Enjoying your garden is not about spending planning and preparing. It’s not about eliminating all the weeds. And it isn’t all just about having the right garden machinery. To truly fall in love with gardening, you need to fall in love with the process. That means making the process itself a pleasure. Here are some tips to make garden work pleasurable instead of painful.
Do you focus only on the bad?
No matter how well you tilled your soil. No matter how many times during the summer you go outside and pluck up the weeds, there will always be something to do or maintain. You’ll always fine weeds in your garden. We can all into the habit of seeing weeds or unfinished work as ‘wrong’, but in doing so, we stop appreciating the 95% good around us. What’s more, since there’s always something ‘wrong’, you can never be happy.
Thankfully, it’s easy to change our minds by catching when we focus only negatives. As soon as you catch yourself focusing on the bad, notice the habit and actively choose to find some things good things about the ‘wrong’ thing. Take a moment to appreciate as much of the good around it as you can. What’s surprising is how quickly you will start to enjoy our garden again. Notice how often weeds actually look beautiful, with beautiful blooms of their own in the summer months. Actively appreciating both the good and the ‘bad’ can go a long way to enjoying your space. The work will still get done when it’s time work, but right now it’s time to relax and appreciate the fruits of our efforts.
Love Gardening: let it take the time it takes
While more serious tools such as a chainsaw are life-threatening to use inappropriately, rushing during any work can be bad for your health at any age. Rushing creates tension and strain in our bodies. So as a result of rushing we get aches and pains, making us more likely to conclude that “gardening is a chore”. And we don’t like chores, which may lead us to rush through it harder and faster the next time. It’s easy to see how rushing can create a vicious cycle.
Instead, try treating gardening as a relaxing way to get outdoors, enjoy the fresh air, and calm your body and mind. When you must bend or reach, or use a heavier tool like a strimmer, make comfort the focus and the end-goal secondary. See if you can move gently through the movement rather than force it. Always take time to find the most comfortable way to go about an activity. If you notice yourself rushing ask, “What is the reason for me to hurry through this activity?” see if you can find the reason and as an experiment, leave it aside and see how it feels to garden with your focus on relaxation and enjoyment.
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