What's Growing in Your Mind?

Last week I encouraged you to consider that we see what we look for, and to therefore begin shifting how you look at things in order to find the good and the growth opportunities that we often tend to overlook, namely in challenges and disappointments.

In that vein, I propose a powerful shift in perspective about something that may initially seem small but is in fact immeasurable in its impact on your life. It is about your thoughts. In fact, it is about each thought that enters your mind.

Thoughts are seeds and your mind is a garden. Just as with any seed, each thought bears fruit; it produces something larger than it first appears. As seeds - thoughts - take root in our minds, they grow. They bear fruit. They spread out larger and larger, encompassing more and more space in our minds. And as is true of seeds, the fruit of our thoughts may be helpful or harmful; it may be beautiful or it may be ugly; it may bless us and those around us with life and sustenance, or it may curse us and those around us with death and depravity.

The beautiful, powerful, amazing thing is you get to choose what kind of seeds take root in your minds, and those choices will have a direct impact on what fruit your mind, and therefore your life, bears.

It begins by paying attention to the seeds. It begins by paying attention to the thoughts in your mind and identifying what kind of fruit they produce. Does the thought bear the mark of gratitude or discontentment? Does the thought communicate love, both to yourself and to those around you, or does it communicate judgment and condemnation? Does the thought ring with grace to get back up and try again or shame to give up and admit defeat?

These evaluations of your thoughts are so vital because by doing so you exercise deliberate, intentional control over what you allow to grow in your minds. You have the power to cultivate a mind of gratitude, joy, contentment, courage, and strength. But it will not happen accidentally. It begins by tending to the garden of your mind. It begins by deciding what fruit you want to grow there, and then weeding out everything that does not bear that fruit. It begins by realizing you have a choice in what you allow to fill your mind, and you have the power to refuse entry to anything that counter that.

So I invite you to begin today.

Starting even now, begin to exert that beautiful ability to choose what grows in your mind.

As you do, the fruit of your life will begin to change, one seed at a time.

Happy gardening!