I live out in a rural community of Colorado. It is beautiful and I feel as though I have found my “little piece of heaven”. When I first bought this home, it was literally a “box on a lot”. There was not one tree, one garden or any out buildings on the property.
Slowly, I began to add gardens around my home and I started adding trees, some deciduous and some evergreens. I now understand why landscaping is so expensive, it is not the cost of the trees and plants it is the back braking work! Digging a hole in ground that is like concrete is hard work!
I now have 12 beautiful trees on the property and lots of gardens all around my home. In addition, to a great 2-stall barn, which houses my 2 wonderful horses, Athena and Zeus (I will write another Blog about those two interesting characters!) And, I added an arena to exercise the horses in. Which brings me to my weeding experience!
This year we have had lots of rain and therefore the grass and weeds are growing fast and big! So, the last 2 weekends have been spent going from garden to garden pulling and digging up weeds. Which for me is more like therapy, this type of work helps me to think deeply about life and create great Blogs!
Unfortunately, the arena grows these big, tall, prickly weeds in one corner. These weeds are about as tall as I am (5’2”) and have sharp, very sharp thorns on them and they grow a deep root into the sand.
So, as I was pulling these big, tall, thorned, weeds one at a time, I started to think about the weeds we each have in our lives. And, if we don’t stay on top of the “weeding in our lives”, the weeds can grow larger and larger and become more difficult to face and handle.
Each time I would pull out one of the really tall weeds, which happened to have the biggest thorns on them, which would inevitably stick me, right through my leather gloves, and would have the deepest root, so I would really have to put all my weight into pulling that sucker out, the weed would of course prick my fingers! This was a painful process! Had I handled those weeds when they were small, and had smaller thorns, the weed would have been much easier to handle!
I started to think about how each of us has “weeds” in our life that may include situations, people or tasks that must be faced, assessed, handled and perhaps weeded out of our lives! And, for one reason or another we don’t want to face it and so it gets bigger and bigger and more difficult to confront. The longer we let that weed stay in our lives, the deeper it gets entwined in our lives and we tend to simply get used to it being there and accept it even though we know it is not the best thing for us! What is up with that?! In addition, that weed may have some pretty painful “thorns” that continue to hurt us, hold us back or prevent us from being who we truly are.
So, what are some of the weeds in your life? Do you have people in your life that cause you pain? Do they pull you down? Are there situations in your life that are not serving you and your vision and mission of what you want to accomplish? Are there tasks that you have been avoiding, brushing under the carpet and refusing to deal with?
It is amazing how simple life gets and how much more we can be productive when we, as Brian Tracy says “eat that frog”! Take a look at your life and consider the people who perhaps are “thorns” in your life and not contributing and or supporting you and your goals. Survey some of the tasks on your to do list that you have been avoiding…take action now! Do one step towards that task and “just do it”!
The people who we keep in our lives that are energy suckers need to go! The tasks that you are not taking action on must be completed! You will be amazed at how “lighter” and how much you will enjoy “smelling the roses” when you weed your own personal garden! What are you waiting for…get weeding!