Happy May Yogis,

I love this time of year when the hummingbirds return and the flowers add color to the landscape. Isn't it beautiful that a garden can evolve and get more complex and colorful every year as the flowers get larger and new plants get added. 

Maybe we can compare our lives can to a garden.

If my life was a garden, all the love, support, safety and warmth of my family and friends would have sprinkled seeds onto the soil and turned it into a beautiful, colorful field of flowers. All the years of words of encouragement and support from both strangers and friends would add to the colors and variety of flowers and over time I would have a spectacular garden. A mosaic of colorful flowers. My life garden would change over time as new flowers were added as words of love and encouragement reach me. 

In my imagination, if our life could be represented by a garden we would certainly have to personally tend to our own garden. Flowers sprinkled by our family and friends could only grow into the strongest, most resilient flowers if they were watered by our own self love and self confidence.  Love and approval of others need to be supplemented with your own self love and self approval. You need to be able to be your own cheerleader to grow the best life garden. Without internal positive affirmations, your garden cannot reach its full potential. The love and approval from within is the most important part of your landscape. Here is why.

This month at certain moments I have heard my internal critic loud and clear and some external ones too. 

Sometimes when I hear negative words it feels  as though  someone drove a plough right through my beautiful flower garden. The criticism which drives the plough through my life garden leaves an ugly streak. The beautiful flower which has taken so long to cultivate is destroyed. One moment of negative words can destroyed all those years of  beautiful, kind word.