Pullin' Weeds and Pickin' Stones

Traveling to Virginia and Ohio this past week, I escaped the smoky Boise desert and landed in the sticky humidity of the East. Both places feel like home, even if they could not be more different.

In Virginia, I rented a 1930s cottage for a college visit with my daughter. Excited to find a desk by a sunlit back door to work at, I opened the curtains and saw a nice patio and a huge backyard - chock full of weeds. I immediately recognized those weeds. We'd fought that same battle in both of our Virginia houses. When we mowed, we didn't even call it mowing the grass, it was "mowing the weeds." By August, the weeds were the only thing still green.

Looking at the weeds, I knew it was a losing battle, one we'd spent nearly a decade fighting. The singer Jack Johnson, in "Home," describes it perfectly:

Get out my machete and battle with time once again

But I'm 'bout to lose 'cause I'll be damned if time don't win

After Virginia, I flew on to Ohio for some training and to visit a dear friend, Meredith. Meredith is a masterful gardener and naturalist and has, no surprise, grown a beautiful, productive, and weed-free garden in the last year. She shared how she can lose herself in her garden and it becomes her place of respite and meditation. She'll wander down some days at lunchtime, pick her salad fresh off the vines and out of the ground, and enjoy something she nurtured and grew. Her garden is not immune to bugs, she just patiently rehomes the nonproductive ones (and celebrates the monarch butterflies). She pulls the weeds and waters the plants, knowing time and attention to the right things will help it grow. Her attention reminds me of the words of another singer, John Denver:

Pullin' weeds and pickin' stones

Man is made of dreams and bone

The monarchs agree – the right attention works. (Photo by S. Carrington)

The contrast between the two yards – Virginia and Ohio, in similar summer climates – is stark, but not at all surprising. We know that paying attention to something with a loving hand is the key to it growing strong and resilient. We know that a healthy yard or garden is both nurture and battle. We know that we must pull weeds, pick stones, provide water, nutrients, shade and sun for something to grow. We know that the machete approach to clearing weeds is short-lived because we don't get the root. We know that it's a full, healthy lawn that creates a barrier to the weeds.

We know. Yet still, we don't cultivate what we want – and we keep reaching for the machete for what we don't.

This isn't just about our yards, of course. We do the same in our lives.

Whether as a leader, a parent, or for yourself, exclusive extremes don't produce lasting change. It must be both.

And the ratio makes a difference.

Our brains are incredibly good at finding the stones, weeds, bugs, and disease of our lives. It's our threat detection survival mechanism. It's powerful. Estimates are that this ability is three times as strong as finding the good. We rarely have to work at this. We just notice it. Because it's so effortless, it begins to create the impression that it's all weeds, bugs, and disease. So what do we do then? We bring out the machete. Chop it all down. Only to "battle with time once again." It's a vicious cycle that can lead us to a life dominated by negative emotions like anxiety, aggression, and anger.

A better way is to notice the good. We need to notice three times as much good to balance that out. In relationships, that ratio needs to be five to one.

Yes, you must do both. You need to tend to the weeds. We're not immune to them, nor should we be. Negative emotions are like the keel on a sailboat; they keep you upright. But they need to be honored in the proper proportion to the good we notice and nurture.

Taking a machete to everything destroys the bad and the good.

Three Ways to Nurture Good in Your Life

Here is what that looks like in practice.

1. Yourself. Every night, write down three good things from your day. Once a day, tell three people something you appreciate about them. Write three letters of gratitude to people who have made a difference in your life and thank them for it.

I write in my gratitude journal nightly and it is transformative. It goes with me on every trip, it's that important to me.

2. Your loved ones. Start a dinner or evening tradition where you each share three good things that happened in your day. Amp it up to BE a good thing for three people during the day and share about that.

We started doing this at dinner years ago and the girls' perspectives shifted from all that was wrong to also seeing what was good. Finding ways to be a good thing helped them see their impact on the world.

3. Those you lead. Start conversations by sharing what you have observed them do well and what you see strong in them. Ask them what they think their strengths are and find ways to use those for their challenges. Resist the temptation to limit sharing their good to only during a "good-bad-good" feedback sandwich. Share it often.

An impactful way to start a meeting is to have each person share something good someone else did since you last met.

When you nurture yourself and those around you, not avoiding but appropriately attending to the negatives, things change. The weeds stop winning.

Meredith doesn't prune her garden with a machete. She transforms it with attention, day after day, to the good that was already growing.

You can do the same.

Home is wherever we are if there's love here too. (Thanks, Jack)

Build the life you're working for.

— Sarah

P.S. This week on the Future Walk Podcast, I talk about "Better" and how it doesn't happen by accident, it happens with intention. Check it out here: The Future Walk Podcast | Linktree and Better.