The weeds don't have to win

My thoughts while weeding my flower bed ... a lesson on mindset, avoidance, and why limiting beliefs get louder when we ignore them.  

• noticing how “should” creates guilt and avoidance 
• linking garden weeds to fears, negative thoughts, and limiting beliefs 
• seeing how ignoring problems lets them grow roots 
• resisting the quick fix that kills the good too 
• naming shutdown and emotional armour as a false solution 
• unpacking beliefs we planted for survival and have outgrown 
• dropping regret and choosing what to cultivate now 
• moving from surface positivity to root-level change through reflection, writing, or coaching 

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Transcript

Welcome And The Pattern Interrupter

SPEAKER_00 0:06

I'm so glad that you're here. You're listening to What the Fuck Did She Just Say? With your host. That's me, Stephanie Fleet State. I'm all about living our best life and finding our zone of brilliance and then removing the resistance so that we can go all in. I say random crazy gift, which is why I called this podcast the way that I did. And I really hate long, drawn-out intros. So let's fucking go. I'm so excited to be here today. As you know, I in the intro, I talk about how I call this, what the fuck did she just say? Because I do say random, crazy shit. And a lot of times it'll just like fly out of my mouth. I'll have this wild analogy that is meant to sort of like be this crazy idea that you will never forget. I think it's just my way of sort of being. I am a pattern interrupter, but I think it's my way of sort of explaining things in the craziest, weirdest of ways. So that you will always, always remember it. And eventually you'll be able to implement it or repeat it to a friend, and you'll be able to up-level your life as a result of it. It is truly, I think, my superpower. It's the way that I see things in the world. It's that I see patterns and things in my life that I then really reflect

Weeds As Thoughts And Fears

SPEAKER_00 1:35

on. I am the most philosophical person, I'm sure. And I see everything in analogies. So we're going to talk about another one today. I am recording this on Sunday evening. This morning, I was out weeding my garden. Now, here's the thing. I didn't want to do it. In fact, I have been looking at, oh, it's not my garden, actually. It's my flower bed in the front. But I have been looking at my flower garden. Oh, I think for ever since the snow left, really. Like probably for a week, week and a half. I've been looking at it, looking at how the quack grass was growing into my flower bed. And I was annoyed by that. I mean, I have been avoiding it for days. Every day I'd walk out of my house or back from my walk or whatever. And I was thinking, I really have to weed that. I really should deal with that, right? And should equals guilt. So, you know, I just walk past and pretend it didn't happen. But the longer I ignored it, the bigger the weeds got, the worse it looked, the more frustrated I became. And then the more overwhelming it felt to just get in and start. Right. The worse situation it is, it's like when you declutter your house, right? Like the more clutter there is, the more likely you are to just go and eat a sandwich and pretend that it didn't exist. And so while I was like avoiding this and like really struggling to get excited about it, I thought about how weeds in our garden are similar to thoughts, fears, and limiting beliefs. If we choose to ignore them, just pretend everything, you know, walk in the house, shut the door, pretend you don't have a flower garden, they don't magically disappear. Your problems don't go away. Your negative thoughts don't go away. Your limiting beliefs, they don't go away. They grow roots. So a week ago, my flower garden looked okay. You know, it looked all right. There was a few weeds that were coming up, and I did think I should just take care of those now. A week later, it was absolutely overwhelming. And I thought, oh gosh, no, I don't want to deal with that at all. It's too much. So then I'd started. And I gotta tell you, fairly early on into this process of pulling weeds, I did think, fuck it. Why don't I just pour Roundup on all of this? You know, it's fast, it's easy, it would be done. I wouldn't have to do this. If I pour enough Roundup on it, I probably don't have to weed forever. And maybe we should just take all of this rocks and all of the landscaping that I've got and just, you know, Roundup it all. Like, why not? However, Roundup kills everything. It doesn't kill just the weeds, but it it kills the flowers too.

The Roundup Shortcut And Shutdown

SPEAKER_00 4:45

And then what about my little bees? Because I really love the fact that I have bees in my garden and I don't want those little guys to die. So Roundup is not the option. But if we compare the idea of me putting a whole bunch of weed killer onto this area and killing everything, it's similar to us shutting down. Sometimes we're so hurt by a situation, whether it's a friendship or failure of some type. Um, I have one of my clients is going through divorce, and like we can get to the place where we sort of build up this armor and we think this isn't working. I'm gonna go and, you know, quick fix. I'm gonna put up a wall and I'm never gonna look at this again. I'm gonna like burn my business to the ground and I'm gonna go and work at a donut shop. I don't know. In order to deal with something that we don't want to deal with, we end up burning it to the ground and then putting up big, huge walls so that we're not having to go through the pain, but we're also not experiencing the joy. We're not experiencing the flowers either. A few minutes later, after I dug out all of the quack grass that really annoyed me, I started looking at the other area that I was trying to avoid, which was the area that I have lily of the valley. I planted it, me, old Sandra, past Sandra. I planted the lily of the valley. Now I knew that lily of the valley would spread, but I did not know how

The Beliefs We Planted Ourselves

SPEAKER_00 6:35

invasive it is. I did not know that not only would it spread throughout my flower bed, but also it would go everywhere. I mean, it's in my grass, it's in the landscaping gravel that I have, like it is everywhere and it is ridiculously hard to get rid of. Q, the Roundup moment again. Like I really could I just inject Roundup into every single lily of the valley. Now they're pretty, but not thousands of them. Okay, that's a stretch, but like not a hundred of them that are now into my gravel. This is not my dream flower bed, you know? And then I started thinking as I'm digging these suckers out, I'm thinking, man, I planted these. Some of the limiting beliefs and the negative thoughts and the unwanted, unhelpful thoughts, we've planted them. And maybe they protected us once, or maybe we thought that this was a belief or a story that was helpful in some way, that would be beneficial to us in some way. But we grow, we shift, we change, and we up level. I mean, I hope we're up leveling. We should be. If you're listening to this podcast, you are. The past me that planted Lily of the Valley without really seeing the consequences of what that would look like years and years and years later, but the past me would have planted survival strategies as well, as did your past you. And one of the things that we spend so much time over is regretting the past and regretting, you know, decisions that we've made in the past, regretting or holding on to things for way too long that no longer serve us anymore. And I was thinking about this in terms of like, I can't go back and change the past. The only thing that I can do is look at who I am now and what I want to accomplish, and then move forward from there. You know how we used to say there's no point in crying over spilled milk? Like, there's no point in whining or being angry or punishing ourselves for planting Lily of the Valley or for planting shitty thoughts in our head that are now we're having to dig out. The other thing

Surface Fixes Versus Root Healing

SPEAKER_00 9:05

I thought, after the first 50 lily of the valley were gone, I started thinking, I really hating this. Maybe I should just rip the leaves off, right? The garden would look better, but the roots would still be there. And like our thoughts, we can do surface fixes, we can say affirmations we don't believe, we can pretend we're okay, we can try to be as positive as possible and just pretend that we don't have resentment, fear, anger, all of the rest of those very, very real emotions that are, yes, low vibration, but also still running in the background. The roots are still there. So unless you're gonna dig them up, you're still gonna have those thoughts. They're still gonna keep coming back. And I'm not saying that you have to dig and dig and dig at absolutely everything that you don't even know is there. But when it comes up, when there is a weed in your thoughts that comes up, it's meant for you to dig it out at the root. It's an opportunity for you to heal it for good. And so that's what I did. I made sure I grabbed my claw thing, whatever it's called. I don't know. I call it a garden claw. I don't know if that's what it was called, but I grabbed the claw out, I started digging it all of the dirt, and I dug out the roots. It took longer, it was massively messy, and it was harder to do it that way than just walk around, you know, grabbing the leaves off. But when I could take them out at the root, real change happens. When we can do the real work and think like this belief isn't serving me, where did this belief start? Why do I think this? Is this even mine? What else do I feel? When we start doing that, we start to heal. When we start shifting and really writing it out in order to release it, that's the key. In order to release it. Or when you decide that you're going to work with a coach in order to really truly transform your life, it's for good. It's not just for you to feel better, it's not just for you to call me up and vent to me and then feel better for a short period of time and then go back to normal. When you sign up with to work with me or any other coach, it's meant for lifelong change. I want you to weed your garden, roots and all.

Let The Flowers Grow And Closing

SPEAKER_00 11:40

When you take all of the weeds out, your flowers have room to grow as well. Right? When you take out all of those negative things that you're thinking, all of that self-talk that isn't serving you, when you let go of the guilt and the shame and the anger and the resentment and the fear and the worry and all of it, and you step into what's beautiful about you, it is truly like digging out the weeds, roots, and all, and then allowing your flowers to bloom. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you've had some laughs, maybe some ideas, and that you've been inspired to take some type of action toward the life you've always dreamed of. If you feel so called, I would love it if you would share with your besties. Leave a review down below. I look forward to bringing you along with me, and I will see you in the next episode.