bloom where you’re planted.

ruffle sleeve shirt. overalls. sunglasses. similar sandals. necklace. ring.

You know how five years ago, keep calm and (enter whatever here) was everywhere?  And now it’s like don’t quit your daydream, and the hustle is real, or a bunch of other ones…When I was growing up the saying of choice was “bloom where you’re planted.”  I remember several different church camps that centered around that theme, and it really started to feel like overkill after the third one.  Ironically, that saying has been on my mind a lot lately.

Maybe it’s because we’ve moved a lot in the last 6 years, but it seems more pertinent an idea to me now than it ever did as a tween.  I don’t know how much I’ve been blooming where I’m planted in the last few years.  I think I was more treading water, the whole “surviving, not thriving” mentality.

I think it can be really easy to fall into that trap, to just be getting through each day, and not embracing the place you are in whole-heartedly right this moment.  This can be especially tricky when you’re a bit of a perfectionist, like me.  It’s almost like it’s all or nothing.  If a situation isn’t perfect, you don’t engage at all in it.

That mentality has not served me well, and it’s prevented me from getting started on a whole lot of things I wish I would have sooner, from house projects to business ideas, to friendships, and even the way I mother my children.

This spring, something shifted for me, and I finally started blooming here in New England.  And interestingly enough, I’ve made more friends, made more progress on our home, been more satisfied with my life, more patient with my kids, and just generally less stressed even though I’m technically doing more than before.

So how do you bloom where you’re planted?  For me, it’s about letting go of the idea of perfection and getting started right now, right where I’m at to make my life a little more lovely, a little more beautiful than it was before.  It means falling in love with the process of things and not just the end result.  Not rushing through every little task and chore.  It’s about approaching life with a spirit of abundance, understanding that there’s enough love, money, time, success, and peace to go around.  It’s about saying no to some things so I can say yes to others.  Doing less so I can have more life.  And it’s about cultivating beauty and joy on a daily basis, whether that’s in the meal I make for dinner, or the flowers I choose for our window box. (The latter of which, by the way, I thoroughly enjoyed.)

So, how do you bloom where you’re planted?  Do you struggle with this?