Personal Development and a Healthy Garden
I am an avid gardener. My
garden is my place for thinking, peace and reflection. In short, my garden is
my therapy. In the process of gardening, I have learned many lessons. One of
the most important is this: things grow whether you want them to or not. Growth
is part of the natural plan. Once something stops growing, it dies. But here is
the catch: if you leave things alone, they will soon be out of control. Weeds grow
as well as flowers and plants. If a garden is not well tended it will become
unattractive and useless, and that which is good and lovely will
be the first things to die
out.
If we are to have a lovely
garden with healthy flowers and plants, we must tend to do. A lovely garden
does not just happen: it takes deliberate work and a willingness to keep it
throughout the entire season. If we stop or neglect our gardens even for a
short time, weeds come in and
take over. So it is with our
lives. The flowers of life are called character. Character, like flowers, grows
in all of us. However, as you find in the garden, you have flowers and weeds
all growing in the same plot.
The weeds of life are
qualities like dishonesty, immorality, disloyalty, anger, hate and violence to
name a few. Like weeds, the types are almost endless. And also like weeds, if
we do not deliberately work to control them, these negative qualities will
creep in and, before you know it, take over.
Good character, on the other
hand, is something that demands to be cultivated, cared for and protected. If
cared for, good character qualities will flourish and grow; if not, they will
be overtaken and die out. Good character, which is the basis of personal growth,
is a deliberate and thoughtful act.
Many people are under the
illusion that we are all basically good, and that if we just do what we feel
then we will be okay and become “good people”. Here is the reality: I hope this
will not shock you, but humans are basically selfish and self-centered, and if
left to their own devices will do wrong long before they do right. How do you
think the world has always been in the mess we are in?
Don’t think that I have a low
opinion of the human race, I do not. I just know that a short study of history
will show you that it is not uncommon for people to do wrong; it is more
uncommon for them to do right. People seldom make a decision to do wrong, but
they always have to make a decision to do right. Wrong comes naturally, but
right takes purposeful action to happen. So is there any hope for us to ever be
better? Is mankind doomed to always fail and to do wrong? Not at all. The point
I am trying to make is that you need to choose to be a better person. That is a
wonderful thing. When we have the power of choice we have the greatest power in
all the universe. You are not a slave to a lower nature: you have the power to
become the very best you can be. The emanate psychologist and holocaust survivor
Viktor Frankl put it his way, “Between stimulus and response there is a space.
In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our
growth and our freedom.”
To discover how you can achieve the dream you have believed was impossible
for too long, read Getting Personal:
A Guide to Personal Development by John Patrick Hickey. You can get a signed copy for yourself and
get one for a friend, by going to http://www.johnpatrickhickey.com/it-is-good-to-set-goals-better-to-achieve-then/. Now available on Kindle, Oops! Did I Really Post That? Online
Etiquette in the Digital Age by John Patrick Hickey.
© 2016 John Patrick Hickey. No part of
this may be reprinted or published without permission of the author.
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