I have a confession to make…
I hate gardening.
OK, maybe hate is too strong of a word.
I dislike gardening. A LOT.
You see I’m a finicky Virgo, and I can’t stand getting my hands dirty.
Totally creeps me out.
Always has.
Not to mention I’m afraid of bugs!
Especially spiders!
(I once jumped out of a moving vehicle when I discovered one crawling on my head!)
But here’s the problem with my gardening aversion…
I live in a ground floor condo.
With an outdoor patio AND….you guessed it…a small garden!
And because I work from home I spend a lot of time out there. (I’m currently sitting on my patio as I type this.)
So every spring I try to show my garden some love. 💚
I plant a few perennials, hoping they’ll bloom again next year!
(Side note: it took me years to figure out the difference between “perennials” and “annuals”! I can’t be the only one that thinks annuals bloom annually?! But I digress…)
This year though, things with my garden got waaay out of hand.
Spring arrived late. And by the time it did my garden was a huge mess!
At first I was like “ooooh look at all those pretty yellow buttercups.”
(The kind, as kids, we used to hold up to our chins to see if we liked butter. For the record, my chin always glowed a bright sunny yellow…hellooooo yummy butter!)
But then I realized I hadn’t planted those buttercups.
And where exactly were my roses hiding?
I quickly took this photo and sent it to my big sis (my gardening guru).
She confirmed my worst nightmare…
Those pretty little flowers were (gasp) WEEDS!!
And they needed to come out…IF I was gonna save my garden.
I nearly cried.
How was I, the anti-gardener, going to remove ALL those weeds?
Should I just leave them? And let them do their thing?
Should I pay someone else to remove them? And if so, who?
Should I move my roses to another part of my garden? And hope for the best?
I couldn’t decide.
So I did nothing. (#procrastinatorsunite)
Then one morning, as I sat outside sipping my coffee, staring those little garden-destroyers down, the decision was made for me…
I picked up my small, slightly rusty garden shovel (called a trowel…I just googled it 😉) and dug up ONE little weed.
Oooh…success!
So I dug up ONE more.
And then another.
Before I knew it, a few hours (plus several blisters, bruises, and scratches) later ALL the weeds in my garden were gone!
Voila!
I was soooo darn proud of myself!
And it got me thinking…
Just when we believe we can’t do something, maybe we actually CAN!
(Aka: don’t underestimate yourself!)
If you have the desire to do something big (or bigger than you think you’re capable of) but you’ve been putting it off, why not use the lesson I learned from my garden. And try this:
🪴 Envision your goal (in my case a weedless garden).
🪴 Take one (tiny) step forward.
🪴 Keep on going.
And before you know it you’ll have reached your destination.
Because, when we put our minds to it, like Glennon Doyle says: “we can do hard things.”
And she’s right! We can!
If anyone had told me I would dig up all those garden weeds myself, I would’ve laughed in their face and said:
“Who me? The anti-gardener? I don’t think so!” 🤣
But yet, I did *all that*!
MEEEE!
Because I can do hard things!
Which felt very empowering.
So what about you?
What’s one thing (project, task, idea) you’ve been putting off because you’ve been telling yourself you CAN’T do it?
Why not switch it up? And try telling yourself: “I can do hard things!”
(Cuz you CAN!)
Take one tiny step forward and see what happens?
You might be surprised at how far you get!
(and even better, how good you feel for trying!)
Here’s to building your I CAN DO HARD THINGS muscle, one small weed step at a time,
Kerry xo