7 Secrets to Creating The Garden of Your Dreams #2: Reconnect to Your Inner Gardener
Secret #2: Reconnect to Your Inner Gardener
 |
| I enjoy Garden Writers conferences. What's your favorite gardening thing? |
Do you feel like you’re going through the motions of gardening without getting much enjoyment? The sense of satisfaction we experience from gardening comes from within. Dissatisfaction is a symptom that we've become disconnected from our inner gardener. This discontent can arise from several sources.
Someone or something outside ourselves can cause us to want to abandon our efforts. For example, if a garden club friend makes a critical remark about your painted flower pots that leads you to abandon what you had thought was a fun project, the enjoyment you derive from decorating flower pots could temporarily leak out of your life. The cure is to recall the pleasure you get from this activity and affirm that that is a good enough reason to continue doing it.
Another kind of leak occurs when something that used to hold meaning for us no longer does, for example rooting our own cuttings, or growing our own vegetables from seed. These types of meaning leaks occur because we’ve changed, our interests have changed, the demands on our time have changed, or our physical capabilities have changed. They are usually permanent. Allow yourself to feel sad, mourn the loss, and look forward to trying something new.
Unhappiness can also come about as aging and disabilities begin to take their toll on the joy we once experienced from gardening. Break the pain-producing tasks into controlled blocks of time interrupted by less-stressful chores and assemble an assortment of splints, compression gloves, topical anesthetics, and adaptive ways of working that will allow you to continue gardening relatively pain-free. Author Jim Wilson’s book, Gardening Through Your Golden Years, offers inspiring stories and practical information for gardeners who are coping with the difficulties of aging.
Discontent in any area of our lives is generally the result of the gap between our expectations and the actual outcomes we experience. To solve the problem, we just need to locate the disconnection and plug back into the things about gardening that we enjoy.
For more on this topic, go to http://cultivatingtheinnergardener.blogspot.com . To read "A Garden That's Just Right for You," click http://bit.ly/jCZlyA .
Another kind of leak occurs when something that used to hold meaning for us no longer does, for example rooting our own cuttings, or growing our own vegetables from seed. These types of meaning leaks occur because we’ve changed, our interests have changed, the demands on our time have changed, or our physical capabilities have changed. They are usually permanent. Allow yourself to feel sad, mourn the loss, and look forward to trying something new.
Unhappiness can also come about as aging and disabilities begin to take their toll on the joy we once experienced from gardening. Break the pain-producing tasks into controlled blocks of time interrupted by less-stressful chores and assemble an assortment of splints, compression gloves, topical anesthetics, and adaptive ways of working that will allow you to continue gardening relatively pain-free. Author Jim Wilson’s book, Gardening Through Your Golden Years, offers inspiring stories and practical information for gardeners who are coping with the difficulties of aging.
Discontent in any area of our lives is generally the result of the gap between our expectations and the actual outcomes we experience. To solve the problem, we just need to locate the disconnection and plug back into the things about gardening that we enjoy.
For more on this topic, go to http://cultivatingtheinnergardener.blogspot.com . To read "A Garden That's Just Right for You," click http://bit.ly/jCZlyA .
