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Informative Articles

4 Strength-Based Keys to a Rewarding Life
Four Strength-Based Keys to a Rewarding Life By Dr. Mike Shery Nurture a Strength-Based Consciousness Your most valuable traits are those that predispose you to have a deep satisfaction with your life, instead of just transitory pleasure. Chris...

An Introduction to Bach Flower Essences Part I – The Twelve Healers
What are Bach Flower Essences? Pioneered by Dr. Edward Bach in the 1930’s, a flower essence is a liquid preparation imprinted with the etheric pattern of a particular flower. Like a homeopathic remedy, the liquid – usually spring water with a...

Can’t Lose Weight? Syndrome X May Be the Culprit
“I’ve put on 40 pounds in one year!” “It doesn’t matter how much I workout, I can’t lose weight.” “My doctor must think I’m eating pizzas in the closet.” With nearly 4 million Americans weighing in at over 300 pounds, is it any wonder the...

Chicago Drug Rehab Long Term Help For a Real Recovery
The central location of the city of Chicago has made it a hub for the distribution of drugs in the Midwest, though much of the problem remains upon the city's streets. The use of crack cocaine is the city's biggest drug problem - since 1990,...

Detoxification and your skin
Learn to help your body glow from the inside out. Nourish it with foods that are pure and natural. Remove harmful substances from your diet and you will notice a difference in the way you look and feel. What is detoxification? Detoxification is...

How To Create Supreme States Of Mind That Empower You To Make Magnificent Changes...
One of the most important and useful aspects of using NLP to master yourself is in the art of creating resource states. Resource states are states of mind that can be used to positively re-program your past, present and future. One of the classic...

Tools for Constructing the Road to Success
Too many times in the pursuit of our dreams, we loose sight of the total picture and instead settle on a small piece of it. A job, any job, whether it is in the conventional job market or any one of a number of work from home ventures all...

YOU DON'T HAVE TO SPEND A FORTUNE BE YOUNG LOOKING!
As we age facial muscles weaken, and skin begins to sag. But just as gym workouts can promote the body's youthful strength and suppleness, facial exercise - based on the same principles of dynamic resistance - can strengthen facial muscles. If...

 
Life is not a hardship to be endured

Life is always here, ready to teach us a "special" lesson of some sort or another, if only we would take the time to notice.

The street I live on in Tokyo is so narrow, that cars can barely traverse from top to bottom. Because of this, a system for lining up everyone's bicycles on one side of the street is necessary and important. My wife, my daughter, and myself, park our bicycles across the street in front of my neighbor's house. To me it seems unfair for my neighbor to have all this clutter in front of his house, but so be it. My neighbor's house sits one foot nine inches from the curb. Pretty cozy, isn't it?

Eight years ago, an innocuous looking weed-tree began growing right next to where I park my bike. You might think that a single weed-tree growing where my bike sits is not a big deal but let me explain.

This little weed-tree started life in a humble manner, sprouting up in a crack between the sidewalk and the wall. Initially it seemed too trivial to pay attention to or pull out, and initially I even cheered it on while marveling at what a hardy pioneer it was.

The little monster grew quite rapidly from day one, and after about six months it was wrapping itself around the front wheel of my bike and birds were coming to rest on it. All of this activity led to bird droppings on my bike seat, which led me to take out my pruning scissors and cut the darn thing about six inches above ground level.

Ignoring the weed in the first place was my first mistake. Cutting it down six inched above ground level was my second. It grew back with a vengeance! In no time at all it had more branches than before, and the base coming out of the crack became more tree like. Foolishly, I was lax again in my approach, and within a couple of months, bird droppings started


winding up on my bike seat again.

This time around, needing hedge clippers to get the job done, I cut the weed-tree down as close to the sidewalk as possible, and I must say that I had a sense of "Good riddance!" when I did so.

Well, I think it was the very next morning, or two days at the most, when I went outside to find the bloody thing sprouting new growth. This time I quickly dug away at it with a small shovel, but I couldn't unearth it, and sure enough, new growth quickly answered the call to arms.

At this point I was beginning to concede a shift in the balance of power. Regardless of my superior education and specialized negotiation skills, the weed-tree was prevailing.

What to do?

I knew by now that there was only one viable course of action. First, I found a new place to park my bike. Next, I went out and purchased some plant food and liberally watered and fed the weed-tree every day. My little beauty grew gloriously and I soon began to lovingly trim it into a "bonsai" shape!

Some years later it is looking truly gorgeous!

Two questions come to my mind, and I wonder if they come to yours as well.

1. Can a weed-tree that is nurtured, praised, and pruned, still be considered to be a weed-tree?
2. Isn't life much grander once we realize that so much of what goes on is not under our control?

I only hope my spirit, can be half as strong as the tree that has offered itself to me.

About the Author

Charlie Badenhop is the originator of Seishindo, an Aikido instructor, NLP trainer, and Ericksonian Hypnotherapist. Benefit from his thought-provoking ideas and a new self-help Practice every two weeks, by subscribing to his complimentary newsletter "Pure Heart, Simple Mind" at http://www.seishindo.org/anger/index.html .