How to cultivate your inner garden
If there’s one thing you need to know about me, I am a bit of a hippie. There is nothing I love more than spending time in nature. My current favourite is taking the time to gaze at the sea, just looking at the rhythm of the water, and taking in the sights, sounds and smells. Over these past couple of stormy days, nature’s power has astounded me.
I have observed how much nature reflects back into our lives. In nature, there are rhythms, cycles and seasons. For example, trees shed their leaves, and after a few months, they bloom again. You can easily compare it to life and how we navigate its different seasons.
Over the years, I find that scheduling time for nature every day has helped me become more creative, collaborative with others and, most importantly, have improved my mental health significantly.
So I want to ask: How have you been looking after your mental health? What rituals or exercises are you doing to nourish and cultivate your mind?
If you’re stuck on how to get started on nourishing yourself again (especially if you’ve been into “hustling” since the beginning of the year), I will give a book recommendation that can help you with this!
The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari by Robin S. Sharma is a book I highly recommend if you want a practical take on what you can do to cultivate greater peace of mind. A bit of background: it’s about the story of a litigator who has a heart attack, and he realised he has been living his life in a very tumultuous way. He went to India, met with some sages, and had a real experiential journey about cultivating his inner resilience, the strength of his mind and finding purpose. He went back home to share his wisdom with his intern.
One of the earlier points he made in the book is that you need to master your mind before you can do anything. This goes back to my daily routine of using nature to cultivate your inner garden.
He suggests quite a few ways to do this:
One of the techniques is the heart of the rose. It means taking a few moments to gaze at the beauty of a particular object in nature. So in those moments, spend your time analysing it, taking it in, breathing deeply and absorbing the beauty in that object.
A head full of fears cannot cultivate anything rich, so by doing this exercise, you can just allow your worries and your fears, which often cloud your mind, to fade away and stop you from being creative and collaborative. This process is all about melting away the words in your head by being soaked in the beauty of nature.
If your mind wanders off, that’s totally fine! However, you can bring it right back by focusing on the roots.
You don’t have to do this one particular exercise; you can also:
Go for a walk alone (without listening to music or podcast)
Go for a walk with a friend
Walk peacefully with a hot cup of tea or coffee
The only key thing is to focus on beauty, even if it is just a blade of grass, hedge, or a tree. You can start doing this for five minutes every day and work your way up to twenty minutes. Each time you do this exercise, you are cultivating beauty, knowledge and awareness, and through that, you will find peace.
It doesn’t matter when you choose to fit this exercise into your day. You can do it in the morning, afternoon or evening, but I guarantee you’ll feel replenished to come back to focus on your work and relationships and invite calm.
I think the pandemic has definitely given us a new way of being that is less about leading a sedentary life and more about getting out and cultivating connection with friends in nature. Last year in Mental Health Awareness Week, I remember when I had a few talks with companies and observed how they’re weaving in hybrid working, environmental spaces, taking meetings into different formats to have their people feel closer to nature.
I am never one for quick fixes. So no matter what ritual you want to add to improve your wellbeing, make sure you don’t add it as just a one-time thing and forget about it the next day. If you want to cultivate more healthy routines and rituals like this, I highly recommend joining us on this month’s masterclass, The Signature Rituals and Routines for Success.
It’s created for managers and leaders who want to get the roadmap of the exact rituals and mastery they need to help them optimise their productivity and supercharge their Changemaker magic.
Does that sound like you?