Life Notes with Sheldon
Life Notes with Sheldon
Cultivating Your Garden: Stop Chasing, Start Growing
Finding what we're looking for often happens when we stop frantically searching—just like discovering lost keys when we've stopped actively seeking them. This paradoxical truth applies to our quests for love, meaning, purpose, and fulfillment during these uncertain times.
Drawing from Henry David Thoreau's butterfly metaphor and extending it to gardening wisdom, we explore how preparing the soil of our lives attracts what we desire more effectively than desperate pursuit. Our internal garden begins with our thoughts—negative thinking patterns act as noxious weeds, depleting our mental soil of nutrients needed for growth. Removing these thought-weeds requires ongoing maintenance rather than one-time effort.
Garden maintenance may necessitate difficult decisions about relationships. Negative people can introduce toxicity that spreads rapidly through our lives, much like how one person's bad attitude can transform a family car ride. Similarly, our digital consumption habits—compulsively checking news or mindlessly scrolling social media—can gradually alter our perception and attitude without our awareness. One revealing moment came when I realized I'd lost eight minutes with my family while checking my phone—time they experienced but I completely missed.
Viktor Frankl's profound wisdom reminds us that "between stimulus and response, there is a space" where our power to choose exists. His experiences in Nazi concentration camps taught him that even when everything is taken away, we retain the freedom to choose our attitude. By tending to our thoughts, carefully selecting our influences, and practicing the freedom to choose our responses, we prepare our internal environment for growth.
Ready to stop chasing butterflies and start building a garden where they'll naturally want to land? Subscribe now and join our community of intentional gardeners cultivating rich, meaningful lives.
Welcome to Life Notes with Sheldon, where we talk about ways to get off the sidelines and back into the game of life as your best you hello friends, and thank you for joining me on life notes with sheldon.
Speaker 1:We talk about ways of getting you off the sidelines and back into the game as your very best self. Thanks for joining me on this blistery afternoon. Where we're recording, it's springtime in New Mexico, so actually it's winter and tomorrow it might be spring, possibly summer next week and a big windstorm. It's kind of hard to not be a little bit bipolar in this country when the weather is so unpredictable. It should be predictable because I've lived here for almost all my life, but New Mexico, spring is always full of surprises and there's always a last hurrah. I thought it was going to be the end of March, but it often is in that first second week of April, sometimes later, where we there seems to be an epic, epic battle between winter and spring here in our area, specifically in the Four Corners, and who will win? Spring invariably, inevitably will, but winter sure puts up a good fight, as she is right now. You know thinking about something.
Speaker 1:Today, as I came into the studio and Sean was getting me set up, he said hey, did you leave this? And it was the key fob to my truck, one of them, one of two, and I hadn't realized it was gone. I just used the other one and I said thanks for giving that to me. I probably never would have known where it went or ever see it again to me. I probably never would have known where it went or ever see it again. And you know, as I was reflecting on that, I thought it's interesting that I've had times where I've lost keys and I have looked and looked and looked and looked and searched and searched and searched and got the family search party going and never found them, or worse, spent a day looking and then find them in the most random, obvious place the next day. But these keys were just here and just given to me and I wasn't even looking for them. And you know, life is funny that way, with not just keys but whether you're looking for love or friendship or meaning or purpose or a new career or a new living situation, sometimes, when we just stop seeking so intently, we're able to find and I know that sounds strange because we're humans and we want to control the situation and we want to take control of life and grab life by the horns, so to speak.
Speaker 1:But sometimes, when we are still, when we're quiet, when we back away from the situation. That's when we find our answers and, interestingly enough, sometimes that's where we find our car keys and also we can find other things that we've lost. Maybe we've lost hope. We live in a turbulent time right now. History has always been turbulent, but it seems like a particular nation right now is upended by uncertainty, and to think that that isn't affecting all of us and people who wouldn't even think it would affect is erroneous, because what affects the whole affects the parts and vice versa, and maybe you're feeling a little bit more stress, a little bit more worry, a little bit more of the awkwardness if you have a differing opinion from your neighbor or someone, and things are just a little bit more intense, a little strange, a little turbulent right now. So, whatever you're looking for maybe you're looking for it too hard, or maybe you're looking for it too often, or maybe you just need to take a break and step back from the looking friends, because honestly in life and those who know will tell you oftentimes that's when you find and where you find the answers. You know, some of the greatest discoveries in science and innovation have occurred when people have just taken a break and taken a stopping point and then they're able to be still and receive that inspiration, that revelation, whatever it is that comes. But it can't come if we're so busy and so intent and so seeking and so trying to control the outcome that we don't allow time for it to come to us. You know to some degree, whether you believe in manifesting or blessings or however you frame it we certainly have to get out and chase our goals in life, but we can also bring them to us.
Speaker 1:There's a quote, kind of a story, that I'd like to share. There was a individual okay, here's how it goes. There was an individual and he was looking for butterflies and he wanted to capture butterflies, and so this is attributed to Henry David Thoreau and he says happiness is like a butterfly the more you chase it, the more it will elude you, but if you turn your attention to other things, it will come and sit softly on your shoulder. Now another one is if you want to attract butterflies, don't chase them, instead, build a garden and they will come. Someone shared that with me once a nephew and I really, really liked that, found it to be so profound that if you want to attract butterflies, don't chase them, instead build a garden and they will come.
Speaker 1:And so many times in life we're wanting to attract and manifest and create our idea of how things should be, but the fact of the matter is we haven't tilled and plowed and fertilized and watered our soil. So even if we receive the thing we were trying to manifest or trying to go after, we wouldn't be ready to plant it. We wouldn't have a place to plant it. We wouldn't have a place to place it. And so it is with our lives. Friends, if we want to chase butterflies or chase friendship or love or fortune or goodwill or relationships, whatever it is that we're wanting to chase, maybe we need to stop chasing and maybe we need to start planting, tilling, fertilizing, watering, getting the soil of our lives ready to receive what we're trying so hard to get. Just think of that for a moment.
Speaker 1:What is your perplexing dilemma? What is it you're trying to change in your life? Maybe you're trying to change yourself. Maybe there's a fatal flaw, so to speak, that drives you insane. The definition of insanity is, of course, is doing the same thing over and over and expecting the result to change. Well, maybe you're doing this in your family, maybe you're doing it in your work, maybe you're doing it with your health, like we all have and probably all do to some degree mental, physical, spiritual health, whatever realm it is. Does that sound familiar? Is that maybe happening? The definition of insanity going on in our lives, doing the same thing over and over and expecting the result to change. Well, maybe, just maybe, we need to stop chasing, stop expecting and start preparing our soil of our lives.
Speaker 1:What is the soil of our lives? Well, the soil of our lives starts with our thoughts, because, friends, there's no greater poison to soil if you will, to healthy soil than negative, destructive thoughts. And these become spiraling patterns if we're not careful. We start to expect the worst and then we find the worst, and then we start thinking that the worst is always going to happen to us and we can go down this shame spiral that is never ending and never good good. So if we want to have fertile, rich, ready soil to plant for our dreams and for what we're trying to receive, we have to prepare the soil.
Speaker 1:And one of the ways we prepare soil, certainly in our neck of the woods, is to remove weeds. And there is no weed more noxious, more unpleasant, more thorny and more dangerous to quality soil in our lives than negative thoughts, thoughts about inflicting punishment because someone hurt us, thoughts about why we can't or why we'll never be good enough, or things that we don't like or things that have happened to us that we don't feel fair. When we dwell on those, we poison our soil. We seep and sap out the nutrients that we need to have in order to grow our dreams, grow our desires, grow those things we want. We sap out the nutrients and we inject the soil with thought poison. We inject it with poison that spreads through the soil on a micro level. It spreads through the soil and if we're not careful it can eventually take the growing power right out of the soil, take the nutrients needed to grow out of the soil. So we have to first of all remove those weeds and then we have to not allow them to come back. We have to prepare our lives and put up barriers and be cautious.
Speaker 1:Now, of course, if you've tended to a garden or flowers or anything else in this state, you know that weeds can pop up and will at the peskiest times, no matter how diligent you are. But if you let it go for too long, that weed germinates, it spreads and pretty soon it will take over the whole lot of the soil. So protect your soil and your garden friends. Get rid of those weeds of negative thoughts and then find ways to prevent them from getting through the fence, through the barrier, back into the soil. Now, this may mean you have to separate yourselves from some things that you thought you valued and thought you needed. This may very well mean the separation of friendships, possibly relationship, possibly places we go, things we do, things we watch and listen to, because once you have received and harnessed the power of this fertile soil, you'll want to protect it, and one of the most tragic things that can happen is to let it go, to invite the weeds back and have it overgrown all again. It's a hopeless, hapless, awful feeling. So maybe you had negative thoughts today, maybe you have that one that comes back and back and back and back and back.
Speaker 1:It's a huge task to remove these, especially if they're chronic. It really is. It really is. It's not a one and done kind of thing. It's not just a pill or an injection you take one and done kind of thing. It's not just a pill or an injection you take. It's like a round of chemo or radiation and you're destroying this cancer. But you have to go in for treatment and you have to revise your treatment and you have to take a break from your treatment for a while and go back to make it effective. And it's a lifelong process, it's certainly a maintenance program.
Speaker 1:So start today, friends. Start today weeding your garden, tending it, giving nutrients to that soil and keeping those noxious, nasty weeds out of thoughts, of negative thoughts. And when they come, you probably can't just make them go away, but you can redirect them. As you redirect them, you'll create this new habit loop where you're able to identify them before maybe they even come. You'll identify those triggers and when they come, you'll have this habit of reframing, of redirecting, and you can almost like a shield these arrows that are coming to you. You can yield that shield and you can thwart their power, thwart their trajectory, and you can keep going and, as you do, you'll create this pattern and this habit that will help you. So what else can we do? Well, friends, other things that add to weeds coming in and toxic things that can damage our soil that we have to tend and plant to have the things that we want and the positive things in life are negative people.
Speaker 1:Now, if someone is chronically negative, you're probably not going to be able to change them. If they have a negative effect on you that is greater than their positive effect, you probably likely are not going to be able to change that or change them. So you have to change your situation. You have to find ways to either avoid that toxicity and negativity that comes or find times to separate yourself from it, because negativity, pessimism, spread through your soil at a quick rate as well. They multiply.
Speaker 1:And if you don't believe that, get in a car and go on a trip with your family and watch what happens when one person is angry and has a bad attitude, or one child decides to have a bad attitude and take it out on another. Watch what happens to the ambience of the car. You don't even have to watch because you can feel it. It's something you don't even need to see or witness in action. You can feel it seep through the automobile and waft out the windows to whatever is around. Such is the power of negativity and negative attitudes and people who bring that toxicity and seem to relish it. Now we have to make room for patience, because so many people are struggling with the same very thing. I don't know very many negative or miserable people who want to be that way, despite what their actions may suggest.
Speaker 1:I think that most of us, in our heart of heart, have these plaguing problems and these fatal flaws that we would love to get rid of, and don't know how. But perhaps it's because we're chasing the solution, chasing the remedy, chasing the vaccination against it, if you will, when we should be creating the environment where the good can come and where the bad and pessimistic will deflect. So create the environment of our soil, prevent those weeds from entering in again. Prevent those weeds from entering in again and keep ourselves free from people and influences that are going to allow that fence to come down and those harmful elements to enter again. This may mean we have to change our TV viewing habits, our YouTube viewing habits.
Speaker 1:Perhaps we have, in this day and age, a compulsive news checking situation, like I have at times. We want to know what's going on, what's happening, because we're frantic and feel the sky is falling, maybe to some degree. So we have to find out these things that are leading to this, and these stepping stones, if you will, and we have to take ourselves away from them or take those things away from us, take ourselves away from them or take those things away from us. You know, it's probably not a great idea at Common Sense for an alcoholic to live across the street from the bar and definitely not a good idea for them to have a liquor cabinet right. But so many of us, with what we struggle with, we have the fuel fueling our addiction, fueling our problem, fueling our fatal flaw right there next to us and sadly, friends, we have it right in our hands the things that we turn into on our cell phones. You know we made the mistake of getting our kids cell phones because we thought we could locate them and in a good way, but we could be able to contact them and increase, kind of, our family safety plan. If they go to friend's house, if anything happened they could contact us. And they're kind of at that age where they might be able to handle it Well, when they're in YouTube for too long and it's not even really bad things, just a ridiculous things, and some of them do have this negativity to them or this weirdness and anyhow too much time in that and their attitude tanks, and I mean it can tank for days If he gets to spend two or three hours on YouTube in the car, one of our sons.
Speaker 1:You know, by the time we make it to our destination, it takes a couple of days for it to wear off. He's more aggressive, he's more emotional and, you know, I noticed it the other day when my son pulled away from the screen. It was just kind of this blank stare. It took him a while to get back to reality. And so we're taking ourselves into this world of virtual reality that is this digital domain, and, instead of tapping into the immense positivity and and opportunity that is, we're tuning into mind-numbing things or negative things or toxic things.
Speaker 1:So what do we do? Well, I for one have an app on my phone called Opal and have some settings on my phone to control apps, to control apps like Facebook and Safari and these things that I always have access to. So I can only get onto them at certain days and sometimes it's really convenient, at times unconvenient, and sometimes it's frustrating. But you know, my screen time is down a significant percentage and I found it was something that I had to do to limit my time on those devices. To limit my time, I went to look at my phone for something and something garnered my attention and I found myself, you know, looking at this news article or whatever it is and searching a little bit more, and I realized that five to eight minutes had passed by. And as I looked up, I realized that there was talking going around me, there was interacting, but I had no recollection of any of it. I'd forgotten what the subject was about. Eight to 10 minutes of my life and time with my family was void and gone. They enjoyed that time, but I did not, and they can never get that back. And I remembered thinking I erroneously had assumed in the past that I could be on my phone or be checking the news or checking stocks or checking whatever Facebook and still be in the social environment that I was in.
Speaker 1:And you can't. It's impossible, friends. Your brain doesn't have that capacity to focus on two things like that. It just simply does not. And if you think it does, you know multitasking is largely a myth, and certainly multi-concentrating on conversations and people and digital devices is a myth. So eliminate those things that bring in negativity, that bring in toxicity, and keep yourself away from them, at whatever cost it takes to do so. And that may mean getting rid of some things, it may mean separating from some people, some organizations, whatever it is, but I think that your heart will guide you. I really do. Our heart and our mind, our wise mind, will guide us if we let them, if we take time away from the frantic, searching the frantic, trying to figure out the frantic, trying to control and make everything work out. And avoid this chasing butterflies, if you will, and just plant a garden. Plant a beautiful garden, make your soil the very best it could be.
Speaker 1:Now I'm sure all of you have heard of Viktor Frankl, the Austrian neurologist, psychiatrist, philosopher and Holocaust survivor who founded logotherapy, often referred to as the third school of Viennese psychotherapy. His experience during World War II profoundly influenced his work. He survived several concentration camps, lost his wife, lost his family members, lost loved ones and friends, and he did an interesting thing Instead of succumbing to the misery and the utter horror of the atrocities around him, he decided to turn his time into an educational endeavor and he started to learn all he could about people, about the way they interact and about the mind, and some of his quotes explain some of the things that he learned and has shared, and one of them I want to share with you. Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom. Man, I should probably tattoo that on my forehead and under my wrist, where I see it daily, because between stimulus and response we have this space, this powerful, powerful, powerful, mystical space that determines our growth and freedom, what we do in that moment.
Speaker 1:One more we are no longer able, when we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves. So many of us want to change the situation, change the person, change the way they act, and that, oftentimes, is the definition of insanity. Instead, let us begin to change ourselves. And one more everything can be taken from a man, but one thing, the last of the human freedoms to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way. When we let things affect us, when we let them bring our attitude down, when we let evil or malice or revenge poison our hearts and poison our soil, we limit ourselves of the true, one and most powerful power that we have.
Speaker 1:One and most powerful power that we have, which is to control our attitude and redirect our thoughts and reframe our mind and friends. There's nothing that will sap gratitude out of our life more than a negative attitude. So change it. Change those thoughts. Stop chasing the butterflies so much, friend, and start working on your garden and I think you'll find. If you do, you'll have more butterflies and the butterflies will start chasing you. I know it to be true. Don't always practice it, but I'm getting better. I'm working harder on it. Won't you join me? And will you join me next week on Live Notes with Sheldon?
Speaker 2:Till then, have fun with that garden friends, you have been listening to Life Notes with Sheldon. Listen every week for a brand new note on life. We hope that we have given you a way to get off the sidelines and back into the game of life as your best. You, you.