Plant Flowers, Pull Weeds: Creating a Garden of Life

Click on image to enlarge, or view a larger pdf image of this page: Plant Flowers, Pull Weeds (maybe be slow to open)

“Plant Flowers, Pull Weeds” quote from Rick Hanson. I went to a wonderful workshop by Rick Hanson,PhD, the author of a huge, wonderful website and of the really good book, Buddha’s Brain.

During the workshop, Rick emphasized that it is so important

to expand on the positive “mind states” in life

and to try to limit and decrease the negative “mind states.”

In addition to that, he emphasizes that it’s so important to increase “clock time” in positive mood states…that the neurobiological impact of that increase will actually lead to positive changes in the functioning of the brain.

Now, THAT is highly motivating to me!!…and hence this reminder page for myself…

“plant flowers,” the positives,

and “pull weeds,” the negatives….

And that’s a good way to create a more beautiful “garden of life”

Creating My Own Sunshine:(click on image to enlarge it) I created this page for the younger kids in my class, but it applies equally to me for creating sunshine in my own everyday life.

Garden of Life: (click on image to enlarge it) I did a project with the kids in my class at school: I used fruits and vegetables, rather than flowers. (I figured that kids might be very motivated to AVOID growing and eating certain vegetables) We talked about trying to plant only the kinds of seeds that you want to have grow…because that is what you’ll probably get from your garden. They get the idea of planting positive (happy) seeds and trying as much as possible NOT to plant negative (unhappy) seeds. Here is a page one of the kids created, on the computer, showing the garden he wants to grow and what the seeds might represent.