Your Mind is Like a Garden

Hi, I am Kiwi Kawaii ^^ Your mind is a garden, your thoughts are the seeds, you can grow flowers, or you can grow weeds. If you want to have a beautiful garden, you have to take care of it regularly; on a daily basis. And if you want to have a beautiful mind, you have to take care of it regularly; also on a daily basis.

There are several ways how you can take good care of your mind garden: Plant the right seeds and regularly wipe out the weeds. Make sure that other people aren’t throwing rotten seeds on your soil. Take good care of the soil. The seeds in the garden of mind are constantly being planted. The seeds in the garden of mind are your thoughts, opinions and concepts. The right seeds, the beautiful seeds from which a nice flower will grow, are all the thoughts that bring the positive into your life. The right seeds are tender thoughts of sharing, connecting and loving – yourself, people, things and ideas. Examples of the right seeds to plant in your garden of mind are: your life visions, life mission and life strategies for how you will achieve your goals; being proud of yourself and feeling good in your own skin; brainstorming new innovative ideas; thinking about the positive qualities of other people and your plan to connect with them even more; things you are looking forward to in life; things you are grateful for; learning and constantly improving; mentoring others and showing them how they can do things better. This is not toxic positivity. On the other hand, harmful seeds or weeds are all the thoughts that bring the negative into your life. Negative thoughts or seeds are rough mental energies of excluding, disconnecting and hating – yourself, people, things and ideas. Examples of negative seeds being planted in your mind: minimizing your accomplishments; comparing yourself to others and being jealous; fantasizing about revenge or misfortune happening to other people; labeling yourself and others in a negative way; drowning in self-pity and a victim mindset; being a perfectionist and always wanting more and more in an endless cycle trying to fill a void that never gets satisfied; other cognitive distortions. They can completely overtake it. They can completely destroy your mind and your life.

So you want to pull out the weeds while they’re still small and manageable. Stop feeding the monster. Starve it. By thinking the same negative thought over and over again, you give rotten seeds the power to grow. On a more positive note, by thinking the same positive thought over and over again, you give healthy seeds the power to grow. So think positive thoughts repeatedly. Enjoy them. With your actions, you give additional power to your rotten or healthy seeds to grow. That means you have to be careful how you think, what you say and especially how you act. You can observe what’s happening with your mind and learn to recognize a bad seed from a good one. You can pull out the weeds while they’re still small and manageable. Not only do you have to throw away the bad seeds, you also have to cut down the ones that start to grow. You can do that with emotional accounting, cognitive reframing, positive affirmations and many other mind tools. But do not fall in the trap of toxic positivity.

Other people are constantly throwing seeds on your mind soil. When you watch the news, what you read, when you talk to other people, it all represents seeds being thrown on your garden of mind. You want to make sure that as few rotten seeds as possible are thrown at you. All these things are part of your personal infostructure. Your personal infostructure is like a sieve that separates healthy seeds from the rotten ones so that they don’t even have a chance to reach you. Build yourself an outstanding infostructure and your garden of mind will start to blossom. Last but not least, make sure you take good care of the soil. That brings us back to the body. A healthy mind can only reside in a healthy body. So make sure you’re taking good care of your body, especially your brain.

This drawing is showing a temporary sadness of a child due to an event. From the outside, he seems sad, but his mind garden if full of goods seeds. He will not get stuck in this sadness for long, since the good seeds grow into tall flowers, they begin to cast a shade on the bad seedlings and these will not grow to become a problem.