Ep. 292 What Pulling Weeds Taught Me About Facing What I'd Rather Avoid

What if the little things you keep avoiding are actually preparing you for the hard things in life?

We all have ordinary tasks we'd rather put off, but those everyday moments can become opportunities to build resilience and create calm.

In this  mini-episode, you'll discover:

1. How doing one small thing you'd rather avoid can strengthen your coping skills and make it easier to face life's bigger challenges.

🎧 Take 4 minutes to discover how an ordinary chore can become an extraordinary coping skill—you're worth it.

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About the Host: 

MJ Murray Vachon, LCSW, is a seasoned clinician, educator, and host of the podcast Creating Midlife Calm, recognized by Maria Shriver as a “Listen of the Week.” Over the past 40 years, MJ has led more than 50,000 therapy sessions and developed the Inner Challenge mental wellness program and the Inner Challenge Master Class, practical tools for emotional regulation, self-awareness, and resilience taught for more than 30 years in junior high schools and at the University of Notre Dame for freshman football players. Through her podcast, teaching, and coaching, MJ helps people build calmer lives, stronger relationships, and healthier communities.

Creating Midlife Calm is a podcast designed to guide you through the challenges of midlife, tackling issues like anxiety, low self-esteem, feeling unworthy, procrastination, and isolation, while offering strategies for improving relationships, family support, emotional wellbeing, mental wellness, and parenting, with a focus on mindfulness, stress management, coping skills, and personal growth to stop rumination, overthinking, and increase confidence through self-care, emotional healing, and mental health support. 

Transcript

M.J. Murray Vachon LCSW 0:00

Welcome to Creating Calm in the Wild. I'm MJ Murray Vachon, and this is your reminder that calm isn't always found when life settles down. It's actually something you can create right in the middle of the wild. Today, I'm doing this recording while standing in one of my flower beds, looking at a job I've been avoiding for longer than I'd like to admit. Most of us think about avoiding big things, difficult conversations, health concerns, finances. But today, I wanna talk about avoiding the little things. You know those pesky tasks that sit in the back of your brain saying, "Do me, do me, do me." Maybe for you, it's cleaning out a closet or a refrigerator, making a will. For me, it's weeding. I have a lot of flower beds, which of course means I have a lot of weeds. I really don't like weeding. Maybe it's because my mother made us weed as kids. Although I did spend my high school summers working on a lawn crew making $2.65 an hour pulling weeds, so technically I think that makes me a professional. What is my thing with weeding? Well, besides the obvious, it hurts my back and I'd rather be doing something fun, there's something else. Unlike some of my friends, when I get done weeding, I don't feel a great sense of satisfaction. What I usually think is this: well, that's how it should look. And then it hit me. That's actually my problem. Somewhere in my mind, I think the weeds shouldn't be there in the first place. say it out loud standing on mulch holding my iPhone sounds completely ridiculous. Weeds are part of having flowers, just like health problems, relationship struggles, and kids with challenges are part of life. I know myself well enough to know if I wait until I feel like weeding, it will not happen. So I've created an infrastructure to save me from myself. Next to my front door is a bucket, gloves, and a shovel. When that voice says, "Do me, do me, do me," or maybe my sister calls me and we talk on the phone, I head outside and weed for about 30 minutes. Today I did what I call vanity weeding. I settled in the landscape area near the end of the driveway. It's not the prettiest flower bed. I prefer weeding where I feel like I'm saving flowers from weeds so I can be a heroic weeder. This spot does not offer that opportunity. So armed with a mug of coffee, I start pulling weeds. It is so boring. It is so tedious, and my back is reminding me that I'm not 16 and no one is paying me. But I stayed with it, even though, to be honest, I thought about quitting continuously. But there were two nice moments. A creepy crawly bug carrying something about twice its size kind of awed me. And once when I looked up, there was the golden dome of Notre Dame sitting about five miles away in the distance. But the 30 minutes I thought it would take turned into 70, and when it was done, there it was again, the same thought. That's how it should look. No World Cup moment, no dramatic sense of accomplishment. I'm not even sure I got a hit of dopamine. But as I was walking up the driveway, I remembered something my college advisor told me many years ago. If you can get yourself to do the little things you don't like, it becomes easier to do the hard things you don't like." Maybe that's one of the hidden gifts of weeding, not the flower bed, not the weeds, but the practice. The practice of facing something you'd rather avoid. The practice of staying with something that isn't exciting. The practice of doing what needs to be done even when you don't feel like doing it. Thanks for listening, and I hope you join me Monday for my full-length episode. And until then, keep creating calm in the wild.