عن المؤلف | Emma Lovewell is the founder of Live Learn Lovewell, a Peloton instructor, an Under Armour athlete, and an all-around health and wellness expert dedicated to teaching others how to feel good in their bodies and live their best lives. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. OneCultivate Gardens for Greater HappinessLife can move at breakneck speed, and it can be hard to keep up. It often feels like the older I get the faster time goes, and I find myself getting whiplash if I don’t remind myself to slow down and just breathe. There are many days where my schedule is packed full and I’m hustling to fit everything in. Did I remember to put my clothes in the dryer? Did I finish my playlist for my upcoming 90s Rock Ride? On my commute to the city there are meetings to schedule, calls to return, and emails to answer before I arrive at the studio for a live ride. I’m sure that most of us are well acquainted with the feeling I’m talking about: It’s “overwhelmed” meets “where do I even begin?” This is the challenge that comes along with wanting it all . . . everything can start to overflow, and it can feel like too much. Sometimes slowing down to “smell the roses,” combined with a bit of careful pruning, is needed to make it all work smoothly. Every spring, as I start to plan my next garden, I find myself standing in the garden center surrounded by beautiful plants and flowers. I want to buy everything. I also know that if I want my garden to thrive, I need to make careful choices about what I decide to plant. Gardens flourish best when they are carefully cultivated, and as I fill my trunk with my final choices, it hits me again that planting a garden is a template for living a well-balanced life. Gardens and life benefit from planning, consistency, energy maintenance, and the ability to set limits. Sometimes the most important thing you can do is say, This isn’t working, and it’s got to go.As you probably know, I could talk about gardening all day every day, but I will spare you the full barrage of my enthusiasm and instead attempt to impart a few crucial lessons from one of my favorite hobbies. Though I had a rocky start with my feelings about gardening, I have come to see that so many of the choices that make a garden thrive are applicable to life writ large, and I often find that things I’ve learned from tilling the soil go well beyond the garden walls―they help me live with purpose and passion (and can help you too, even if you never pick up a shovel!).When I’m deliberate about my plant choices and soil maintenance, all the planning, digging, watering, and constant care eventually result in a bounty of fresh vegetables and flowers. It’s like I’ve conjured my own little miracle out of the earth. When my friends and family gather at my table for a late-summer meal, the vases of brightly colored zinnias, the fresh grilled zucchini, the string beans, the jars of cucumbers I’ve quick-pickled, and the heirloom tomatoes are the result of all my careful decisions. It’s not only what I put into my garden that made it flourish, but also what I took out.As I said, my relationship with gardening wasn’t always the full-on lovefest you now see on Instagram. For me, gardening was a practical skill that I slowly leaned into loving as an art. When I was a kid, helping my mother with the garden was not only an unpleasant chore but one I was sometimes embarrassed by. I saw the dirt, the constant weeding and watering, the little containers of beer we put out to kill slugs, and the horror that is the smell of homemade compost as pungent reminders that we were different from other families. The worst gardening-related task came every night after dinner, as sure as homework. I’d hear my mother call out to me from the living room.“Emma! Take this out to the compost.”I’d groan and slowly walk into the kitchen, knowing my mother was going to hand me the unpleasant remainders of my family’s dinner. |