“I am called to live the abundant life not the exhausted life. I am planted to thrive not to survive!” ~ Jaachynma Agu
After many rainstorms this spring my yard is a riot of flowers. The hillsides throughout Southern California are covered in an abundance of blossoms and new growth, and the desert is almost unrecognizable with a super bloom of flowers and Pink Lady Butterflies. Hiking in the Anza-Borrego Desert recently I was blessed to witness the Pink Lady migration and experience the magic of thousands of butterflies swirling around me like the wind. It was an awe–inspiring experience that highlighted what thriving looks like and encouraged me to explore how we can nurture and empower ourselves to blossom, grow, and thrive.
As Arianna Huffington reminds us “We take better care of our smartphones than ourselves. We know when the battery is depleted and recharge it. We need to do the same for ourselves.” But what if we did not wait until our battery was depleted? What if instead of buying into the myth that we must give until we are exhausted, we chose to cultivate a thriving life full of abundance? Imagine our cups being so full that we give from our saucers.
So how can we live from this place of abundance and thriving?
To begin we need to identify what thriving looks like for each of us. When I asked the audience during my keynote speech at a women’s retreat earlier this month, I heard many responses including taking time for myself, listening to my own needs and desires, having enough energy to share generously with others, learning new things, traveling, attending more retreats, being out in nature, enjoying time with family and friends, being vibrantly healthy, feeling purposeful, making a difference, and leaving a legacy.
What does thriving look like for you?
Once you identify what thriving looks like you can begin to cultivate your thriving life like a gardener lovingly cultivates their garden. This place of abundance and possibility requires intentional loving care and consistent nurturing to increase your capacity to receive more love, compassion, kindness, peace, and joy than you ever imagined was possible. In this process, you will not be expected to do anything perfectly but rather to give yourself permission to show up authentically in your life and cultivate your self-nurturing practice. Without unrealistic expectations, thriving will feel joyful, rather than one more thing on your “to do” list.
Can you imagine how healing it would be to include yourself on your own “to do” list and release feeling guilty or selfish when you take time to care for yourself
As you embark on cultivating your thriving life, I offer you the metaphor of gardening to support you in planting seeds of self-nurturing to blossom, grow, and thrive. I love how nature always provides us the most empowering examples of healing and wholeness and a place to witness the natural process of growth and abundance to apply to our lives. Being the gardener of your own thriving life requires regular sunshine, water, fertilizer, weeding, and good companion plants.
To apply this metaphor to your self-nurturing practice, reflect on the following questions:
- What is the sunshine to your thriving life?
What activities do you need to engage in every single day to feel centered and grounded? What self-nurturing practices give you energy, vibrancy, and encouragement? Perhaps your sunshine is meditation, walking in nature, spending time with family and friends, inspiring reading, setting intention, praying, eating nourishing food, drinking enough water, dancing, singing, listening to music, journaling, or affirmations. What ever those self-nurturing practices are, identify them and commit to including them in your day.
- What is your water?
What do you need to do a few times a week to feel nourished and refreshed? What are those restorative activities that help you feel like your thirst is quenched? Perhaps it is exercise, hiking, taking a class, listening to a podcast, watching a TEDx talk, getting together with a friend, practicing yoga, playing music, or being creative. As Pamela Metz and Jacqueline Tobin remind us in their poem Containers, “She contains that which nourished the world. Pouring freely, the wise women first quenches her own thirst.”
- What is your fertilizer?
What activity do you engage in only once a month or every few months that deeply rejuvenates you and encourages your growth? This will be different for each of us and may require more investment of time or money. Some ideas include receiving a massage or a facial, attending a concert, participating in a retreat, traveling, exploring a new area, attending a conference, or taking a day off.
- What needs to be weeded in your life?
What is no longer serving you that needs to be weeded out of your life in order for you to thrive? What have you allowed to sprout in your garden because you were too overwhelmed and exhausted to weed it out. These weeds may come in the form of responsibilities, commitments, beliefs, thoughts, paradigms, or unsupportive people. Recognizing what needs to be weeded is critical to making space in your life for health and vibrancy and letting them go is a powerful act of self-love and self-nurturing.
- What good companion plants do you need to include in your garden?
Cultivating a supportive community is vital to thriving. Choose to include people in your life that support and encourage you to blossom, grow, and thrive! Remember our growth is amplified when we spend time with other committed gardeners.
We have the ability to nurture ourselves to cultivate fertile ground for our growth and thriving!
Today choose to give yourself permission to listen to yourself. Follow your heart and make nurturing choices. Allow yourself to feel nurtured by every activity you choose and plant the seeds for more self-nurturing practices to include in your thriving life. Explore more ways to cultivate peace and joy so that your cup overflows into your saucer and that is where you give from.
We all have the capacity to be gardeners of our own thriving lives and create ripples of peace, love, and meaning in the world. We cannot be truly loving, compassionate or generous with others if we are not that way with ourselves first. True self-nurturing enhances our presence in the world by allowing us to give from a filled-up place. Selfishness arises from scarcity. When we are nurturing and caring deeply for ourselves we have the capacity to shine our love and light generously in the world.
Become the gardener of your own thriving life and nurture peace in the world from the inside out!
Peace, love and gratitude, Kelley
