Ep #19: Lessons I Learned from a Houseplant

You are listening to the overthinkers guide to joy episode 19 this week I'm going
to talk all about lessons. I learned from a houseplant. Let's dive in Hey there,
you are listening to the overthinkers guide to joy This is a podcast for
overthinkers overachievers Perfectionists type a stressed out anxious people who just
want to calm down and feel better. I'm your host, certified life coach, Jackie
de Crinis
Hey there, and welcome back. So this week, I thought I would do something a little
bit differently. I think I'm going to tell you guys a story about lessons I've
learned from from my houseplant. I know that sounds super weird. But here's the
deal. So I come from a long line of gardening hobbyists,
meaning my grandmother loved to garden any free moment that she had when she wasn't
working or taking care of her children or grandchildren. She was always in the
garden puttering and very proud of her flower beds and her garden. My brothers Both
love to garden. In fact, one of my brothers is a farmer on the big island of
Hawaii. He grows coffee and cacao and pineapple and all kinds of tropical fruit.
And he's self -taught. He loves it. It's amazing. And my other brother loves also
spending time in his gardens and buying plants, buying trees, growing flowers,
growing fruit and my mother was the same way. My mother loved growing tomatoes and
flowers and all kinds of things. So there's some genetic link for certain members of
my family who have the passion, patience and appreciation of gardening.
Whether it literally or metaphorically bears fruit or not, they just love being in
the garden. And then there's me. And while I have two acres of a beautiful
property, I can't take credit for a single blade of grass. A lot of it was here
when I bought the home. And the rest of it was 100 % done by people who know what
they're doing professionally and by my husband who also enjoys gardening and
landscaping and all things. And I get the benefit of looking at beautiful trees and
flowers and, and things, but you just don't ever want me to take care of a single
plant or house plant, outdoor plant or anything. I just,
I will kill it not on purpose, but just, I just don't trust myself with plants.
Illustrative of the fact that I don't have a green thumb. Many years ago, when I
was dating my second husband, he came over for a family dinner and I had come home
early and set the table with a tablecloth and china and silver and come home to
prepare this, I think it was a holiday dinner, this family holiday dinner. And it
was really hard for me to even get out of work and go to the supermarket and
prepare all this food and get the table set. And I had an orchid in my dining
room at the time. I don't even remember if I had gotten it as a gift or if I
had bought it myself. I'm not even sure where it came from. Maybe it came within
something else. Anyway, this orchid had not been looking good and I had been
watering it periodically and I noticed that it was really looking much better And I
had placed the orchid as the centerpiece on my dining room table that night for the
family dinner. And so we're having this family dinner and people were very
complimentary about the food and the table looked beautiful. And I said, "Oh,
thanks." And then I mentioned, and you have to remember I was dating my now husband
for just a few months, like maybe six, eight months at this point. And I said,
and did you see my orchid? I brought it back to life. It was looking really
terrible a few weeks ago, and I'm really proud that like I figured it out. I think
it's coming back. I think it looks pretty good. And my now husband then boyfriend
said, you're kidding, right? And I was like, no, I think it looks much better.
I mean, it's not great, but it looks better than it did. And he said, you know,
that's a fake Orchid, right? And I go, "What are you talking about?" No,
it's not. It's absolutely a real orchid. And he touched it and he goes, "No,
the leaves are plastic and the orchid is silk. You've been watering and caretaking a
fake orchid for several weeks and I don't know what's scarier the fact that you've
been taking care of a fake orchid Or the fact that you actually think it's doing
better than it was. Anyway, my family broke out in hysterical laughter and I started
crying. Not like tears of embarrassment, but kind of laughing with them, kind of
laughing at myself. But I started crying because I realized that I was so stressed
out in my life that not only did I not know how to take care of a houseplant.
Not only did I not know the difference between a silk orchid and a real orchid,
but the fact that I actually thought it was doing better was I think illustrative
of just how overspent I was that I couldn't tell the difference and very much a
reflection of what was happening in my career, which was I was working too hard.
And I probably needed some tender loving care. And here I was projecting my care
for this orchid as, you know, doing something good for somebody else. I'm not even
sure. So anyway, that's my history with house plants. Is the only house plant that
I, I suppose, successfully ever took care of was my one money tree in Los Angeles
and the silk orchid that I thought I brought back to life. Anyway, that's a really
long back story to get to the meat of today's story, which is, it was my 40th
birthday and I had a party and my friends Pam and Marty brought me this beautiful
four -foot tall braided tree which had a big red ribbon and a big gorgeous pot and
they explained to me that it was called a money tree and it was supposed to be
good luck. And I'd never heard of a money tree. I just loved it. But I had this
momentary panic of, oh, dear, someone's giving me a houseplant and I am likely to
kill it. Now, the good news is my husband's really good with houseplants. So I
figured he'll take care of it and I'll just enjoy it. Anyway, so we had this
beautiful tree and it just was green and gorgeous. And the trunk, like I said,
was braided in the big, beautiful red ribbon lasted for years and the pot was
beautiful. And it was just, it made me so happy that it was like my houseplant.
And again, I attempted to take care of it. I think he told me, you know, put this
much water in and don't do it too much and what have you. And I probably followed
the instructions and most of the time did it. Although everyone's in a while, he'd
bark at me because I had over watered it and and the water would cascade out of
the bottom and be all over the floors. But for the most part, I did a pretty good
job taking care of my money tree. So when we moved from Los Angeles to Hawaii,
we ended up renting that house and I couldn't take the tree with me. There's very
strict rules about moving to Hawaii and you can't take agriculture with you. Like
they don't even let you apple into the, into the state, like very strict rules. So
the plant had to stay with my tenant and we ended up, it's a long story short,
but we ended up moving back to Los Angeles for a period of time and the tree did
not look good, but it held on. So it was such a healthy tree that even he
couldn't kill it. And that moved to a different place. And again, I was back and
forth commuting and our caretaker caretaker who would take care of our condominium
was assigned to watering this tree every time she came to check on our house and
it survived. And so I had this tree for 15 years and it was always beautiful and
it was always lovely and it always reminded me of my friends Pam and Marty and it
represented that I had this plant that I didn't kill and it was a money tree.
So, like, I felt this responsibility because it was a gift. I felt this
responsibility because I couldn't take it with me. And then I felt this
responsibility because it was supposed to represent the growth of money and
prosperity. And I had many prosperous years between the time that was given to me
and the time that I eventually moved to Hawaii full -time. So anyway, it was this
kind of badge of honor. Like, This tree existed and this tree was always growing
and always doing its best in spite of my, you know lack of attention because I was
back and forth and When we finally moved to Hawaii again, and we gave up our home
in Los Angeles Again, I couldn't bring the tree with me. So I wanted to replace my
money tree here in Hawaii And they're actually not that easy to find. They're not
actually called money trees, by the way. They're called Petura Aquaticus, which I
think means like the sweet water nut tree or water chestnut tree, although it
doesn't bear any fruit or chestnuts. But so I finally found a small one and I
brought it to my home. It was beautiful. It was much smaller than the original one
I had. It was beautiful and it was green and it was healthy. And I put it in my
dining room because I thought that was where it would get the most sunlight for
whatever reason. I thought it needed a lot of sunlight and I was wrong and it
quickly burned and was not doing well. So I moved it into it by the front door
and then it wasn't getting any sun. So its leaves started falling off. And then I
read an article that said, no, it actually should be in your office if you have a
home office, and which I do. And it should be in the southeast corner of your home
office, which ironically had just the right amount of sunlight and it started to do
great. But then like with every houseplant that I've ever had, I started
micromanaging it, meaning every time a leaf would fall off, I would, you know, give
turned yellow, I would want to transplant it. And so I was constantly either over
watering it or transplanting it or trimming it and putting fertilizer in it.
And I almost killed it. All the leaves started falling off, all the leaves starting
turning yellow. But I play this plant classical music every day.
I play classical music in my office every day because I like classical music. And I
also exercise in my office and my dog sleeps in my office. And so the plant gets
like a lot of love and attention and energy, animal energy and human energy and
music and light. And I just wasn't doing well. It was losing all its leaves and it
was sick. And So I bought it a bigger pot, I trimmed its roots,
I added new topsoil, I did all the things, and it was really sick.
And I started to feel like a failure because once again, a little bit of it was
tied to the metaphor. Like if I can't even take care of a money tree, how do I
ever expect to be profitable in my business? Which of course they're not it. But
part of it was my ego was attached to like, this was my tree. There's probably
hundreds of trees on my property, but this was my tree because it's my houseplant.
And I need to learn how to take care of a houseplant. So I'm reading all of these
articles. And the common denominator amongst all the articles after, you know, I did
all the other things like transplant it and get it a bigger pot and fertilize it
and talk to it and play classical music and make sure it's in the right light and
all the things was I was over watering it. So sometimes,
and this is where the metaphor comes in, sometimes in our effort to care for
something so deeply, whether it's our children or our spouse or our loved ones or
our friends or our animals or our plants or our business,
we can get to invested in the success of that entity,
that human being, that animal or that plant. And that's what was happening to me. I
was too attached to the success that I could have this plant and take care of it
and it would grow and it would be beautiful and it would survive. And what I
stopped doing was over -watering it, that was the first piece of advice from all the
articles I read. I let it dry out against my better judgment. I let it get dry.
And I let it just be. I let it do what it's supposed to do, which is just enjoy
the sun and enjoy the fresh air and not be messed with so much.
Not overthink it, overdo it, overfeed it, overwater it. And so the reason I'm
recording this podcast today is what is going on in your life where you might be
overdoing something that you want so badly that you're putting too much attention to
it or too much something to it. And where do you need to just pull back and just
trust that it will be? I think the success of my first money tree was,
well, first of all, I had this supervision of my husband who would tell me not to
overwater it. I don't know why I didn't learn that lesson on the second one, but
part of it was I didn't move it around a million times. I never planted it.
I didn't even fertilize it. I just let it be. I let it have its cycles. I let
its leaves drop. I let its leaves turn yellow. I let its leaves get spotted
sometimes. And the truth is, it just grew when it was ready. And all I needed to
do was make sure that it didn't get too dried out and give it water, but not too
much water. I just needed to let it be. So I think that this applies actually to
so many of my clients that I talk to. Like my clients who are trying to lose
weight and get in shape, and they feel like they're doing everything right, but it's
not happening fast enough or the scale up ticks a pound or two. And they want to
give up, or they want to do something radical, or they want to stop doing what was
working and just let it be. And it's the same for my entrepreneurial clients who
are trying to grow a business and make money. And they're working so hard.
They're working to the bone. They think about their jobs, their business 24 /7.
They're working seven days a week. They've lost their joy in what they're doing
because they think that if they spend any time doing other than working the
business, it won't succeed. And you need to rest.
We need to rest. Our houseplants need to rest. We can't just keep overwatering
everything. We have to give it a break and we have to give it time.
So that's true of relationships, personal relationships which have It's ebb and flow,
and it's easy to micromanage a relationship and think that every conversation means
something or every day has to be perfect. And it doesn't.
It's okay to just let things be. Let them rest, let them absorb the sunshine,
let them dry out a little bit, give them time to just be a houseplant.
So I thought I would share my very ungreen thumb with all of you today to let you
know that the lesson I learned from my houseplant is to just put it where it's
happy, water it when it's thirsty, love it when you can, and then just let it be
and watch it grow. Okay friends That's it for today and as always,
I thank you for listening and I look forward to talking to you again soon. Have a
great week and bye for now. If you want to learn more tips about managing your
stress and how to manage your overthinking brain, just go to my website and sign up
for my weekly newsletter at jackiedecrinis.com. That's J -A -C -K -I -E -D -E -C -R -I -N
-I -S .com. You can also find out more at jackiedecrinis.com.
Thank you for listening to this episode of Overthinkers Guide to Joy. If you like
what was offered in today's episode, I would love you to leave a review and
subscribe or follow wherever you get your podcasts.