The Simple Sophisticate - Intelligent Living Paired with Signature Style - 378: Choose to Compost Your Past: How the Arrival of the Spring Season is a Metaphor for Life

378: Choose to Compost Your Past: How the Arrival of the Spring Season is a Metaphor for Life

04/03/24 • 47 min

The Simple Sophisticate - Intelligent Living Paired with Signature Style

"Composting what was into what will be."

Mother Nature and the cycle of seasons provide endless life lessons and nourishing guidance if we are wise enough to heed her teachings.

More specifically, spring's arrival, the season as we all know that introduces itself after winter, the latter season of which for many of us can be frigid, keeping us more home-bound and bundled up far more often than we might prefer as well as to cause us to take stock of our home environment most directly and intimately.

It was upon hearing the statement above in a recent yoga class that I immediately smiled. Why? Well, there is much truth in this literal description of how compost is created and as to why it applies to our lives, it can figuratively be true as well. However . . .

We have to choose, and thus remember, to compost in the first place!

Spring gifts us with an abundance of wonderments and opportunities to apply what we have been investing in and working on during winter, or healing or resting in order to feel rejuvenated and reenergized. So not only do we need to remember to view winter as an opportunity to tend to what needs our attention, we must also be courageous enough to step forward into what that rest has given us.

Simply because we plant, water and fertilize a new plant in spring, or pot up a dahlia tuber in spring, doesn't mean the beauty we hope to come will appear in spring. No, it will not. The dahlias take around 100 days to share their first flower, but once they begin flowering, so long as they have been planted in their right conditions and the gardener keeps dead-heading, the blooms keep on coming until the first frost in early fall. This is beautiful reminder to be patient with ourselves and the changes we have begun to put into place, or the steps we have begun to take that will eventually lead us where we want to arrive. Spring is the beginning of the new journey, but we may not arrive where we wish to go until Summer or early Fall, but we will never arrive if we don't choose to compost first.

In today's episode we will explore eight instances in our life when unwanted moments have happened and how to compost them into something we do want. I welcome you to join us and tune in.

Have a look at the Show Notes for the episode, #378 here - https://thesimplyluxuriouslife.com/podcast378

"Composting what was into what will be."

Mother Nature and the cycle of seasons provide endless life lessons and nourishing guidance if we are wise enough to heed her teachings.

We have to choose, and thus remember, to compost in the first place!

In today's episode we will explore eight instances in our life when unwanted moments have happened and how to compost them into something we do want. I welcome you to join us and tune in.

Have a look at the Show Notes for the episode, #378 here - https://thesimplyluxuriouslife.com/podcast378

Previous Episode

377: The Slow Productivity Approach that will Elevate the Quality of Your Entire Life, as taught by Cal Newport

Author and professor of computer science at Georgetown University Cal Newport's latest book Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment without Burnout details exactly how and where in our daily lives and throughout the year we can apply the Slow Productivity approach and why it works.

In today's episode I will be sharing with you 10 takeaways that caught my eye as areas of interest that I thought would interest TSLL readers/podcast listeners, and if what you discover here speaks to you, I encourage you to pick up the book as far more detail and information is shared. Throughout the discussion today, I will be dovetailing the ideas Newport suggests with how it overlaps with living simply luxuriously because as is made clear from the name given to his approach, the concept of quality versus quantity is the key thread that runs through Slow Productivity, something that TSLL Community is all too familiar as we individually cultivate our simply luxurious lives.

Check out the detailed Show Notes - https://thesimplyluxuriouslife.com/podcast377

Next Episode

379: How (and Why) to Be Your Own Best Friend

"We are not born with the secret of how to live [well], and too many of us never learn it. There is nothing cold-blooded or mechanical about it, but there are many things we have to learn to do . . . the first thing is to realize we've probably been looking in the wrong place. The source is not outside us; it is within." —Mildred Newman & Bernard Berkowitz, authors of How to Be Your Own Best Friend

Befriend yourself and you have a friend for life.

This simple saying, often expressed, while true, is often not understood as to how it can be possible. But the most awesome news I want to share with you today is that you have had the answers to so much of the peace, calm, and clarity you have been seeking traveling within you all this time. How to tap into and what exactly are you looking for? That is what we are going to talk about today.

Inspired by a book that was written in 1971 Mildred Newman and her husband, both psychologists, Bernard Berkowitz, the title was originally How To be Your Own Best Friend: A Conversation With Two Psychoanalysts. Consisting of only 74 pages, their insights are shared, as this title suggests, in conversation form - questions followed by answers.

While little known when the couple originally self-published, it was with the help of author, screenwriter and director Nora Ephron, who upon reading the book quite liked it so she introduced the authors to her book agent upon which it then became a national bestseller (learn more about how she helped in this article published earlier this year). Picking up my own copy and zooming through it, I found common sense advice, grounded in approachable guidance sharing reminders and nudges of how we can help ourselves out but often are too timid to do so due to a variety of cultural circumstances and pressures.

As I read, the overlap of choosing to be your best friend and finding and experiencing contentment quickly became apparent, and having just wrapped up producing all of the filmed lessons for TSLL's Contentment Masterclass, as you will discover when you enroll, knowing ourselves and honoring what we find to be true for ourselves resides at the core of a fulfilling life. In the words of the authors, becoming our best friend is sage wisdom to follow. However, what does that look like? Being our own best friend? That's what I want to share with you today and the benefits of doing so.

Let's get started.

View the Show Notes on the blog: https://thesimplyluxuriouslife.com/podcast379