Friday Food for Thought: How to Cultivate a Better Life

All that we are is the result of what we have thought. The mind is everything. What we think we become.

~ Prince Gautama Siddharta, founder of Buddhism, 563-483 B.C.

For those who missed the first edition of Friday Food for Thought, this is a periodic series of posts in which I write about an article that I’ve recently read and found to be thought provoking. Today’s article comes from The Online Investing AI Blog. It was entitled The Financial Secrets of an Abundant Mind, and I really liked the gardening metaphor the author referenced throughout the post.

Like the author, I’m no gardener. I love to look at gardens and enjoy the colours, but I don’t like to touch dirt, I have a mortal phobia of bugs, and I’m allergic to a lot of stuff. Still, it’s springtime and my tulips are blooming and that has brought gardening to mind.

A Gardening Guide for Your Finances & Your Life

My recent article on Your Life Balance Sheet outlined 4 parts of life in which we can strive for balance and which contribute to the overall sense of balance in our lives. The 4th quadrant was psychological fitness. I think the gardening metaphor fits best in this quadrant. Our perceptions can have a profound effect on the quality of our existence.

Here are a few basic gardening principles that can help you cultivate a higher quality of life:

1. Plan Before You Act: Whether you’re looking at your budget, your garden, your marriage, or your diet, a little time spent thinking about what you’re looking to achieve can go a long way. If you aren’t careful which seeds you plant, you might end up with weeds, or a vegetable you don’t like. If you plant something that can’t grow under your native conditions, you’ll end up with nothing. Likewise, if you set goals that don’t reflect your values, or are not realistically achievable, you will be disappointed with the results.

2. Cultivate with Balance: Too much water, sun, tampering, or fertilizer can compromise even the heartiest plant. A healthy balance sheet and a healthy life are no different. All good things must be employed in moderation. Keep your spending under control, but don’t forget to leave a little room for fun.

3. Pull Weeds Regularly: Psychologically, weeds are limiting thoughts, or what Warren & Tyagi called “negative thinking traps“. These are thoughts that keep us from getting out of a rut and moving to improve our lives. When our psychological garden is full of these weeds, new, positive, productive thoughts and habits can’t grow.

A Healthy 4th Quadrant Is the Best Weed Whacker

A landscaper once told us that the best way to keep weeds out of your lawn is to have thick, healthy grass that won’t allow the weeds to take root and grow. Thought patterns, even unhealthy ones, can begin to feel very comfortable after a while. The longer we hold onto them, the more difficult it can be to recognize the choking effects they’re having on our lives. At these times, it’s useful to have a fellow gardener on the path with you to act as a second set of eyes and to point out the weeds you didn’t see.

As the Financial Secrets of an Abundant Mind article pointed out, it’s really important to pull those weeds from the root if you don’t want them to return. Similarly, if you spend 2 hours analyzing your spending to set up a budget but make no effort to improve your spending habits, your budget is just a piece of paper. It won’t help your balance sheet at all.

If you are having recurring difficulties with your finances, health, or relationships, you can often look to that 4th quadrant (psychology) for the root cause. For those who have tried in vain for years to lose weight, it’s probably not about the food. Likewise, for those with perpetual financial problems it’s not about the money. Often, these folks are substituting food or money for other things that they lack, think they lack, or feel like they don’t deserve.

In order to get rid of these harmful weeds once and for all, we need to figure out what the root cause might be. Does buying expensive new clothing or gadgets make you feel better about yourself? Why don’t you feel good about yourself in the first place? If you can identify the real causes of the behaviours that cause your life to shift out of balance, you can address them head on rather than placating yourself with temporary fixes that will only harm you in the long run.

Once you have cleared the weeds, you may be really surprised at what begins to sprout. New perspectives, new habits, and a new attitude can’t help but foster a new life. You might even wonder what took you so long to pull that first weed!

Do you have any negative thinking traps to overcome? If you’ve already turned them around, how did you do it?