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.
