How to Reprioritize and Recharge
Recharge and Reprioritize
Recently, I find myself thinking about how important it is to recharge in times of difficulty. It’s so important to take the time to consciously make decisions. As well, to update priorities based on changing conditions during these times, and how can you do either of these when you’re exhausted? Self awareness and connection to self is essential to being a leader in your own life. And from that point of clarity, showing leadership to others in your community.
It’s probably the political turmoil the world is witnessing right now that’s sparked these musings. Polarizing opinions and segregation being shown all over the global media have people questioning their thoughts based on the behavior of others. To be honest, so much of what is being shown is energy draining.
When you’re bombarded with negativity from your external world, it’s not surprising that you struggle to look inwards, to your own wisdom and trust that you can make decisions that are beneficial to you with an eye on the greater impact.
The Right Tools for Recharge
It’s at these times though that it’s so necessary to have the tools to recharge your energy and your spirit so that you don’t fall out of alignment with your life purpose.
When you feel energized and connected with yourself, when you feel invigorated and aligned and conscious of your own patterns and behaviors, then you can use this knowledge to make decisions in every aspect of your life without external influence. At least, without undue external influence being the major factor in the decisions you make and how you make them!
From a practical perspective, nature and the plant kingdom are one of the best places to go to recharge and feel alive again. Observing natural models of logic that you can emulate and implement in your own world provides answers to questions you thought were unanswerable.
The Benefits of Nature Around Us
It’s really a two-fold benefit to your physical and spiritual world. And here’s why:
Nature is full of awe and wonder. It’s in everything nature offers; the simple beauty of nature’s physicality, the opportunity it offers you for contemplation, the logic you observe in the behavior of the plant kingdom.
The more you allow yourself to access this wonder and awe, the more energy you can draw from it. It’s energy offered on a spiritual and emotional level that can fuel your passion, offer you clarity about your life purpose, and truly help you to understand your True Nature. Don’t just trust me, if you want, I can send you a list of scientific studies showing this. All you have to do is ask!
Modeling and creating a relationship with nature to help you align with and recognize your true life purpose and deep patterns makes long term health and happiness attainable.
True Nature Decision-Making
That’s where the magic happens. Understanding your True Nature means every decision you make, even in times of overwhelm, exhaustion, and difficulty, even when external factors seem to be having a relentless impact, is a decision you make with full, conscious awareness of the impact to your purpose, goals, and values. Which in turn means that it is made in alignment with the needs of the commons.
The simple act of stepping into nature and taking a long, deep breath, connects you with your environment. It connects you to your True Nature. And this acts like a cable to recharge your internal batteries. With a full charge, you feel clear and able to choose where you need and want to put your energy.
Forest Therapy or Bathing (shinrin yoku), for example, refers to the practice of spending time in forested areas for the purpose of enhancing health, wellness, and happiness. Studies even show that it provides relief for both mental and physical health. It’s a practice that makes room for listening and acceptance and an opportunity to be present through all of your sensory modes, thereby lowering stress levels and calming the mind and body.
Logic & Understanding After Recharge
Once you’ve reset and reconnected, you can see the ways in which the plant kingdom prioritizes for maximum benefit, and from this space of understanding, you can implement their logic into your human world.
Plants have an incredible intelligence when it comes to choosing how kin use kin’s energy. Everything plants do and every decision kin make is done based on a few simple rules. These are tools that you can translate to your life with a little bit of a shift in your thinking:
First, think about optimal growth, reproduction and survival of the entire ecosystem rather than the single species, even if it means gracefully letting go or sacrificing something for the greater good.
Take the bean plant. If you observe 2 bean plants growing next to each other and one has already wrapped around a pole, the second won’t try to compete with the first and wrap around the same pole. Rather, ki will look for another pole and, if ki can’t find one, will sacrifice kiself, because ki realizes that it is more beneficial for the entire species to survive.
So, while you obviously won’t be sacrificing yourself in that sense, it is a great lesson in evaluating your personal priorities VS the bigger picture and walking away from things that may not serve your bigger picture.
Secondly, they create mutually beneficial relationships that are truly mutually beneficial. When humans create partnerships, they tend to put a focus on how the individual benefits.
Not the plant world. The plant world works with the other species in ki’s environment in co-operative models that serve all. Anything other than a mutually beneficial relationship (and there are several other types, which I’ll explain in the future) is commonly short term because it will usually take lots of energy and risk. Mutualisms create a long term benefit and so kin know it’s smarter to place energy into long term priorities. Likewise, you can do the same when considering your long term health and happiness and how to make that sustainable.
The energy a plant puts out must be weighed against the outcome. If the outcome isn’t worth the amount of energy, ki shift and reprioritize rapidly. Ki’s ability to do this comes from having an innate understanding of ki’s own capabilities, as well as what ki needs from others to decide what actions are worth the energy. The more you know yourself the easier it is to prioritize and make decisions to move forward in alignment with your True Nature, rather than against it. It’s a matter of not letting that pesky human ego stop you from adjusting to your optimal natural state!
Third, ki truly are the masters of knowing their environment. Plants know how important it is to use the resources the environment offers to reach a goal.
Therefore all their decisions are made based on what kin’s environment can offer and exactly where to find it. A plant will know where in their ecosystem ki can draw on what nourishment, and in turn, what ki can give to the commons; ki knows what area ki can find nitrogen or phosphorus in or that there is another species that can help ki survive in the long term term so, when that specie’s seed arrives in ki’s ecosystem, it’s in ki’s best interest to help the seed grow. Your natural world is one that is made up of inner and external elements: your habits, places, your attitudes and inclinations, astrology, Human design… There’s a plethora of resources and tools you can use to really know yourself and understand your environment by mirroring that plant logic. From a place of inner knowledge, decisions are easy to make.
Working with plants to understand your own decision making processes is incredibly beneficial, particularly if you want to redefine your idea of success, health and happiness. The plant mind works completely differently to the human mind, and so understanding and emulating kin’s thought processes can help you change your approach and implementation in every aspect of your life.
Just by shifting your way of thinking a little and embracing the decision making wisdom of the plant world, you can physically, energetically and emotionally recharge. The plant kingdom is right there to help you bring yourself into alignment and into a place where you understand what actions and decisions to take so that you wake every morning with a smile on your face.
This post was originally published on my blog.
