Tend Your Garden

This summer, I was invited to give a workshop at the 150th-anniversary Jung conference in Cambridge. People gathered to celebrate Jung’s legacy, to keep alive the torch of this master, a true alchemist of inner and outer journeys.

One speaker talked about war. I don’t recall much of the talk, but the closing image stayed with me. On the final slide was a black-and-white photo of Jung in his later years, standing in his rose garden. Was he watering? Pruning? Weeding? We’ll never know. And along with the picture, the message from his smile: Tend your garden.

It immediately called to mind the wisdom of my ancestral sage, Confucius:

“Cultivate the self, manage the family, govern the country, and bring peace to the world.”

A tidy little staircase of wisdom. Four steps. Start small, end big. Or, in today’s plain language: Self. Family. Work. World.

And I can’t help but wonder: How much time and energy do we truly give to each of these fields? And more importantly, how often do we skip the very first step altogether?

I’ll admit, I do. Often, I forget the necessity and power of tending the self. Usually, it takes being so tangled in frustration that I finally retreat back to my “inner garden.” By then, the weeds have taken over. The task feels overwhelming. But once I begin—once I clear a little space, and my “self” can breathe again—everything shifts. I feel lighter. Calmer. More at peace. And I’m far less likely to “pollute” the space around me with my own unprocessed frustrations, those inner snags Jungian analysts call “complexes”, the persistent weeds keep growing in our gardens. 

The Weeds Know Your Name

As therapist James Hollis once said: “The relationship is never about the relationship—except in a small way. In a big way, it’s really about the history of relationships.” That rings true in almost every coaching session I’ve had. On the surface, people talk about work, relationship struggles, or how to grow as more effective leaders. But dig a little deeper, and you find the roots—old relationships, past experiences—still feeding weeds into the present, quietly narrowing their choices before they even realize it.

As I write this, my son is in his room playing guitar. One note sounds off. It hits my nerve all the time. He pauses, tunes the string, and tries again. Suddenly, the whole song flows. And I am enjoying it. Self-cultivation is a lot like that. Like tuning an instrument. It needs care, attention, and small adjustments—so it can be fit for play. But the history of relationships can twist the strings to be either too tight or too loose. And the reactions born from those old patterns rarely create harmony in the music of today. The difference comes when we notice. When we’re aware, we can retune. We can choose differently—choices born from the agency of self, not from the grip of the past.

The Powerless Powerful

So it’s important to tune our instrument, to tend our garden. The hardest truth I’ve seen in my clients? It isn’t that they’re “too busy.” It’s that—often to their surprise and mine—no one ever taught them how. Not their parents. Not their teachers. Not their bosses. Not even the internet. Many grew up as children who didn’t get the care they needed, so they learned to stay busy instead. And busy is one “hell of a shell”. 

So where do we begin, when inside our adult body still lives that attention-starved child—hidden beneath a shell built to survive by staying busy? In Energy Landscape—a survey I designed to give a snapshot of someone’s capacity to embody different energy archetypes across situations—the lowest energy almost always shows up as the mountain: keeping still. It seems nobody knows how to rest and stop anymore. One client admitted, “I want to change my pattern, but I don’t even notice it. The reaction travels faster than I can catch it.”

“What could help you notice?” I asked.

“Pause?” She answered with a question mark, carrying both disbelief and a hint of disapproval at how simple that word sounded/

Exactly. Pause. The simplest brake. The survival kit. The very first act of care that leads to self-cultivation.

That’s what tending your garden really means: pausing, seeing clearly, choosing differently. Each pause, a weed pulled, a new breath of air, a new choice cultivated, a renewed connection with our inner nurturer, the inner mother, if you will. 

One man’s inner work, another man’s peace

Last week, I had my final session with Jason (nickname instead of his real name) - a young, talented board member carrying an old, quiet belief: I’m not mature enough. Maybe an imposter. His first coaching goal was simple: “I want to look and feel more senior.”

We could have focused on executive presence. Maybe some leadership frameworks. But instead, we turned inward—into his inner garden. He began reflecting. Tuning. Turning the ground. Noticing where his reactions came from. Learning how to respond differently.

Over the months, the sessions grew lighter. In our last call, Jason said: “There is this inner quietude… all the noise is gone. For the first time, I feel very connected with the purpose of what I do. And by the way, I noticed even my kids are calmer. Their fights have disappeared. Our family time feels so much better in quality.” He hadn’t taken a parenting course. He hadn’t built a family vision board. He had simply cultivated himself. And that inner peace rippled outward—into his home, his work, and maybe even further into the world.

That’s the thing. Tending your inner garden might look selfish from the outside and absurd in your busy mind. But in truth, it’s the most generous act you can offer to every relationship you’re part of.

Weeds to Wisdom

Right now, my parents are staying with us for three months. It’s a blessing. And at times, it’s also a living mirror of my unfinished inner work. All histories of our relationships come knocking at the door. Family patterns and emotional landmines can suddenly creep up into small daily interactions,  flooding me with the same shadows I once believed I’d outgrown.

But this is the ongoing work. Here’s how I see it: life keeps handing me training grounds. Each moment with my parents is an opportunity to shift my response to the same words, the same energy, that once pulled me down familiar paths into not-so-nice emotions.

Before, I always wished they would change. Now, I see that I have choices. I can tune my guitar when an out-of-tune string is struck. I can walk my own talk—pausing, seeing clearly, choosing differently. And when my response comes from a spacious and peaceful place, I also change our shared experience.

Tend your garden. The world’s counting on it.