Tending to your Life Garden

Today we are going back to basics.  Starting at the beginning.  Bottom line, no matter what transition you are going through in your life (either by choice or chance) in order to get through it in a happier way,  you need to be monitoring your energy.

So today's question is:  How do you spend your energy or to be more clear how do you spend your time?  Do you spend time with people you love?  Are you engaging in activities that fill you up?  Do you recognize your signs for being low on energy (both physical and emotional)?

If you think of your life as a garden.  You need to water your garden, care for it and make sure there are no pesky weeds or rodents eating your tomatoes and such.  You get energy from the beautiful plants and flowers that grow in your garden.  You lose energy when your garden fills up with weeds, or rodents and when it starts to lack water.  The flowers are the things in our life that give us energy;  supportive friends and family or fun and fulfilling activities.  The weeds and rodents are the things in our life that drain our energy: drama filled friends and family or activities that we dread and don't like.

Too many of my clients move through their day completely unaware of their garden.  They are unaware of

1. How they are feeling energy wise 
2. Actively engaging in garden management (working on adding more flowers and decreasing the weeds) 

How do you feel when you are low on energy/when your garden is wilting and brown? Sluggish ?Irritable? Do you get headaches or stomachaches? Do you amp up to make up the difference in energy? Do you drink too much coffee followed by too much wine?

Pay attention to how you feel to help guide you as to what your garden needs.

Give yourself permission to engage in activities that give you energy and drop the activities that don't. Now, I know we ALL have activities that we don't want to engage in but we have to because that is life.  But get very clear on what these have to activities are.  Many activities that we have in the "have to column" are not have to's at all but rather "I don't want them to be mad at me", or "I don't want them to think badly of me" activities.  We can't do it all AND have a garden that is lush and happy.

You can say NO to:

• the bake sale, 
• lunch with a friend who is so packed full of drama you leave her feeling more drained. 
• dog sitting your brothers annoying dog.
• the baby shower that falls on your only day off in 2 weeks.

You can say YES to:

• taking a walk with a friend you haven't seen in forever who always makes you smile.
• turning off the TV and actually chatting with your spouse.
• reading a really good book.
• getting a massage or taking a long nap.

But for those activities that you have to engage in that drain you.  Make sure you have a counter activity planned.  In my life I do a lot of care taking, on the days when I am feeling particularly drained from care taking I make sure to plan something fun and re-energizing.   I frequently check in on my garden and see if there are any miscellaneous weeds that I can pluck out or if I need to gather up some flowers to make myself feel better.

What about your garden?  Where does it need some tending?  What weeds can you pull?

Photo Credit:  Julie Gibbons via Flickr