We have a peach tree in our backyard. We planted it nearly eight years ago. Some years it produces delicious, juicy peaches. Other years there is no fruit – I’m not sure why.

When there is fruit, it is always peaches.

Never apples.

Never pears.

Not a single lemon.

Unfortunately, never once has the peach tree produced money…because, of course, “money doesn’t grow on trees.” But if it did, I would go pick some and put hardwood floors in my family room.

You plant a peach tree – you get peaches. Makes sense. None of us question that.

This is a true principle.  We understand this law in the natural world – we accept it and work with it.  But so few understand this principle, this law, in the mental world – and yet its function there is just as simple and unchanging.

“Every thought seed sown or allowed to fall into the mind, and to take root there, produces its own, blossoming sooner or later into act, and bearing its own fruitage of opportunity and circumstance.  Good thoughts bear good fruit, bad thoughts bad fruit.”  (James Allen)

Kinda makes you stop and think about what you are thinking about.

Am I thinking kind thoughts…because it will lead to kind actions.

Am I thinking generous thoughts…because it will surely lead me to be generous.

Am I thinking happy thoughts…because I will be happier if I do.

“Good thoughts and actions can never produce bad results; bad thoughts and action can never produce good results.  This is but saying that nothing come from corn but corn, nothing from nettles but nettles.”  (James Allen)

…or peaches from peach trees.

When we do have a harvest of peaches, I make peach pie.  It is delicious and wonderful.  Imagine the harvest of our positive, happy, kind, wonderful thoughts!  I am certain it will be equally wonderful!

Several years ago, I was preparing to write for my 7^th CD – If I Only Had Today.  While writing the previous six CDs – I followed a pattern.

Not the best pattern.

Certainly NOT a pattern that is effective or one that I would recommend.

A pattern, that today, I would work on eliminating from my life.

It was a pattern filled with questioning and doubt.  No sooner would I pick up pen and paper to begin writing, and I would question my ability to write.  I doubted whether or not I was a good songwriter.  I remember countless nights sitting at the piano in my living room and crying, doubting.  My kind-hearted husband would come in everytime and gently tell me to “Buck up little songwriter, you can do it.”

I repeated this pattern over and over.

But as I approached the 7th CD…I decided to take a different approach.

I was not going to doubt.

I was not going to question.

I was not going to allow the negative thoughts to have even a speck of space in my mind.

I reassured myself that the Lord had helped me write six other CDs and He could help me write a 7^th.  I wasn’t going to worry or fret or cry or complain.  I was going to trust and have faith and pray and have hope.  Whenever a doubt-filled, unbelieving, negative thought came into my head, I chased it away with a prayer.  I chased it away with words like, “You can do this Hilary.  The Lord will help you.  Just try.”  I turned it over to Heavenly Father and tried to be positive.

I had a Completely. Different. Writing. Experience.  I didn’t spend one night sitting in the living room crying.  (I did it in the kitchen – JUST KIDDING!!)  I didn’t doubt myself.  My writing improved.  I felt like it was my best work so far.  It seemed easy.  Nothing changed – except my attitude, the way I thought.  I simply refused to entertain the negative thoughts.  I had a plan of replacing them each time they crept in.

I look back on the experience of writing that CD and I feel happy.  I feel like two mountains were climbed  -

…a CD was created

and

…a pattern of doubt was replaced with a pattern of hope and faith.

It felt good.

Positive thinking feels good.

Its that simple.

James Allen, author of As a Man Thinketh wrote, “A man’s mind may be likened to a garden, which may be intelligently cultivated or allowed to run wild; but whether cultivated or neglected, it must, and will, bring forth.  If no useful seeds are put into it, then an abundance of useless weed seeds will fall therein, and will continue to produce their kind.”

Here, let me show you.

I have two garden boxes in my backyard – one has raspberry plants.  I think my neighbor got tired of me hinting about how yummy their raspberries must taste and finally offered us raspberry starts from their garden.  Boy, how the plants have grown and thrived!  Just yesterday I picked about 40 plump, red, sweet berries.  The bees were even kind enough not to sting me whilst I gathered.

Then there is the other box.

I haven’t planted anything in it.  I actually tried – my 1st grader brought home a pumpkin start at the end of the school year.  We prepared the soil, set the drip lines, placed the fragile pumpkin plant in the ground…and ten minutes later the dog dug it up.

I was so mad.  (A goldfish would’t have done that.)

Demotivated, I haven’t planted anything else.

I took a picture of the garden boxes today.

On the left, healthy, full raspberry bushes.

On the right…weeds.

Weeds, weeds and more weeds.

I didn’t plant any of the weeds – not a single one.  But they grew.  Unwanted, annoying, ugly weeds.

Allen goes on to explain, “Just as a gardener cultivates his plot, keeping it free from weeds, and growing the flowers and fruits which he requires, so may a man tend the garden of his mind, weeding out all the wrong, useless and impure thoughts, and cultivating toward perfection the flowers and fruits of right, useful, and pure thoughts.  By pursuing this process, a man sooner or later discovers that he is the master gardener of his soul, the director of his life.”

He is right.  Both gardens did “bring forth.”  I like the garden on the left a whole lot better than the one on the right.

I am convinced that what we plant and nurture in our minds becomes evident in our lives.  Positive thoughts produce positive results.  A neglected mind, allowed to run wild, will produce “wrong, useless and impure thoughts.”  Weeds.  Weeds of the mind.

But we have the choice.  That’s the amazing thing – We. Get. To. Plant.  WE are the gardners of our mind.  As we plant seeds that are”right, useful and pure thoughts,” we will reap great rewards and accomplishments.

Seed Ideas

I can

I will

I am strong

I am determined

I am meant to succeed gloriously

Plant.  They will grow.

(…and so will you.)