I’ve spent a lot of my free time this past 5 months growing sunflowers in my backyard. It was something I was so excited about. I grew them from seedlings, planted and protected, watched over and sang to them. (The neighbors really enjoy watching me sing to my plants!) I felt like the sunflowers were my babies. In the past week or so, my daughter and brother-in-law shared photos of the sunflowers they had been growing. My brother-in-law has this huge field of sunflowers, my daughter grew hers up against the fence in her front yard. They are so tall and beautiful.
ME AND MY SUNFLOWERS ARE FAILURES
Suddenly, my sunflowers didn’t look so wonderful anymore. They fall over and break (thanks squirrels!), the Maya variety bloomed early and died back before everything else could bloom. They aren’t thick and bushy like my daughters. For a few days I was upset that “everyone” else had the secret to the “right” kind of sunflowers. I must have missed something when I was planning them. Perhaps I didn’t plant them the right way. When I went outside, I didn’t see how beautiful they were, I only saw what they were lacking.
ME AND MY LIFE ARE FAILURES
Is this ever a story that you see pop up in your life? Do you look around and feel vaguely dissatisfied with yourself or your life? Did everyone else’s kids serve missions and get married in the temple, while yours made different choices? Perhaps your home isn’t as big or beautifully decorated as your friends and neighbors’ houses? Maybe it’s your health. You’ve got auto-immune illnesses and your sister-in-law runs marathons. Do you ever find yourself comparing your life to others and coming up short?
THIS IS JUST YOUR BRAIN TWISTING REALITY
This concept may be new to you, but these are all just stories that our brains offer us. But guess what? We don’t have to believe or accept them!
JOY ON A SCALE OF 1 TO 10
My life coach recently gave me an assignment to make a spreadsheet of my daily activities, and then rank them each on a scale from 1-10, with one being things that I loathed doing and that drained me, and ten being things that really lit me up and made me feel energetic and enthusiastic. She called it the Joy scale – 1 is no Joy and 10 is full Joy.
After a few days, I observed some interesting things:
- I became very thoughtful about assigning numbers to my activities.
I didn’t want to be miserable, so I examined each activity looking for ways that I could improve its score. - I started looking for 10’s and trying to collect more of them every day.
- I looked for ways to improve my average score for the day.
- If I had an activity that I didn’t like, I would try to find ways that I could turn the activity from a 4 to a 6. What would I have to do to bring these activity scores up?
MIND LENSES CAN BE LIARS
I discovered that everything in my life is filtered through my “mind’s lenses” and when my lenses are focused on what everyone else has, that is better than what I have – I don’t like myself or my life as well.
I CAN BE TAUGHT
Oh, by the way, I’ve forgiven myself and my sunflowers, and there was never really anything wrong with them – or me. I am back telling them how beautiful, strong, and amazing they are everyday. They like that – I can tell.
I CAN HELP YOU CLEAR YOUR MIND LENSES
Mind lens cleaning is just one of the things we will learn in Becoming a Whole-Hearted Woman small group coaching. We will practice looking at ourselves with loving lenses. In fact, the entire program is based on love as outlined in the three Great Commandments, loving God, loving ourselves, and loving others.
If you have any questions about this post, or want to discuss how coaching can work in your life please setup and time and Let’s Talk.
