The Garden Within

Discussion Questions

How does thinking of your thoughts as plants change the way you respond to your thoughts? Reflect on the question by Dr. Anita, “What if you responded to painful thoughts as evidence that something within you needed to be nurtured or cared for?” Use Page 10 as reference
Thinking of your heart as the soil, your thoughts as plants, and your actions as the fruit. How does your garden within is currently looking like? Feel free to explain it with words, draw it, or create it as you want. This will be an ongoing process of looking at our garden within and how they change through this journey.

- What else would you like to grow in each life zone? Use questions in page 66 for guidance
- Are there relationships, jobs, guilty pleasures or distractions that need to be plucked? What steps do you need to take to remove them?
- Let's practice body awareness! Do exercise in page 68 💜
- Answer questions at the bottom of page 70
- Answer questions at the bottom of page 71 and top of page 72 to evaluate the current seeds in your heart and the seeds that you want to plant now

Dr. Anita said, “I think it’s wonderful that we live in a time when people are so aware of the importance of healing, but we are more than the sum of our broken parts”… How would you define who you are if you focus on other areas of yourself that are not just your broken parts?
Reflect on the current situation of your life zones – Relationships, Purpose, and Legacy. Answer the reflection questions Dr. Anita provides in pages 37, 38, 40, and 42.
If you were to frame your current life intentions (goals) utilizing the relationships, purpose, and legacy zones as Dr. Anita did for her coworker Casey, what would they be?

What brought you to this book? What are you hoping to learn from this book?
How has war with your emotions looked like in your life? Reference pages xviii-xix

How have you seen the “emotion avoidance / disconnecting from your feelings culture” show up in your own personal life?
How have you seen “emotion avoidance / disconnecting from your feelings” impact your spiritual life? How have you seen that feeling your emotions has impacted your spiritual life?
As we see in Jesus’s life, moments of physical and emotional pain led to moments of incredible power. Pages 20-21... In your own personal life, what moments of emotionally intense expressions have been closely followed by moments of undeniable power? Consider moments you have labeled as “failure” that can be reframed to be described as moments of undeniable power.

"Goals should not be gathered, they should be grown" and "Caring for the garden within means moving from a conquest framework to a cultivator framework - from the never-ending war to abundance. External motivators will take us only so far if our emotional well-being can't support the things we hope to grow" p. 46.... Is this a perspective you had previously adopted or is it new to you? What are your thoughts and emotions about it?
Let's do a soil check... Here are some guidance questions ➡ How is the soil of your heart in each area of your life? How are sadness, anger, and fear present in your life? How are faith, hope, and love present in your life? How are sadness, anger, fear, faith, hope, and love interacting in your life? Where do you find good ground in your heart? I know this is a broad question but the goal is that you meet yourself where you are at and start there 💜

How does thinking about "emotions precede thoughts" instead of "thoughts precedes emotions" changes things for you? How does this change how you renew your mind?
Understanding thinking as photosynthesis was mind-blowing to me. How did you felt about this part? What do you think about it? Pages 82 and 83
Look at picture