let nature help you
To rediscover yourself and take advantage of all that nature has to teach us,
follow what we call “nature’s recipe for restoration.”
These are the basic steps we took when we restored our property.
Identify the invasives in your life
What’s getting in the way of you being your best self? Is it a job situation that isn’t working? Are you in a bad relationship? Write these down or say them out loud. Give them words so that you can start to regain your own power over them. Choose one or two to remove at a time – you don’t have to do it all. We would have been overwhelmed if we’d tried to tackle everything needed to restore our property all at once. To this day we work on small sections over time.
Be brave enough to own what you love about yourself
This is not an act of arrogance. It’s self-indulgence and grace of the best kind. Nature showcases its glory every chance it gets. Think about birds flying south in a perfect V-formation, a flower growing in the crack of a sidewalk, or the quiet sound of snow falling in the early morning before the noises of the day get going.
Are you taking time to notice the beautiful natural images and sounds that are uniquely you? What makes your heart sing? What is it that makes you uniquely you that maybe you are afraid to move forward with? Challenge yourself to list at least five things you love about yourself. We think you’ll learn to list even more!
Welcome a little prescribed disruption in your environment even if it's painful or scary
What are you willing to change? This is the hard part. Remember the story of the controlled fires? Write down one change you can make to your current situation that will help you get rid of the invasives in your life. Then, do it! Take the first step to fix or get out of a bad relationship or job situation. Embrace the disruption that may happen. Consider it an opportunity to be a better you. Seek help from friends and professionals. You don’t have to do this alone!
Show up for yourself every day
You don’t have to be perfect. Life is in a constant state of change and everything is imperfect, impermanent and incomplete. Nature is in a constant state of transition and it’s beautiful, just like you. Start small with a simple daily mantra or prayer that acknowledges your presence and state of being. Sit comfortably with both feet flat on the floor or ground. Open a window or listen to a recording of birds, water flowing, wind, rain or something similar and let the natural sounds surround you. Close your eyes. Quiet your mind and focus on your breathing. Count to four as you breath in. Count to four as you exhale. Keep this up for two minutes. (Set a timer if needed.)
Step back when all the hard work is done, smile and celebrate
We know that amazing things will unfold all around you!
All of the images on this web site are the property of Jon and Susan Cross. They cannot be used or duplicated without written permission.
Privacy Policy Who we are Our website address is: https://www.zenvironment.life What personal data we collect and why we collect it Comments When visitors leave comments on the site we collect the data shown in the comments form, and also the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection. An anonymized string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available here: https://automattic.com/privacy/. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment. Media If you upload images to the website, you should avoid uploading images with embedded location data (EXIF GPS) included. Visitors to the website can download and extract any location data from images on the website. Contact forms Cookies If you leave a comment on our site you may opt-in to saving your name, email address and website in cookies. These are for your convenience so that you do not have to fill in your details again when you leave another comment. These cookies will last for one year. If you have an account and you log in to this site, we will set a temporary cookie to determine if your browser accepts cookies. This cookie contains no personal data and is discarded when you close your browser. Embedded content from other websites Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website. These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracing your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website. Analytics Who we share your data with Your data is never shared with or sold to anyone. How long we retain your data If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so we can recognize and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue. For users that register on our website (if any), we also store the personal information they provide in their user profile. All users can see, edit, or delete their personal information at any time (except they cannot change their username). Website administrators can also see and edit that information. When you log in, we will also set up several cookies to save your login information and your screen display choices. Login cookies last for two days, and screen options cookies last for a year. If you select “Remember Me”, your login will persist for two weeks. If you log out of your account, the login cookies will be removed. What rights you have over your data If you have an account on this site, or have left comments, you can request to receive an exported file of the personal data we hold about you, including any data you have provided to us. You can also request that we erase any personal data we hold about you. This does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes. Where we send your data Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service.