“. . .if you walk around with your nose in the air, you’re going to end up flat on your face. But if you’re content to be simply yourself, you will become more than yourself.” Luke 14
An architect looks at the condition of the soil, what things need to be removed, and what underground restrictions need to be considered in creating a design.
In our personal life, we might need to work through an ongoing anger problem that keeps us from achieving what we want. Just as an architect analyzes the conditions he is working with, so we too need to analyze what we are working with. What things need to be dealt with, acknowledged or addressed?
Garden analysis to life project
Just as an architect wants to know everything that could potentially impact the design he is creating, so we too want to gather as much information as possible.
What things are your ignoring or are unconscious liabilities that could compromise a new plan of action? For example, if you don’t believe you can, you won’t be able to.
Continue to gather as much information as possible.
In a real gravel pit, before a design is worked out, you will want to know the kind of soil you are working with. Is it clay, porous, sandy or loam. How stable are the edges. Is there an underground spring that could erode your work or alter your vision? Can it be used as a source for a small pond? Where would you like walkways or paths to be placed?
In using this same analysis for a life project, you might want to ask questions such as:
- What is the condition of my life right now?
- How stable am I emotionally and in my relationships?
- What preliminary work on knowing myself is needed before I can go further?
- What resources do I have to work with? This includes support as well as finances.
- What difficulty can be turned into an asset? Example: You may have difficulties in your relationship: what can you learn about yourself that could turn things around? Maybe it is working with that child or teen who is struggling and together finding solutions. Maybe it is simply acceptance of where you are at this moment and moving up from there.
Gathering information
Continuing from Step Two, you now want to identify those things that are complicating your life currently, such as ongoing relationship or marriage problems, ongoing self esteem issues, being in constant defend/attack mode unable to articulate your wants and needs. Perhaps it is discontentment with your job, difficulty communicating, always thinking the worst without balancing it with the possible.
What we bring to our lives today from our past can be like underground springs or hidden deep rocks in the soil. We need to find a way to resolve them before creating that new design.
Here are some things that can sabotage your efforts to accomplishment.
- What labels do you continue to use that were put in place growing up and are not true?
- What do you say to yourself whenever anything isn’t working? Are these negative thoughts from your past? Can you challenge them?
- What do you say to yourself when things are working? Do you sabotage your efforts by downplaying your abilities and accomplishments? An honest appraisal is not bragging. When we brag, it is because we are uncertain of ourselves and have the need to be better than someone else.
- What does your internal critic say to you about you? Operating from the past, we look at problems today from what happened in the past. If our analysis of problems today is based on the facts in the present, we will be able to find solutions.
- What resentments and grievances do we continue to revisit keeping us from thinking in more positive constructive ways?
Not addressing these things can result in a landscape design for your life that will be less than what you want.
Marlene Anderson
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