Take that, suckers! (or how growing tomato plants relates to work/life balance)

I’m going to try to focus my writing here around topics related to coaching, themes and issues that I see play out in my work, that I want to link to things I see out there happening in life. Today’s topic - what do tomato plants have to do with work/life balance? I’ll tell you – it’s about trimming the suckers! 

For the first time ever, I’m growing tomato plants.  A friend who is a gardener took care of the early stages of the plants and then gave me 4 little tomato toddlers to grow. It’s been fun to look after them, water and feed them, make sure they’ve got what they need to thrive. I’ve had to take a few trips to the garden centre for different size stakes but generally they’ve just been doing their thing, growing in the heat we’ve been having in the UK.  

I’ve eaten a few ripe tomatoes off the plant which has been incredibly satisfying, and it still is this magical surprise to look at the plant and see that there continue to be new tomatoes bursting forth into life, almost every day.

One thing that I didn’t do, however, was to pay attention to the suckers.  Tomato plants grow in a pretty unbridled way, continuing to produce new shoots, known as “suckers”.  While there’s nothing inherently good or bad about suckers, one of the downsides is that they can take energy away from the tomato fruits in order to keep growing more shoots. Energy is then redirected away from the tomatoes and instead goes to producing more. Many gardeners trim the suckers so that the process is more focused and efficient.

What feels so relatable here is that as people we don’t have energy to do everything. For some portion of my life, I resisted believing that was true.  Instead, I ran myself into the ground by trying to be and do everything – an employee, a manager, a wife, a mother, a friend, a volunteer. Suckers were everywhere, and I wasn’t clear enough about my boundaries or accepting of my own limits in terms of time and energy.  The result was that I was perpetually exhausted, feeling like I was on a treadmill but one where the speed was turned up way too high for me to cope.  My own blend of this was around perfectionism – feeling that everything I did had to be 100% in order to be good enough; people pleasing – putting other people’s needs in front of my own in order to feel acceptance and approval; and seeing the bright side of everything without seeing the downsides – an unintended negative by-product of having a natural optimism and a glass-half-full spirit.

At some point, I had to ask myself, what’s important here? Where are there things sucking my time that really don’t matter?  Some of these questions helped me get an overall better balance where I’m more aware of my energy and my needs around rest and not being constantly on the go. Being more able to say no to requests of my time without feeling guilty.  Resisting the urge to volunteer when I’m not clear where I’d find the time to fit that activity in. 

My invitation for you is to get curious and consider where you have suckers in your life. Maybe it’s always saying yes to volunteer projects at work, that take a lot of time but don’t provide enjoyment or reward. Maybe it’s recognising that you’re doing activities that you used to once look forward to, and that now you dread.

What could you trim so that you’re focused on the best and most meaningful use of your energy?  

How can you water and nourish the parts of you that you want to flourish and thrive?

What might life be like without the suckers?

Focus on the lettuce!

Mantras can be great for getting us through tough times.  My new one – focus on the lettuce!

I’ve been watering my friend’s allotment for the last week while she’s away. It’s a duty I take with pride and happiness as I know how much hard work she puts into tending her plot, so I see it as a privilege and responsibility to look after something that she cares a lot about.  

At the moment, we’re also in the middle of another heatwave here in the UK; it’s officially now a drought, so my watering duties have extra weight.  Without the water, I’m not sure that these plants would survive.

Saturday morning I was up early to get to the allotment before the most intense heat. As I was going through the rounds – tomatoes, fennel, raspberries, chard, lettuce, beans, squash, kale, blackberries, blueberries, courgette, pumpkins – I happened to notice that the root to one of the pumpkins was looking very dry. Desiccated would probably be the more apt word. I paused, took a deep breath, and then investigated further. Had I actually been watering this at all, over the past few days? I wasn’t sure – evidence would indicate that the answer is no.  Panic flooded me. Oh my god, I’ve let the pumpkin die on my watch.  Breathe, Meg.

In times like these in my life, my thoughts can go all over the place; since the pandemic, it’s seemed to slant toward the negative.  Some of the thoughts that flashed through included:

• someone else would not have let this happen

• why did you not pay better attention?

• what have you been doing instead of keeping this pumpkin alive?

Really unhelpful, right? Words that would probably never cross my mind if the roles were reversed and someone was telling me this story.

Earlier this year I went to a mindful self-compassion retreat, which was all about trying to be more compassionate to ourselves and others.  This moment in the early-morning sun was a great chance for me to practice self-compassion, to balance out the unhelpful negative thoughts that could have kept me in a shame spiral. I was able to come up with:

• You’ve done a great job and given your own heart and time to help with the watering

• Your friendship is way stronger than this – she will not be upset and will likely be grateful for how you’ve helped her

• People make mistakes, and you’re not an expert at this gardening thing

• The consequences are not dire; this is not a pumpkin growing contest

• Look at what is thriving in this heat – focus on the lettuce! 

Did I feel a bit guilty that I had missed something?  Yes, yes, I did. 

Were my unhelpful judgemental thoughts changing anything, allowing me to do something about to bring about a different result? No, no they weren’t.  (Although I did spend the next few days pretty much flooding the pumpkin plants just in case it wasn’t a lost cause…)

Did it suck in that moment to realise that I’d been less than perfect? Yes. 

Could the messages I tell myself give me a little grace, care, and love when I felt down? Yes, they could.

Our brains are wired to pay attention to the negative stuff in the world that we should be worried about.  And of course, right now, there is plenty of that.  It’s a survival instinct, still going strong from the days when our ancestors had to ward off danger to stay alive. These days, many of the situations we find ourselves in are not really life-threatening, but our brains still perceive them this way.

In my case, I really didn’t like the idea of having to admit to my friend that I’d not gotten a perfect result from my caretaking of the allotment. But I knew that this situation was not a friendship dealbreaker and could relax a bit. Self-compassion helped me not get bogged down by the negative thinking that would have made the situation worse. Plus, when I looked around the whole allotment, there was so much that was thriving.  The lettuce, for one, was stunning – bright green, plump thick leaves.  Truly beautiful lettuce, seriously. If I were served that lettuce in a restaurant, I would be thrilled.  Next to it – rainbow chard, showing bright vibrant roots of red and yellow, shoots that hadn’t been as prominent a week ago. Fennel bulbs poking out of the ground, looking better than ones I’ve bought in the store, juicy blackberries, sturdy kale, big runner beans, radiant cherry tomatoes.  When I pulled back and took a big picture view, I could see that there were so many plants that were doing well. 

So for this week, my new mantra: focus on the lettuce!  When our brains pay attention to what’s gone wrong and what’s not working, it is really just the brain doing its job to keep us alive and safe. With a bit of self-compassion, and a mantra to go with it, I can remind myself that I am safe, I’m an imperfect human being who does make mistakes that I can learn from, and I can move on to spending my time and energy on action that makes a difference, rather than ruminating and obsessing in ways that don’t actually change the situation.

Where can you in your own life focus on the good?

What’s the equivalent of focusing on the lettuce in your life right now?

If you’d like to know more about how self-compassion can help you work toward a more balanced, less stressful life, drop me a line to schedule a free chat to learn how coaching can help.  I’d love for you to focus less on the pumpkins and more on the lettuce.

In the beginning...for the 3rd time

Restarting is not always easy. I love writing, and over the years I’ve had various blogs. Two, in fact: a page on blogspot before blogs were a thing, and my last website. Recently I decided to change my website and with a hasty click, much of that writing history disappeared from my screen. Fortunately I had most of it backed up; and if I think it’s worthwhile, I’ll publish some of the posts again here.

For now, I’m committing to writing for the joy of it. I hope that some of the posts will be useful to you, while at the same time being enjoyable for me to write.

If there’s one thing I know from the work I’ve done as a coach, it’s that people are more motivated when they’re doing something they enjoy. And I really enjoy writing.

So here I am, restarting again. I also know that each time we restart an activity - whether a hobby, or a passion, or a type of work - we’re not really starting from the beginning. Even if it can feel like starting from scratch, I have to remember that the me that is writing this blog post is not the same me who last wrote on my other website. I’ve grown, I’ve changed, I’ve had new ideas. I’ve not stayed still. So here’s to new beginnings, new pathways opening up, new doors being slightly nudged open. To new horizons and new adventures. To being here.