Stop Planting Weeds and Complaining About Your Salad
Chandra Eden, The True Me Yogi
Thinking For a Change
Author: John C. Maxwell
"It may seem obvious that the quality of people's thinking leads to the quality of their results. I believe most people would agree that:
Poor thinking produces negative progress.
Average thinking produces no progress.
Good thinking produces some progress.
Great thinking produces great progress.
Yet, one of the reasons people don't achieve their dreams is that they desire to change their results without changing their thinking. But that's never going to work. If you expect to reap corn when you planted nettles, you're not going to get corn - no matter how much time you spend watering, fertilizing, or cultivating your plants. If you don't like the crop you are reaping, you need to change the seed you are sowing! Do you want to achieve? Then sow the 'seed' of good thinking."
Stop Planting Weeds and Complaining About Your Salad
It’s one of those ideas that feels glaringly obvious, like realizing water is wet. The quality of your thinking directly creates the quality of your results. Most of us would nod along with this: poor thinking leads to poor outcomes, average thinking leads to stagnation, and great thinking leads to great success. Simple enough, right?
Yet, have you ever looked at your life and wondered why you feel stuck? Why you’re putting in all this effort—watering, fertilizing, tending to your goals—but the results are still... lackluster? This is where a lot of us get tripped up. We desperately want to change our results without being willing to change our thinking.
That’s like planting a bunch of weed seeds and then getting frustrated when you don’t end up with a beautiful rose garden. You can water those weeds, give them the best fertilizer known to science, and even sing them a little song at night. But at the end of the day, you’re still going to have a yard full of weeds. If you don’t like the crop you’re reaping, you have to change the seed you are sowing.
Stop Fertilizing Your Nettles
So many of us are expert nettle-farmers. We just don't realize it. We want a promotion, but we spend our days thinking, "I'm probably not qualified for the next level," or "My boss never notices my work anyway." We want to start a business, but our internal monologue is a constant loop of "What if I fail?" and "It's too risky." We want a healthier relationship, but we’re sowing seeds of doubt, insecurity, and past baggage.
These thoughts are the seeds. The actions you take—or don't take—are you watering them. When you avoid speaking up in a meeting because you’ve convinced yourself your idea is dumb, you’re watering a seed of mediocrity. When you endlessly scroll through other people's successes and feel like an imposter, you’re fertilizing a seed of self-doubt.
Then we look at our stalled career, our non-existent business, or our frustrating relationships and wonder what went wrong. We blame the economy, our boss, our partner, or bad luck. But we rarely look at the handful of nettle seeds we’ve been clutching all along.
Sowing Better Seeds: A Practical Guide
Changing your thinking isn't about chanting affirmations in the mirror until you feel less weird. It’s about consciously choosing to plant better seeds, every single day.
Audit Your Mental Garden: For one day, just pay attention. What kinds of thoughts are you planting? Are they seeds of possibility, or seeds of limitation? You can’t pull the weeds if you don’t know what they look like. Write them down without judgment. Just observe.
Swap the Seeds: Once you identify a negative thought pattern, don't just try to suppress it. Replace it. Instead of "I'm so bad with money," try planting, "I am learning to be better with my finances." The first is a dead end. The second is a path forward. It’s not about lying to yourself; it’s about giving yourself a direction to grow.
Water the Good Stuff: When you have a moment of good thinking—a creative idea, a flash of confidence, a sense of optimism—lean into it. Give it your attention. This is the mental equivalent of watering your corn plant. The more you focus on productive, positive thoughts, the more they will grow and multiply.
You can't expect a different harvest if you keep planting the same seeds. It’s the definition of insanity, yet we do it all the time. We want corn, but we sow nettles and then stand there, hose in hand, wondering why our fingers are stinging.
Take a look at the results in your life. If you don’t like what you see, stop blaming the weather. Look at the seeds in your hand. That is where the real work—and the real change—begins.