Life is a Garden

As a Kansas farm girl growing up, we had rich black soil. Everything we planted seemed to sprout up and grow happily. Years later I moved to Norfolk, Nebraska where we had hard clay. It felt like I needed a jackhammer to drill a little hole to plant a flower. The flowers choked for nutrition and struggled to survive.

Your mind is like that soil. Is your mind the fertile black soil which nourishes and brings forth value? Or is it like the hard clay which is closed and unreceptive to new ideas. The beauty is that you have the opportunity to choose. Every day you can decide to be whichever one you choose. Why not choose to grow and flourish. Jim Rohn, noted business philosopher, said that in order for us to receive more, we must become more.

Tony Robbins speaks about not going to your garden and chanting "There's no weeds, there's no weeds." Of course there are weeds. Weeds must be pulled out. He chooses not to see it worse than it is but truly as it is. Ideally see it better than it is and go to work to make it so.

There is the story of the beautiful garden on the garden tour. One of the visitors walked by a lovely garden and seeing the owner there decided to speak to him. Not wanting the owner to take full credit for the beautiful garden, the visitor said to the owner, "you and God have a beautiful garden here." The owner replied, "Yes, without the seed and the soil and the sun and the rain, it would have been very difficult. But, you should have seen it 2 years ago when God had it all by himself."

We are given everything we need to not only survive but thrive. We each received gifts: talents and abilities. Those gifts are the seed and soil for our personal growth and future prosperity. The sun and the rain are the opportunities we encounter in our life. We have the opportunities to learn and grow by reading, masterminding with other leaders and listening to educational materials. Opportunities to expand our mind and our self-worth abound. It is up to us to tap into those resources and increase our value to the marketplace.

Your mind can be like the fertile black soil and produce a beautiful garden for all to enjoy or like the hard clay and be unhappy and broke. Your choice. Your garden. Choose flowers or weeds. Choose prosperity or poverty. Life really starts and ends with our choices.