During COVID, I wrote a Conversation piece around the importance of growing things called “Plant.” Planting – and seeing growing things – changes us and the world. This Spring, the trees and flowers have particularly enthralled me, perhaps because I’ve been walking more, as I’ve watched the world – or so it seems – bud and bloom. Breathtaking.
Plus, during the winter someone gave me cuttings for four houseplants so I’m now, again, a proud plant owner.
But along with the natural world, I’ve recently been reminded of what we plant in each other. This can be negative and positive.
Hinted at in the Conversation “Be Litter Free*” in the book Moxie Moves, is the negative energy we sometimes inflict on those around us. False ideas. Misplaced anger. Helpful suggestions that aren’t terribly helpful. Like the piece of paper that falls out of your pocket, some of this might be inevitable and is certainly unintentional. But recognizing this as, if you will, a way we plant weeds in our world is useful. Weeds, by definition, are what is growing where we don’t want them to be.
However, focusing on the positive things we might plant can mitigate some of this. For it is our positive plantings that do change the world. Kind of like the marigolds you plant with your vegetables to attract bees and, so we’re told, deter many pests. Plus, while they won’t keep the deer away, marigolds are at least one flower the deer won’t eat, so that flower bed can indeed boast flowers! What might you do that is a positive planting?
Many are on our basic “little things that can change the world” list. Smile.* Listen.* Vote.* Keep your word.* Or are more provocative like “be kind to animals” and “don’t kill.” For today, what are the simple seeds you can plant? A sincere compliment, maybe to the grocery store checker or the person ahead of you in line? Grinning at the little kid who is looking at you when their mom isn’t noticing? Being honest when asked a question. (Lying hurts the person to whom you’re responding, but also hurts you physically as well as mentally. Really.)
You get the idea. What have been your favorite Spirit Moxie Conversation posts? What would you add?
Besides, the little things, there are also the fairly big things we plant in the world. For some it has been a new business that has affected their community, country, and planet. Perhaps it is an idea tentatively shared or a new insight. It’s existing things like libraries. I’m working in one right now which is offering free internet access to multiple patrons or, for me, good wifi in a place free of the distractions of home where I can also find a recommended book to take home to read after dinner. Our highway network. Electricity. The Internet.
Part of your job might be the dreaming that creates these — but it is certainly gratitude for them which helps give them power.
So, plant. My new housemate moved in with an almost full bag of potting soil, so now my cuttings have graduated from glass jars to real pots. I’ve been trying to share more of my ideas, most recently around “doing without doing” (or “how to be lazy”) which might not change the world, but might change someone. Plus, I am writing to you.
Share – how and where are you planting?
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All images by Spirit Moxie. From the top
Spring trees
Voting in Oregon
New houseplants
*In Moxie Moves: 10 ways to make a powerful difference (Amazon link)
Almost everyone loves a good story, whether a formal tale or that anecdote about the guy in the supermarket. It’s one reason gossip is fuel for so many and, I’m guessing, is also the basis for serious insights revealed in therapy.
I got to this point by realizing I’m sometimes impatient when people see situations as hard (yes, I know I don’t know all of the details). And I realized why.
This, too, is a story. Somewhere there is a story that works for
Perhaps the most basic step or action to making a difference and changing the world and oneself is gratitude. Appropriately gratitude was one of the first “little things” we wrote about in Spirit Moxie’s Conversation posts. 
Surviving as a human is pretty much impossible without other humans. So we can see “thank you” as an acknowledgement of the web
Gratitude, on the other hand, is personal, although sometimes it is expressed publicly and certainly can be seen to touch thanks. Being grateful is not so much an acknowledgement of an action or experience as a perception of how that action or experience has affected you. Gratitude changes the way the world appears to us and makes us more productive and effective, a result scientifically studied by such writers as 
When I began writing this, I got a bit puckish and remembered the “Wild West” definition, with prospectors and land barons. In my imagination I saw dry creeks and hills. There, “claim” was a noun.
Intellectually how could your getting enough sleep* or
We read that we’re enough, are fabulous, are good the way we are. But our mind may say, “Who, you? Don’t be silly. You’re not big or strong or important enough to matter.” Thank your mind for sharing. You are all you have to offer. And it is enough. If you claim that and I claim that, we have enough people for that race. And others will join in.
This year I struggled with a post about the new year, which is why this post is early in the year, but not at the very beginning. I reread all the former end of/beginning of year Spirit Moxie Conversations. (I suggest the core 1916 post 
The second piece to help you remember: I kind of dare you to try. It is an exercise I love that apparently pushes people’s buttons. Ask someone — using these exact words — “Tell me how I’m fabulous.” You can ask me that question when you see me in person. Or, send me a 
But what did I mean by extravagances when I first listed this in 2013? There aren’t any notes, but I’m pretty sure the why and how of this has expanded, if not changed.
The diet example is maybe the easiest to understand. I usually ask for no cheese on sandwiches and omelettes as for me cheese only adds calories rather than flavor. But I enjoy good cheese with bread or crackers before dinner or even for dessert. Sometime in my late teens I decided cream and sugar in my coffee weren’t worth the calories, especially because I usually drank coffee with desserts. But now I have friends who will tell you that enjoying good coffee, usually black, is something they identify with me.
Note the phrase above of “enjoying and participating.” Enjoying the world is certainly central to having it be the world you know it could be. (“Changing the world” as the Spirit Moxie tagline reads.) When you are only angry with your partner or children, they never have a chance to blossom and be great around you. But when you enjoy being with them, enjoy their idiosyncrasies, and sometimes participate in what they love, something more beautiful than all of you becomes possible. Yes, I know that example is a bit simplistic. But think of our world the same way. What do you want to indulge in that is beautiful, extravagant, and that also, in some way, serves who you are? Getting up early to watch a sunrise? Ordering the real butter and the bread basket? Buying the shoes or spending the extra $40 for an upgraded airplane seat (yup – just did that)? And so, we participate. Not with something just because it’s there, but because it provides satisfaction and maybe a bit of joy.
Your list will be different from mine. I’m pretty sure you can’t imagine that sandwich without cheese and that you find delight in the cheapest ticket you can find when traveling. But watch and choose. My friend bought the most expensive champagne she could find when she sold her house. She drinks a low cost 
Spirit Moxie is now 10 years old, and many of the ideas we introduced in 2013 have become commonplace. Our central concept focuses on the power of positive change, but when we look around, it feels as if, rather than becoming more positive, the world has become darker: politics uglier, the environment more fragile, people less connected, and information and news increasingly unreliable. We have the tools to correct this. There are actions and mindsets to help prevent these problems! So why do they still exist?
At the beginning of each new year, I claim a word for the year. For 2023, my word is “curious.”
“Spirit,” for me, is multi-faceted and ranges from the energy at a football game to serious conversations on theology. But perhaps the most basic place for the word and idea comes from the way people describe being human as “body, mind, and spirit.” Do you say this? If so, what does it mean to you? When one simply looks up the definition of “spirit,” or, to be precise, looks it up in the dictionary on my phone, the very first definition is “the principle of conscious life; the vital principle in humans, animating the body or mediating between body and soul.” Hmmm. So, in some way, our spirit is what makes us conscious of our humanity and of our existence.
What I want to suggest here is a perspective I’m pretty sure I didn’t come up with on my own, but I can’t trace it to a source. Simply put, how humans talk about God and the energy that image embodies changes about every 2,000 years. We have the time of the Old Testament or BCE (Before the Common Era) which describes god in a fairly hierarchical way (the Father). Then comes the more personal connection personified in the figure of Jesus that has affected a good portion of the world, whatever your religious beliefs are, during the past 2,000 years or so. It is reflected in Western calendar dating and has been the root cause of
We can see truth in this idea of our being in a time of the Spirit as we listen to some of the current spiritually based (there’s that darn word “spirit’ again) coaches and writers. One example is 
When I
So how does this relate to changing the world? I’m guessing those who are cruel to animals aren’t reading this. But I think talking about being kind to animals is important because, as with most things, I’m guessing even the best of us sometimes gets it wrong. In fact, I doubt if we could even agree on what wrong is. Yes, it seems obvious when domesticated animals aren’t treated properly. We hear of animals rescued from conditions of squalor. We read about them having terrible health conditions. 
All these matter because even if, or perhaps particularly if, you live in a city, our relationship to animals reminds us of an integral part of our own humanity. We, too, are animals. And claiming that is true can inspire us to do other accountable things that help the world. Little things like not using plastic straws, or maybe any straws, and being concerned about the rings used to connect packs of cans because both are known to kill sea life. An action such as that leads to other little things that change the world such as