26 Life Lessons from Plants WWPD | Mindfulness Skills

Hey there, everybody, and welcome to this video on 26 Life Lessons from Plants. I'm your host, Dr. Donnelly Snipes. Now, on this channel, I talk a lot about mindfulness. And mindfulness means being present in the moment and noticing those things around you. So I decided last week to focus on plants when I was being mindful, and try to figure out, what can I learn from plants, what can I learn from my environment right now? And this is what I came up with. The first lesson. Seeds can be planted, but need a supportive environment to sprout and grow. If you plant seeds, for example, at the end of fall, they are likely not going to sprout until the next spring because the environment is not right. If you plant seeds in the spring and they don't have any water, they're not going to sprout and grow until the conditions are right to support their growth. The same thing is true for us. We can plant seeds, we can get ideas, we can decide we want to grow, but until the environment that we're in is supportive, we're likely not going to grow. That that idea or desire is likely not going to sprout. Even the tiniest seed that is nurtured can grow into a huge plant. And I encourage you to just go out and look. Mustard seeds. You know, we'll take one from the Bible. Mustard seeds are really, really tiny little seeds, like the size of a pinhead. But mustard plants grow to be about 2ft tall, 2ft wide. So going from that little speck to something huge is kind of remarkable. So even the tiniest idea or even the tiniest desire can be nurtured to grow into something huge. Seeds that sprout despite being in poor or inconsistent conditions may survive, but they won't thrive. And this is one of those things that I learned from hydroponics, because in hydroponics, you don't have the actual sun. You're trying to mimic the sun. And if you have the lights too far away or too close or too dim or too bright, the seeds may sprout, but they often become stunted or leggy or die off really easily. So they're there, they're trying, but they just don't have what they need to make it. Think about yourself. In environments, you know, you may be putting one foot in front of the other and getting by, but are you thriving? Everyone has different needs, so don't assume your needs are the same as the other person's. This is something we learn about with companion planning and crop rotation. For example, certain plants need A lot of potassium. Other plants need a lot of calcium. Some plants need a lot more nitrogen. It depends on, number one, the type of plant that it is. Some are heavy feeders, some are not. As well as the stage of life that it's in. If it is a fruiting plant, like a tomato, for example, initially it needs different nutrients to grow its stalks, I guess that's what they're called, and its branches. And then when it comes time to start flowering and fruiting, it needs different nutrients. The same thing is true for us. Think about school. When we were young and we were growing, we went to elementary school, middle school, high school school. But then when we decided that it was time for us to flower and blossom into whatever we were going to be, we needed a slightly different environment. We went to college, we studied certain subjects, we went to trade school, or we started in a job where we could be mentored. Every person, like every plant, needs something different. And your needs may change as your life changes. Your ability to grow up and fulfill your potential depends on your environment and your adaptability. We know that to grow and to thrive, we need food, water, shelter, and a place to raise young. We need safety. And in order for us to feel safe and be able to focus on things like learning and making decisions, we need to have all of these things. Yuri Broffenbrenner talked about having multiple different interactive systems that we all live in. The micro. Well, the individual is you or the plant, and all the specific things that make you or that plant unique. You know, a tomato plant is different than a potato plant, and you are different than your sibling or your best friend. So the individual and their characteristics and how they interact with their microsystem, that's that safe home base where you can get recharged and feel supported. For plants, that's their soil microbiome. That's the soil right around them that is impacting them. Then the exos system for humans, toxic people or overcrowding can stunt our growth. If we're around people who are abusing substances, who are depressed, who are angry all the time or. Or whatever, it can drain our energy and stunt our growth. We can't flourish in that sort of environment. It's not supportive. Likely. If there's overcrowding, we have difficulty getting everything that we need. The attention we need, the support we need, the resources we need to flourish and grow. The same thing is true for plants. If you plant spinach, for example, and you plant spinach really close together, like every two to four inches, you're Going to get little tiny baby spinach leaves. You're not going to get the big spinach plant because the plant adapts to that environment and says, hey, you know, if I grow big, then I'm not going to have enough resources to sustain myself, so I'm going to stay small. I'll continue to grow, but I've got to manage my size. We see the same thing in fish, for example. Fish that are grown in a little fish tank stay little. You can take the same goldfish and put it in a great big pond and it gets a whole lot bigger. We adapt to our environments. Plants do it, we do it. The macro system. These are things in the universe that impact you, but you cannot easily change. You can adapt to them, though. For example, as a human, you can't change the economy, but you can adapt to it. You can change your spending habits when things are tight, and you may spend more when things are good. Politics. There's a lot of things in politics you can't change, but you can adapt to them. You can adapt so your corner of the world is less impacted negatively by changes in politics. You can go out and vote. There are things you can do, but you may not be able to directly impact or directly morph whatever that thing is. Social media is another thing. In the macro system, you can't change it. You know, you can't. You can't censor everybody that's on social media. That's just, you know, it would take an entire army of people to try to control all that. But what you can do is adapt. You can block people or you can just turn it off. And sunlight, you know, we're just kind of going all over the place here. The economy, politics, social media, sunlight. You can't change the fact that the days get shorter in the winter, but you can adapt. You can add bright lights, you can make sure that you're awake when it's bright outside. You can open your windows and take advantage of when it's sunlight outside. Plants do the same thing. They can't up and move and they can't add extra lights or something, but they adapt to the sunlight. In their universe, if they are in an environment that is diminished, they actually grow their leaves larger so they can take in more of that light, temperature, rain levels. They adapt as needed, take only what you need and give back when you can. Plants don't suck up extra nutrients to have them just. Just in case. They take what they need and what they don't need, they give back. They take in carbon dioxide they give back oxygen. That's a great thing. We can learn from this. We don't need a bunch of excess. A plant takes what it needs and it can, you know, reach what they might call self actualization. Just fine, thank you. Mind your circadian rhythms. And I talk about sleep and circadian rhythms a lot, but it is, they are so important because our circadian rhythms regulate our hormones. Our, our cortisol is supposed to be highest in the morning and lowest when it's time to go to sleep. Our sleep schedule is partly affected by our circadian rhythms. Our gonadal hormones are affected by our circadian rhythms. The same thing is true for plants. Did you know that plants during the day are involved in photosynthesis and at night they send all their sugars down to their roots for storage at night so they don't just get wasted overnight when they can't be used efficiently to photosynthesize. How cool is that? Inconsistent and inadequate nourishment of your body and mind will make you more susceptible to harm. During hard times. You need to have consistency. You need to have depth in the, in how you take care of yourself and the support systems. You don't want to have a couple kind of acquaintances there and assume you're always going to have support. You need to have solid friendships. You need to have solid health. You need to be taking care and nourishing your body, your mind and your relationships with plants. For example, if it rains inconsistently, or if you water inconsistently and you don't water well, the plants actually adapt. They grow all of their roots right at the surface. So yes, whenever there is water, they're able to suck it up really quick. But it also works in reverse. When it's droughty, when you're not watering it, those roots are right there. So their water is being evaporated or taken away a lot faster so they're more susceptible to harm. And if you water deeply and regularly, like twice a week, you water deeply instead of shallowly every day, the plant actually sends down deeper roots and is able to sustain itself. During times of inclement weather, you impact the environment and the people around you. If you are in a God awful mood, it's going to impact the people around you. If you're in a happy mood, it's going to impact the people around you. If you, however you are, is going to impact them, however they are, it's going to impact you. Now you can choose what you do with that, but it is human nature to notice and be impacted by the Quote energies in the room, so to speak. In plants, we see this in companion planting. There are some plants that you can plant together and they actually make each other grow bigger and stronger. And some plants that you plant together and they stunt each other's growth. So we want to recognize that not everything goes. Goes together. Well, everyone has a function and a purpose. So be the best version of you. A tree is not going to be a tomato plant. Edible plants are going to be what they are. They are not necessarily going to be prized roses that smell amazing, and weeds, well, they're going to be weeds. They're going to be resilient, and they're going to grow and they are going to prevent erosion. They may not be something that is necessarily visually appealing in your mind, but they are persistent and they help maintain the health of the soil by preventing the erosion. So it's got a function. Even though we call it a weed, it's actually got a purpose, it's got a function, and it helps. Don't compare yourself to others, even others like you, because their situation and experiences are not the exact same as yours. When I planted my garden last year, before the deer ate it, I had an entire row of tomatoes. And each tomato plant grew a little bit differently. Some grew really big and tall and strong. Others floundered a little bit. And some just kind of went off on their own and tried to do their own thing. But they were all in that same row that I had prepared for the. For the tomato bed. What does that tell me? That tells me that every single plant was getting a slightly different amount of light, a slightly different amount of water, and the microbiome where their roots were was slightly different. If one person or ideology takes over, it can choke out everything around it and totally change the environment. In plants. We see this with things like kudzu. When kudzu takes over, or in my area too, grapevines. Grapevines take over. They climb up plants and they crawl and they're really thick and they form this huge canopy and they're too heavy on a lot of trees. So they break a lot of trees, they suffocate a lot of plants, and they choke out the biodiversity. And that's not what you want. You need biodiversity. Giving is fine, but giving until it hurts is destructive. We've talked about this before, but we see this in nature. We see this with parasitic plants. There are some plants that actually take nutrients from their host. They will attach to the host plant and suck nutrients from it and drain the host plants. That's not what we want. We want to work symbiotically, we want to work synergistically, but we don't. We can't be giving more than we're getting back. And parasitic plants don't give back. As long as everyone respects each other's boundaries, you can peacefully coexist. Plants teach us that you shouldn't throw shade or poison the environment for others. When plants grow together, if one plant grows too large, then it is going to shade out the others, which may need more sun than they're getting and cause them to wither. So that's not okay. But if you plant them far enough away, if you respect the boundaries and say, okay, this plant is going to get to be 2ft wide, so I've got to give it a wider birth than this plant over here, that's going to be narrow and tall and respecting the different sizes and shapes, they can coexist. You don't have to plant only tomatoes with tomatoes. The same thing is true with roots. You can plant some things that are shallow rooted with other plants that tend to have deeper roots. That way you're taking advantage of different levels of the soil structure and you're able to plant more and a smaller space. If you have to try too hard to keep yourself going, maybe it's not the right environment. We, we see this with plants all the time. I have tried for years to grow lavender and I love lavender. And I've tried four or five different types of lavender growing it and it never survives. It always gets mildewy and kind of withers. It is not a good environment. Whatever I'm doing to it, I am not able to effectively grow lavender. Same thing with blueberries. Blueberries require a very acidic soil, an acidic environment, and it's really hard to create that in Clay, Tennessee. Mess. I can't even call it soil. So it's important to recognize that different plants need different environments, just like different people do. I am not going to thrive generally in a super big city. I don't, I wouldn't be motivated and I probably wouldn't be happy over the long haul in somewhere like New York city or Washington D.C. or even downtown Nashville. I'm a country girl. I like my space, I like my critters, love my chickens. That's the environment where I flourish. Other people would hate living out here and they want to be able to walk to everything and they love being in the middle of everything. Cool. That is awesome. We all have different environmental needs and knowing what your needs are can help you move toward your version of a rich and meaningful life. When you're stuck in a less ideal environment, sometimes you have to adapt to survive. I mentioned earlier that if plants are not getting enough light, either because they're being shaded or because they have started to produce leaves and things before the spring actually starts, when you're not having as many hours of daylight, they will produce bigger leaves. So things like stinging nettle. The first round of leaves on stinging nettle tend to be two to three times bigger than the subsequent leaves on the stinging nettle because it stays green most of the year. And it produces those leaves early, early, early in the spring, like March, March 1st, end of February. So we're still having really short days at that point. So it needs to drink up as much sunlight as it possibly can. And legginess, as I mentioned, if the plants are not getting enough light, some will grow tall and thin and reach out towards the light. But that makes them leggy, which is another term for tall and thin and too weak in, in this particular context. And they're very susceptible to injury. Think about times that you've been walking through the forest and you've seen a tree that instead of growing straight up, grew out and kind of around it, reached for the light. Some plants do well as understory plants, like dogwoods, but other plants really need that direct sunlight. So they're actually, they actually will alter their shape and move toward that light. It's really cool. And it's important for us to figure out, you know, how can we adapt if we're stuck in an environment we can't move right now for some reason, or we can't change jobs, how can we adapt to survive? Plants also turn toward the sun, which same thing for us. We need to look towards the things that nourish us. The light at the end of the tunnel, the bright side of things. Now, I'm not saying be toxically optimistic. That's not helpful. But it's important when we're feeling stressed to also recognize those things that are going well. That's part of hardiness. Recognize that this thing right here, right now may suck. And these other things in my life are really going okay in order to keep the channel going. It is super helpful if we get support from you. You can donate@docsnipes.com donate become a member of the YouTube channel@docsnipes.com YouTube purchase a super thanks on videos that you find particularly helpful, or something that costs nothing at all, is to share these videos with friends and on social media the more eyeballs we get on the videos, the more revenue we're able to generate from ads to support the channel. So back to those lessons. Experiences shape you, and intentional experiences can help you prune yourself into the person you want to be. Think about bonsai trees in yourself. You may start growing these little random branches. I'm interested in this and I'm interested in this. And if you give some of them attention, you may realize that, hey, I'm good at that. So you strengthen that branch. Other times you may give it a little attention and realize, yeah, I'm kind of weak in that, and that's not something I want to devote energy to. So I'm going to prune that back. I'm not going to focus on that for right now. And that adjusts how you're spending the limited amount of energy you have. Abrupt change or extreme stress is jarring and can weaken you and make you more vulnerable. In the winter, we often start seedlings inside. Then before we move them outside, we go through a process called hardening, where we slowly expose them to outside temperatures and wind and sunlight. Because going from artificial light and virtually no wind to bright afternoon sunlight is very jarring for the plant. And it can often will kill plants if they are not slowly acclimated to it. Same thing is true for us. It is very jarring, and it takes a lot of energy to adapt to major changes to. So we need to recognize that. And if we're going through an abrupt change, know that we may be more vulnerable to stress, to depression, to anxiety, to irritability, and be compassionate with ourselves. Even things that are good changes, like bringing home a new baby, there's a lot to adjust to during that, and recognizing that is important. Hardening off can buffer you against stress. If you can gradually make those changes instead of just jumping in the deep end, it can buffer against stress and make the transition easier. But that's not always possible. Healing or pruning wounded or weak parts improves your health and resilience, but it takes time. Sometimes we have parts of us, whether they're physical parts or mental parts, that are wounded and maybe need to be what. What I'll call pruned. We need to resolve them. Like grief, it's a part of us. And then when we resolve it, it's kind of like pruning back that wounded branch so it can. The whole plant, the whole person can become healthier. And healing is another thing that plants do. We had a willow tree that our lovely donkeys decided to eat all of the Bark off of, and the bark is the protective coating. And they start. The plant started to really struggle. And, you know, I wrapped it up and took care of it as much as I could. And over the course of a few weeks, the plant actually, the tree actually responded by kind of scabbing over and healing. It was really awesome. We see the same thing in trees. When they splice root stock onto certain trees and you see that the stems will actually meld together. They will heal together and form, I guess what you'd call a new plant, which is kind of cool. But it's important to remember these things take time. You can bandage a wound or you can work on healing a wound, whether it's on a plant or a human, whether it's physical or emotional. But it takes time. Don't expect things to happen overnight. You only have a certain amount of energy, and what you devote it to will change. I mentioned with plants, when they first sprout, they devote all their energy to sprouting and growing roots and leaves. Some will continue to produce more leaves because they're green, leafy plants. Others will change at a certain point and start developing flowers so they can produce fruit so they can reproduce. We do the same thing when we're children. We devote a certain amount of energy to different things than we do when we're adults. But even as adults, things will change. When you were young, before you had children, you devoted time and energy to different things than when you were raising a family. When you're finished raising a family, you've got that empty nest. The amount of energy you're devoting to things is going to change again. You can be alone without being lonely. And this is something that a lot of people struggle with in, in. In human life. But we want to look from look at plants. You can have this lone oak tree growing in the middle of the forest or, you know, chrysanthemum or something else out there all by itself growing. It doesn't have any friends, but it is thriving. It is. It has found synergy with that that is around it. And so it's important to recognize that plants don't require other plants like them in order to be happy. They can be happy wherever they are. Your enemies don't always fight fair. Having a support system is necessary in a hostile environment. I mentioned last year that the deer decimated my garden. So the deer, in this particular case, they were the enemies. They came in and they just ate everything. A support system would be the gardener that comes in and puts up fencing to keep the deer out if they find out about it before the deer have decimated the whole garden. Good defenses will keep away predators and attract pollinators. A cool thing about plants is some plants are they smell icky. And a lot of plants like herbs, you know, things that have a strong smell keep away predators like rabbits and deer, but they attract bees so they can reproduce. So your good defenses are going to keep away the people that will do you harm, but they're going to attract people into your life that are going support you and help you flourish. Timing is everything. Sometimes you need to just go dormant for a bit, rest, recharge. That's really important. Whether you're going dormant like the plant does at night when it sends its sugars down to it root, down to its roots, or you're going dormant during the winter like the plant does when it just kind of, you know, the top level, everything above the surface dies off because it's too cold, and it conserves its energy until the environment becomes hospitable again, and then it blooms and grows again. Ultimately, plants can teach us a lot. So when you encounter a challenge in your life, when you encounter distress, consider asking yourself, wwpd. What would plants do?