Your garden needs fertilizer in order for the plants to be able to grow properly. Compost made from kitchen scraps is natural, healthy for your plants, and good for the ecosystem! To make compost, you take kitchen waste -- apple cores, vegetable peels, seeds and such -- and throw it in a pile to rot. You turn it occasionally for a few months, and let time, microorganisms, moisture, heat, and nature do the work.
Likewise, your creative garden needs nutrients. Just as time and nature turn your kitchen garbage into compost, our life experiences provide the starting point for creating our own personal compost! When we've learned from challenging experiences, we've transformed those experiences into nutrient-rich material: ie, compost! When we've not been able to process and learn, these experiences may pile up like garbage, and never complete the cycle of renewal that releases their nutrients.
What do we need to do to help this transformation? We need to practice skills like awareness, acceptance, gratitude, forgiveness, and letting go. When we are able to do this, we are able to transform these experiences into wisdom: compost!
Many of our life experiences have to do with our success in meeting our needs.
Needs go beyond food, water, shelter, and oxygen. Needs are unique to each of us, and include what we require for our souls to thrive.
When our needs are met, they transform our life experiences into a rich compost, full of nutrients and energy to power our creative dreams. When our needs aren't met, they lie unchanged on the compost pile for years, keeping energy and nutrients tied up and unavailable for our use.
We often tell ourselves that it is okay for our needs to remain unmet, that it doesn't really matter, but our subconscious knows we are not content when our needs are not met. Sometimes we tell ourselves that we shouldn't have a particular need, but changing that need can be like trying to change the color of your hair: it may happen naturally with time, but if you dye your hair, it will eventually go back to what it was.
Expressing your creativity may be a need of yours. Feeling close to people around you. Getting out in nature. Having peace and quiet.
We often blame others for our needs being unmet, and with that blame come feelings of anger, resentment, unworthiness, guilt, fear -- you name it. Until we know what our needs are, these feelings lie as garbage on the compost pile, unable to be transformed. Once we understand our needs, we can begin figuring out how to get them met appropriately, either by ourselves or others, or dealing with the fact that they won't be met by accepting, forgiving, and moving on. Once met, these needs become rich compost to nourish our lives.
Needs often have two sides to them. For example, needing to feel close to others may lead you to host potluck dinners so you can enjoy spending time with friends and family. It may also lead you to sacrifice your own self-care to catering to their every wish, and to push yourself upon people when they need to be alone. See how their need to be alone is now in direct conflict with your need to feel close to others? What is critical here is to make sure your need is not constantly pushing you into unhealthy behavior or conflict with others, while at the same time getting that need met.
Your need to feel close to others may be better satisfied by meeting a whole group of new friends who love doing potlucks and movies every weekend!
Some needs, you will find you can meet yourself. If you need to get out in nature regularly, don't fume at your couch-loving spouse -- find a hiking club on the internet! Or, if you need to feel respected, instead of turning to others to meet that need, and being repeatedly disappointed, work on learning to respect yourself. You're more self-sufficient when you can meet your own needs.
Some needs you can specifically request be filled. For example, if you love dancing, but your partner never takes you out, a discussion of why it is important to you followed by a request for them to join you twice a month for a night out might be the perfect solution. If they say no, take your sibling and have a great time. Or, if you feel you need a hug in the mornings, let your spouse know -- they may be trying to stay out of your harried morning routine.
And some needs you just have to let go of, and come to peace with the fact that they may never be met. A lot of parental issues fall into this category. If you want your parents to be proud of you, your spouse being proud of you may not quite do it. A conversation about how you'd like them to express their pride in you may fall on confused ears. At some point, you may want to release this unmet need and free up the energy, or nutrients, it contains. Find a way to let go and come to peace with it. Accept that it will never be met. Oddly enough, that is frequently the point at which your parent may comment on how great something you did 30 years ago was!
Sometimes we get caught up in thinking that our needs must be met in a specific way, or by a specific person. Be flexible in seeing how your needs can be met creatively, rather than holding onto your fantasy of how things must go. If it is not practical to relocate your family to the mountains, take them camping a few times a year and see how far that goes toward meeting your need for being in nature.
We talked last time about taking time for self-care. Getting our needs met is part of that. When our needs are not met, energy that could be nourishing us is tied up in old issues, and we end up feeling drained and unfulfilled. Taking the time to figure out what our needs are, and how to get them met, is a vital part of self-care.
When our needs are met, it creates the rich compost that provides the energy and enthusiasm we need to pursue our lives and our creative projects.
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