Who Is Planting Your Garden?
Your mind is a garden. It is comfortable to think that you are the only gardener of your mind, but in reality, there are thousands of people, organizations, programs, and companies scrambling to plant seeds in it. Ultimately though, you decide which ones get planted. You decide by choosing who to listen to, who to trust, who to confide in, what to watch, what to listen to, what to do with your time, who your friends are, what to read, and what you believe.
Some people plant beautiful flowers in your garden with seeds that blossom for all to see. These seeds are based on truth. They affirm you,
give you hope and liberty, and grow deep roots. A garden planted with love, care and truth can be seen for miles because of its beauty. It draws people to it, and inspires with its beauty.
However, destructive weeds are everywhere, encroaching on your garden, trying to get in. These lies pervade the media - television, radio, books, magazines, movies. They say that you are not beautiful enough, rich enough, or loveable enough. They say truth, morality, and values do not exist. They sow the seeds of relativism, pluralism, "tolerance", all of which sound good, but are really based on faulty premises and can have frightening conclusions.
With the billions of seeds flying around in the Information Age, it's more important than ever to diligently watch what gets planted in your mind. Yet today, it seems people spend more time pondering what to wear than what ideas they base their life upon. There are consequences to the ideas you let in your mind.
Your worldview is a very precious part of you, and it's worth thinking about what kind of seeds you want growing in it and shaping it. If you let lies shape the way you view the world, your whole life will be less effective, less successful, and you will not be able to fulfill your potential. Lies ruin lives everyday.
Think of a rebellious teenage girl who wears dark mascara, heavy make-up, and immodest clothing. The way she dresses is not the real problem. Her mother can lecture, and make her put on better clothing, but that will not change the internal factors that made her dress immodestly in the first place. The real problem is a heart issue: lack of self-esteem. Internal ideas have external ramifications.
The internal ideas that make up your worldview will have external consequences for how you live your life. Your current life is the result of the thoughts you have had in the past, and the things you have spoken and done are a result of those thoughts. If you want to change your future, you have to change the thoughts you have about your life, and the words you speak that affirm or belittle those ideas.
If you want to live in liberty, and live up to your full potential, base your life, your garden, your inner world of ideas, on truth. Choose what to plant in your garden, rather than letting society plant it for you. If you plant your garden in truth, you will discover more liberty, more success, and more effectiveness than you could have ever dreamed of. The truth will set you free.
The preservation and sustainment of Liberty depends on you. It's time to discover liberty or lose it.
