Welcome to day 6 of the 9:09 is Nurture Time challenge!
Every circumstance can be used as fertilizer for growth.
Yesterday we focused on the idea that you deserve to spend time filling up yourself with love and taking time to regenerate yourself.
We’re going to move on to step 3 of our nurturing as gardening metaphor and it’s a doozy. Here it is: Manure is fertilizer.
In gardening, before you plant anything, you add manure, compost or mulch to the soil to increase the nutrients and add to its richness. In a literal sense, manure is fodder for growth.
And it’s true in a figurative sense, too, which can feel kind of, well, crappy. Rodney Atkins has a song that goes
“If you’re goin’ through hell, keep on going
Don’t slow down – if you’re scared don’t show it
You might get out before the devil even knows you’re there”
-If You’re Going Through Hell, songwriters Sam Tate, Annie Tate, Dave Berg
I really like the song and sometimes I’ve tried to take his advice. But, I’ve learned that speeding through tough times without slowing down to let it all sink in doesn’t really work. Instead I just end up repeating the lesson until I learn it. I’ve learned to pause and ask a couple of questions, the first of which is, “What am I feeling?”
When we don’t stop to feel the feelings, they can end up as stress in the body – knots in the neck, ulcers, heart problems and more. It also tends to add stress to relationships, keeps you up at night or could cause you to adopt coping behaviors that could even become addictive.
Surprisingly, when I slow down and feel, it’s amazing how the yucky part of the feelings just float away – anger, resentment, hostility, sadness – they get released. Even if the circumstances don’t change overnight, my attitude does and it becomes much easier to find the beauty in the middle of the manure.