The garden of your mind is a product of past seeds that have been planted there. There are many plants in the garden, some are beautiful tulips and roses, and others are more like weeds. There can even be invasive species!

The difference is that as you read this, you have more control than ever before to choose the seeds that you plant, and to change your garden over time. But to understand why this is so, and why it is important, we need to touch on language and its role in our psychology.

Historically, language developed from a physical and instinctual basis — we mimicked the sounds of nature, uttered primal cries and clanged tools and instruments to express or refer to things. From there, language became more abstract, it also enabled us to encode and pass on the baton of the past, which enabled mass culture and belief systems to sprout out.

Existence became not only physical, instinctive and emotional, it became mental. Words and thoughts could now be used to influence how we feel and what we do individually and collectively. Words and concepts then became tied with feelings, via personal experiences (e.g a trigger word associated with a past event elicits a reaction) or collective experiences, such as beliefs that we are taught about certain groups and ideas.

Language has a power and a certain reality of its own, which affects the other aspects of our lived lives.

However, the mind and words do not have a monopoly. Past pains and emotions can hijack the mind and make it think certain things; this is clear enough if you’ve ever wanted to stop thinking about something, but couldn’t. The power of the mind when it meets with past pain, causes much suffering at a scale that was just not possible before language.

So why have I told you this? So that you understand two things:

1. Words are powerful, you can use them to change what you believe and how you feel — the line between what seems true logically and what we feel is actually blurred; your identity is not a fact, it is in interaction with your beliefs and how you feel, which then feeds into your situations.
2. But, you also can’t just think you’re way out of problems alone if you’re in a tight spot and turbulent emotions are at work.

So the advice is this: Plant Positive Thoughts-Seeds About Yourself And The World: Gratitude, Self-Love and Kindness — and do it when you’re calm, as this is when it is at its most powerful.

When times are good, that is the best time to build the resilience for those more difficult times, the storms! I will get onto what to do if you are in a not-so calm place right now, but bear with me.

The reason it is more powerful to think positive thoughts when you’re calm, is because you will have less inner turbulence countering your thoughts, and you can be more in touch with your body, which will also amplify the practice. Here’s what you can do:

If you lay down, let yourself while away an hour to think positively, listen to calm music, and just feel your body, and then do that at least for a few days for a month. I can guarantee you that you will feel a noticeable shift in your self-image, your daily feelings, and your daily thoughts.

If something negative comes up in a calm state, let yourself feel into it; what’s it like in your body? Negativity coming up in a state of calm openness is a fantastic opportunity to productively get to the roots of those thorns in your inner garden.

Focus on the feeling, and explore it, you can ask yourself questions, let the answers come up. Be receptive and willing to hear the truth, and this will serve you and those emotions well; they come up because they want your attention, they want you to understand them and hold them. They hijack our thoughts because inversely, we do not listen to them.

You can also set reminders for yourself, maybe make some positive affirmations for the morning. Or, at the end of the day, reflect on what was positive, what made you feel good? What were you grateful for? What positive thing did you achieve?

As with anything, the more you practice positive thinking and being with yourself, the more it will become natural to you. Then, what was a negative cycle start tilting into a more positive and self-sustaining one.

There’s a ridiculously high, infinite really, amount of variables that have led to your life experience in this moment. There is always cause for self-kindness and kindness to others.

The more we remember this, the more we can free ourselves from the force of the Past, and enjoy the freedom to create our own Future from the purified present; from our own home-grown, and self-chosen garden.