I’ve been spending a lot of time in the garden recently. I never thought I’d be someone who enjoys gardening, especially since I suffer from seasonal allergies, yet here I am 😉 Over the last 2 weeks or so, I’ve been notices small trees popping up in our backyard. I decided to attack them this weekend and discovered that they’re sprouting up from the roots of a tree that was cut down before we moved to the house last year!
I know… Yes, another blog post inspired by my adventures in gardening, but bear with me. This whole tree root takeover of our backyard made me think about the beliefs we hold onto, even when they stop serving us. Sometimes we have no idea how deep rooted those beliefs are, or what can crop up due to not uprooting those beliefs. If we don’t do the work and get rid of them at their root, we don’t make room to replace them with something that can promote growth of something new.
I feel like I’ve done a lot of work on myself. I’ve developed self esteem and self confidence to a level I never imagined, yet there are still moments where I revert back to that old mindset. As much as I know that other people’s opinions of me are none of my business, there are times when I still care way too much. I feel like the longer you’ve held on to a certain mindset, or the earlier it was cultivated, the harder it is to let go of it.
Just because it’s hard, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t still try though does it? Let’s say we get a professional to take a look at our backyard situation and we’re told we have to pull up the grass and cut out the roots to solve our mini-tree problem. Not the most convenient option is it? Who knows how long it would take and it might put a cramp on our summer barbecue fun, but it’s a long term solution to the problem. I could just continue to make small holes in the lawn as I try to pick out the trees as they pop up, but that solution has no end, unless we move.
Sometimes the work we need to do to get to the root of a problem means hiring an expert. Whether that means seeing a therapist or having an honest talk with someone that you’ve been putting off for a while, it needs to be done. When we don’t deal with the root cause of a problem, we leave it to fester and pop up in areas that we never expected.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned from my own experiences, it’s that waiting to deal with an issue often costs you more than it would have if we had dealt with it as soon as we became aware of the problem. It may not be a joyful journey, but it’s going to be a lot bumpier and a lot more exhausting the longer we wait! We might as well start the work now, so we can enjoy the future with less worry.