It helps practice acceptance
Suffering for most people is caused when they try to control things they can’t. When you can accept the limits of your control and how unpredictable life is, then the more peace you are going to experience. Gardening is a good way of practicing. Nature is always reminding people that it is in control. Adopting this mindset is going to work pretty well for you.
My own garden taught me to practice acceptance when I planted baby lettuces for the first time. The lettuce was ready for harvest. I wanted to use that time to spend time with my family in the garden, but when my young children wanted to help. I was not that enthusiastic. What if they messed up the garden that I have invested a lot of time and effort into? What if they break the stem of the lettuce instead of the leaf?
I was able to get over that, thankfully, and I was okay with them coming into the garden even if there was a possibility of breaking things. Having a perfect garden isn’t the best of ideas because it becomes a lonely place.
Accepting doesn’t mean giving up. You should be bringing your best efforts to things that are within your control and letting go of the rest. When you are gardening, it means preparing for the best environment possible for your plants. You are then going to leave nature to handle the risk. The garden is going to feel like it isn’t in your hands but in bigger hands. And if you need help with garden maintenance, you can check out Pristine Gardens.
Move beyond perfectionism
If you are one of those people who focus too much on perfectionism, then you know it comes with some costs. You can end up frustrated by trying to have things perfect. You can easily miss opportunities and deadlines. There is also the risk of strained relationships. You can easily end up not doing a lot of things because you keep worrying about whether it will turn out perfect.
Gardening is a good antidote for perfectionism because you don’t have much control over it. No matter how much you plan and execute, there are many unpredictable factors that will come into play – like inclement weather, invasion by bugs, or hungry rodents. There is a lot that is out of your control when gardening, you just have to sit back and let nature take its course. The best you can do is put in the work and the rest follows.
Gardening is going to help in neutralizing your perfectionism. When you focus on perfectionism, you are wasting your time. if you try to do it when you are gardening, you will feel helpless because most of the factors are going to be out of your control.
Develop a growth mindset
You should be happy because of your inability to garden perfectly. Experts have come up with a distinction between growth and fixed mindsets, and gardening is a good way of developing the former. The growth mindset is where you assume that you are constantly learning. When things don’t go the way you planned or hoped, you see it as a learning opportunity and not a failure.
There are cases where you will be looking forward to the mistakes because you start seeing them as a chance of learning something new. These mishaps will help you understand what happened and why. This allows you to learn and be better prepared for the next time. more mistakes can then mean more learning and growth.
Connecting with others
Good relationships boost your well-being a lot. Gardening is a good chance of connecting with other people. You can even connect with strangers and become friends because you have something in common.
