The Purpose of Pruning
I was on my back patio this weekend cutting back some vines and although I had been putting this off, it actually turned out to be quite meditative. The more I cut away, the more my mind began to wander, and a flurry of different– what I call “nudges” I had collected throughout my week, started to come together with this powerful message.
As I was cutting away the old, lifeless vines I realized how relatable this is to life.
Have you ever been at a point where you try and try to meet a goal or change your circumstances and it seems like you’ll never see progress? We want to see change but what’s standing in our way is often our unwillingness to let go of our old patterns and ways of living. For lasting change, we must be radical; we must eliminate the old to make space for the new. The weight of your current and past tendencies, although they are familiar will eventually weigh you down. There’s a space between where you are and where you want to be. In order to change, that gap needs to shrink before the change you wish to make no longer takes any effort. One of those nudges I previously mentioned was an idea I heard from Ed Mylett’s podcast that said the more we allow the “dysfunction” and poor behavior to stick around, the more it drains you. It affects your creativity, productivity, and drains your energy. Like the vine, it has less room to grow if the old dead branches weigh it down.
It’s been said, “Anyone who thinks they can always do what they’ve always done is a fool.”
Furthermore, as I was cutting away at the dead branches I actually started to feel bad as the new growth began to cling to the old. I started to question if I was doing the right thing because I was now taking away the structure the new growth needed to climb. In that moment, it reflected such a perfect picture of our habits once again. When there are habits we are trying to break in order to form new ones, those new practices have to become stronger so they can stand on their own. These practices need to grow more substantial “trunks” or “branches” if you will. This is true in our lives if we ever want to make lasting change. We have to eliminate the old in order to grow stronger and healthier.
There’s a time for everything as Ecclesiastes says, “A time to tear down and a time to build up.” That’s sort of what it felt like; as if what I was taking away from the plant was actually tearing it down, but this was necessary in order for it to build back stronger in time.
Now, I can be a bit of a nerd so of course I had to look up the benefits of pruning and this is what I found:
Pruning is necessary to avoid potential harm, like disease or pests. “Pests” to me sounded like the tendency we have to go back to old habits. If we allow space for us to return to what’s comfortable we stifle our ability to grow.
In addition, pruning not only creates space for more growth to be possible but it actually produces a better quality fruit or flower. How often do we decide on a goal and add some new habits but still dabble with our old patterns? This leaves room to easily go back to our old ways. If we consider the time it takes to make lasting change and some experts say it takes at least 90 days to form a habit, we are only prolonging the process if we continue to let some things slide. Instead, we must make our minds up and set them solely on the goal and what will get us there. If we do, it allows for the change we make to produce a new, better quality of life for ourselves and lessens the potential to go back to the former ways of living.
"People are like vines ... We are born and we grow. Like vines, people also need a tree to cling to, to give them support."
~ Elizabeth Kata
So there you have it, a new way of looking at vines and a tiny lesson on pruning. I love when life inspires you to view aspects of living with fresh eyes. This picture of what it means to get rid of the old in order to make room for the new may sound obvious but it just goes to show how we at times need a reminder to look around and see where we may be stunting our own growth or allowing ourselves to become stuck. We can’t move on to new heights until we cut ties with what’s weighing us down.
I hope this image was as helpful for you as it was for me.
Xoxo,
Tera