How To Weed Your Overgrown Garden Of Priorities
Has your to-do list made you it’s bitch?
Does everything feel important and urgent?
Do you wake up each morning already feeling behind no matter how early you set the alarm?
Are you nurturing your mind as much as you nurture your daily to-do list?
Treating your mind like a garden can lead to greater peace and clarity. Especially, if you consider yourself to be multipassionate like I do.
Trust me, I know first hand how painful it is to sit down at the end of a long work day without being able to identify any true accomplishments or meaningful progress. I know the weight and anxiety of a to-do list that stretches out into infinity.
The longer you allow your priorities to become an “overgrown garden” the more internal turmoil you will experience in your life and business. Plus, you will likely become more burned out and find yourself questioning if you have the stamina to continue in the niche you once loved. (Been there too).
So today, let’s take realistic first steps to weed our overgrown garden of priorities as a way to nurture our mind, create calm, and ultimately create space for our creativity to flourish. Bookmark and pin this post so you can refer back every time you feel overwhelmed and lost.
Start With Self-Compassion
The first step to weeding your overgrown garden of priorities is to adopt an attitude of self-compassion and grace. Beating yourself up to let things get to this point will only diminish your capacity and this exercise is about nurturing and healing.
Watering Your Mental Garden With Daily Mindfulness
Just as a garden needs to be watered daily, your brilliant brain thrives on routine daily mindfulness practices. Although, if you are new to mindfulness, I suggest starting with one small task that feels manageable like a walk to reflect upon your day or 5 minutes of journaling each morning.
As you advance in your mindfulness journey, adding regular yoga (moving meditation), guided and freeform journaling, and deep meditation practices will further increase your mental and emotional capacity.
PRO TIP: Adding a new habit or routine can be a major challenge in the beginning which can trigger a shame spiral. Instead of that same old cycle, this time try making your mindfulness activity a requirement of brushing your teeth or eating breakfast in the morning. Studies show adding a new habit before a cemented one dramatically improves your odds of success.
Pruning Negative Thoughts To Weed Your Mental Garden
Do you sometimes find your mind is completely overrun with ideas, to-dos, and stressful or negative thoughts?
Sugarplum, it is your responsibility to pluck those negative thoughts from the fertile soil of your mind like the weeks that they are. Remember, there is no need to spend time with your to-do list when it isn’t in front of you. There’s no need to adopt negative thoughts as fact and there’s no reason you need to try and store ideas in your mind when you can store them in a journal or spreadsheet.
If you find yourself getting overwhelmed with these thoughts lately, it is a good sign that your mental garden has become overgrown and needs some weeding.
Planting Seeds of Positivity
Weeding the negative thoughts isn’t enough for your mental garden to flourish.
You must also plant seeds for positive growth by adopting more positive thoughts about yourself, your life, your relationships and your purpose. Easier said than done if you’ve spent a lifetime writing a script that paints you as the villain in your own story.
But we must start somewhere right?
So, I suggest a gently Cognitive Behavioral Therapy approach that was helpful for me after leaving a string of abusing relationships that created an cruel and vicious internal script. Reminder: I am NOT a licensed therapist and if you need help coping with controlling negative thoughts you should seek the help of a licensed medical professional but this approach works for me.
- Start, by simply drawing your attention to how often you’re having negative thoughts. I used a tally mark system in my phone. This is just about noticing not about making any judgements.
- The next step is to keep track of the thoughts themselves by recording them in a journal with the page separated into two columns.
- Finally, next to the negative thoughts, I brainstorm all of the reasons they are not true and all of the evidence that I have showing the more positive version is true. For example, if I have the negative thought that I am ugly I can gather a list of evidence to prove to myself that I am not what I consider an ugly person.
This is not about moving into toxic positivity where nothing is ever wrong but you can strike a healthy balance and learn to be happier by finding gratitude for smaller pleasures. However, that will be impossible until you weed those negative thoughts and make room for the positive ones to flourish like the flowers of your mind.
Get A Quick Win With Your Overgrown Garden To Kickstart Momentum
Momentum is huge when it comes to developing new habits!
So if you don’t take action right here and now that will result in a quick win, behavioral psychology tells me you will put this on the back burner and continue to simmer in guilt, shame, and overwhelm as your to-do list makes you its bitch once again
and Honey, you aren’t anybody’s bitch!
That’s why I created this Garden of Priorities Worksheet set to help you instantly sort through your tornado of to-do list tasks and thoughts that are keeping you up at night. If you’re new here, you can use code DAYDREAMER to save 50% off your 1st purchase in the Scaling-With-Soul store.