren’t 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!

The attitudes of inconvenience are learned through conditioning. And… like good pets, they can be retrained.
~LeAura Alderson, author, entrepreneur, co-founder-iCreateDaily

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