The “garden of your mind” must never be left unattended. No matter how healthy the garden may seem, there will always be opportunities to allow weeds and thorns to creep in and bring destruction. When this happens, you can experience everything from poor health to depression and emotional upheaval affecting your career, relationships, well-being and success.
“’Whatever we plant in our subconscious mind and nourish with repetition and emotion will one day become reality.” – Earl Nightengale
“Whatever a man sows, he will reap in return.” Galatians 6:7
Sowing good seeds to produce a healthy garden in your mind and heart must be considered from multiple perspectives. The changes in your routine and habits will always affect your inner thought life for better or for worse.
Now that you have your vision written, look at just a few influences (or seeds) to analyze and see if what you are doing is in alignment with your vision or the “garden” you wish to produce. In other words, the influences in your daily life can be but are not necessarily all bad things. You must be willing to ask yourself frequently about what habits may be “good seeds or bad seeds.” However, it will also be important to assess which ones are pushing you towards your destiny and which are just time stealers or inhibitors of healthy growth in the garden of your heart and mind.
* Entertainment – movies, media, video games, television
* Reading Materials – magazines, newspapers, books, articles, social media
* People – friends, family, class-mates, co-workers, etc. (albeit, you cannot always control some of these influences, you can limit the time you spend with them or work on being an influencer instead of being influenced)
* Music – paying close attention to the messages they are sending
* Social Media – limiting time spent unless it aligns with your vision and monitoring what you allow yourself to be exposed to
* Education or Insights – YouTube, audiobooks, courses, training or seminars. Are they pushing you toward your destiny?
When it comes to taking care of our garden to ensure it matches our vision and pushes us toward our desired goals, we must do whatever is necessary to change our inner dialogue.
Therefore, a regular examination of our influences, both inner and outer will not only reveal some root causes of stress in our lives but it can help us prioritize what we allow ourselves to become involved in and help us to regain control in all areas. This is something we should be doing periodically, especially if we are noticing some “hiccups” in our progress.
