Gardening Habit #1: Slow and Steady Change
The clocks have sprung forward and we are rapidly approaching the spring solstice. Longer days, warmer weather, and new life is on the horizon after a very difficult fall and winter season. This time of year always makes me want to do two things: make major life changes, and garden. For years, I thought these were two separate things. Recently, however, I was standing over my half-dead winter garden thinking of all the moving parts in my life and realized: the only way to really change is to start thinking like a gardener. I have stretched this metaphor to fit so many things in my life, but for the sake of this blog, I will narrow my focus to one core reason that thinking like a gardener will create realistic, lasting, and sustainable change. Each post this month will include a “Gardening Habit of Change” to help guide us into this seasonal shift.
Gardening Habit #1: Don’t expect immediate results.
One thing you quickly come to understand in gardening is that nothing happens overnight. You can plan out a beautiful garden, buy the best seeds, the best soil, and the fanciest garden beds. The whole weekend can be spent outside in the dirt and come Monday, you will still not have a garden. In fact, you won’t have a garden for months no matter how hard you try. And yet, we carry on with this practice because we don’t expect immediate results. We know this is a slow process and get hooked on the smallest changes, the first shoots popping out of the soil, the first tiny buds emerging.
Gardeners are aggressively patient and it is often a real point of pride. If I ever bring a fellow gardener to my house to show what I am growing, without fail they will ask “did you grow that from seed?” (In other words “did you actually grow it, or just plant it.”) Shortcuts in gardening creates imbalance in the soil and, while it may lead to fast results (think Miracle Gro) our plants and health can suffer in the long term. Any change mirrors this pattern. Following “hacks” or “secrets” to anything—weight loss, success, love, beauty—is almost always a scam. The same dynamic can apply if you just pick up a plant in a garden center, dig a hole, and stick it in. In the short term, it will seem like change has been made. With a little more time, however, the plant may start to shrivel as it struggles to adjust to the shocking new environment it was plunged into.
Change takes time and is best pursued via small steps. Imagine each change you want to make as small individual actions in the garden of your life. Want to get healthy? Each time you cut out processed food, go on a walk, or reduce sugar intake, you are planting the seeds. The changes you make today won’t mean much tomorrow—you will just be sore, tired, and craving a brownie. Yet over the course of a month tending to this behavior, little by little, you will start to see small shoots of change poke their way out of the soil. Change is nourished by small daily habits and a great deal of gardener-like patience.
