This past Sunday was one of those beautiful Summer days that those of us who live in Minnesota look forward to all winter long – low to mid 70’s, light breeze and sun – glorious sun. It was a day to spend outside for sure so out I went to tackle some yard work. I planted flowers the week before and they are settling in and blooming already. Surveying my handiwork from the weekend before, my eyes focus on this section in my backyard where we have raspberry and blackberry bushes and the bushes are surrounded by river rock. Next to it is lush grass. Sounds nice except for the fact that the grass has started to move into the river rock and really take over so I have a mix of rocks and grass and weeds. I know you fellow backyard gardeners are feeling my pain. What I really wanted to do was ignore the area and do something more fun, like add more flowers in another area of the yard but I kept being drawn to this overgrown area and how really bad it looked. So, I took a deep breath and began attempting to pull the grass and weeds from the rocks. After a short time, I was already feeling deflated. Grass and weeds were really stubborn and rocks were in the way and the shovel I was using was not helping one little bit. There just seemed to be too much grass and weeds mixed in the rock and for a moment, I considered giving up and going to my original idea of planting new flowers in another area of the yard. However, I knew if I did, this area was only going to get worse.
I decided to approach it like a tough business situation. First, I had to take a look at the work that needed to be done and determine if it was important to me. Yes, it was – the area looked bad and was only getting worse. Then, assess if I had the right tools. In this case, I did not. I figured out which tools would work best and got them out and ready for the task. Next, how to tackle this huge task? I decided to begin at one end and focus on only a small area – feeling like if I made some progress that would be a good start. Well, next thing I knew, I had finished that one little section and was ready for the next and the next until I eventually finished the work.
Now, this was by no means an easy project and my back, legs and hands were plenty sore when I was done but as I was making progress, I stayed focused on my little section. Looking too far ahead still felt overwhelming. After each section, I took time to congratulate myself on the good work and how nice it looked. I was motivated to begin on the next section and so on until I was done. Looking over my work at the end of the afternoon, I reflected on how relevant this process is anytime we try to tackle a difficult task. If we look at how big it is and how difficult it will be, we may never begin. If we don’t have the right tools, it certainly makes the task that much more difficult, and perhaps not even possible.
So my lessons from the garden are:
- Understand the whole picture
- Make sure you have the right tools
- Break the large goal into smaller, more manageable steps
- Celebrate the little successes
- Once at the finish line, reflect on what it took to get there
- Celebrate again and enjoy the work!