Taking care of plants is putting our love into practice. Even if it’s not something we actively think about or do, this hobby of ours revolves around kindness, care, and deepening our love for ourselves, other people, and our planet. We lead with love when it comes to our plant collection, and there is no one else more perfect to talk about love than bestselling author, spiritual leader, fellow plant lady, and an inspiration to thousands of people everywhere, Danielle LaPorte.

 

In this episode, we learn:

• [00:34] Life updates from Maria
• [02:03] What to expect from this plant-parallel episode
• [03:54] How to avoid sad-looking indoor plants
• [05:33] Caring for a Buddhist pine according to Danielle!
• [06:54] How plants help us through our limiting beliefs
• [09:28] Danielle shares her plant parenthood journey and the lessons she’s learned along the way
• [15:45] Who is Danielle and what are the core values that she lives by?
• [20:16] How can personal development be unproductive to living our best lives?
• [23:40] Why are plants and love deeply connected? How does Danielle see the relationship between nature and the self?
• [28:03] How to keep your home, your plants, and yourself hydrated
• [30:03] Where to get the best fertilizers, potting mixes, and more
• [31:28] The healing benefits of Hinoki essential oil
• [32:35] Different works of art that show gratitude to nature
• [33:40] In what ways has Mother Nature helped Danielle heal?
• [37:55] On turning inward and shifting perspectives on the things we identify as
• [40:47] What is the difference between embodiment and feeling?
• [43:06] How does Danielle define love? How can we embody love in everything we do?
• [44:20] What is the practice of weeding thoughts? How do negative thoughts influence the way we move in the world?
• [45:50] How powerful self-talk can be and why we need to avoid negative mindset
• [49:35] Overcoming body image issues and honoring your body
• [53:29] What is the heart center? Where do we start with feeling into our heart center? 
• [56:17] What does Danielle hope people take away from her newest book How To Be Loving?
• [58:00] Why our love for plants can expand into love for everything
• [58:50] How to join Danielle’s book launch
• [01:00:22] Maria on why you should add Danielle to your following list!

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Leading a Heart Centered Life

Who is Danielle

Danielle LaPorte is really interested in love. Aside from being an inspirational speaker, an author of several books, a mom, a plant lady, and a spiritual leader, Danielle dedicates her life to helping other people tap into their heart center.

Danielle also has a podcast, With Love, Danielle, (one of my absolute favorites!) where she turns big ideas like relationships, spirituality, self-help, and love into practical lessons that anyone can relate to and apply to their own lives.

 

Plants and Love Go Hand in Hand

There are many benefits to having plants around us. From having a greener space and contributing to a greener world, to plants teaching many life lessons that we sometimes forget and need reminders of.

Among the many lessons these plants enlighten us about: resiliency, dormancy, growing at your own pace, and even fulfilling potential, and one of the most important reminders, is love.

Danielle and Maria share a similar experience of this love. When Danielle was dealing with her divorce and Maria was coping with losing her job, they both turned to the forest.

There was something in the trees, the miles of interconnected roots below the forest, and the way nature continued to be despite everything that was happening around them. Slowly, and through daily walks through the forest, Danielle and Maria (separately) started to heal and feel better.

Mother Nature receives whatever troubles we might have, and she never asks for anything in return. The same goes for our plants; how they sit in our homes and do their best to grow and thrive, and we just have to be willing to give them our time and attention.

There is love in just being, and our plants’ just being brings so much respite for us in a fast-paced and screen-dependent world.

 

Connecting With Our Heart Center

According to Danielle, mystical teachings point to the heart center as a portal to higher consciousness. Tapping into our heart center enables us to live our life with purpose, with love, and with a consciousness that brings more compassion and balance to our decisions.

When we become in touch with our heart center, love informs our actions and moves us to do things in a heartfelt way. Our heart center also encourages us to reframe and let go of our anxiety and worries, by thinking through and acting on different situations with grace and openness.

Where do we start our journey to living a heart centered life? What is the first step to feeling in our heart center?

Breathe. Our breath regulates our nervous system, so doing deep breaths and taking our time helps with anxieties and grounds us to the present moment. Breathing calms our body down and makes way for a clearer mind, which in turn enables us in making more sound and more compassionate decisions.

Danielle encourages doing box breathing, which is inhaling and counting to four before exhaling and counting to four again. Repeating this breathing pattern helps equalize our adrenaline and ultimately helps us regulate our emotions, especially our anger and frustration.

 

Things to Remember

Self-talk is important.

Words have power – as we all know – and it matters most when we say those words to ourselves. Using negative labels disengages us from practicing love and compassion towards ourselves.

Like what Maria has learned, using “plant killer” to describe her and her plant parenthood did not help in establishing a good relationship with her plants. The things we believe influence how we act and believing that you only kill plants discourages room to grow and learn from your mistakes.

Look inwards.

Personal development is not a one-day or one-week thing, and it certainly does not help if we are depending our improvement based on how many courses we take or how many retreats we have, or how many things we check off our list.

We must know the real reason why we want to improve ourselves first. Taking a pause and checking within ourselves is the first step in figuring out our goal in self-development. 

Choose loving thoughts.

Danielle believes that energy follows what we are thinking. If we are harboring more negative thoughts than positive, the negative energy becomes destructive, and we would move through life approaching things in a negative way.

By choosing loving thoughts, we are reframing our perspective of the world and how we interact with everything around us. We are giving ourselves the chance to be free from negative energy, to be compassionate with everyone, and to address everything with love.

 

Embodying Love

Danielle believes that love is not a feeling nor an emotion: love is embodiment. How does embodying love differ from feeling love?

For Danielle, embodying love is about consistency. It is practicing love in everything we do: from the things we eat to the words we use to the decisions we make no matter how big or small the impact. Being compassionate in all aspects of our lives brings consistency that translates into love being our default state.

 

Mentioned in our conversation:

• How to Be Loving: As Your Heart Is Breaking Open and Our World Is Waking Up, book by Danielle LaPorte
• The Desire Map Experience: A Guide to Creating Goals with Soul, book by Danielle LaPorte
• The Fire Starter Sessions: A Soulful + Practical Guide to Creating Success on Your Own Terms, book by Danielle LaPorte
• WC Jungle
• My Neighbor Totoro, 1988 film by Studio Ghibli
• Braiding Sweetgrass, book by Robin Wall Kimmerer

 

Thank you to our episode sponsors:

Soltech Solutions

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Espoma Organic

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Visit espoma.com to find your local Espoma dealer or check my Amazon storefront.

 

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