Top News

When you are walking through the lanes of Connaught Place in Delhi, a thousand sights attract your eyes. From someone singing to a store with a trendy top, from a couple in the youth of love to a family running after their dog. The lights, the advertising, the performers, the people and the stores, together they can all be overwhelming at times.

Most of the time in our lives, our minds are weaving through blocks of Connaught Place. There are numerous messages being directed to us from different channels, including conversations, social media, public transports, roadside banners and more. This makes it extremely difficult for the mind to manage such copious amounts of information and process it accordingly. This is why, learning to manage information is vital, which is where mind gardening comes in.

What is mind gardening?
"I hate it here so I will go to secret gardens in my mind, people need a key to get to, the only one is mine," remember this Taylor Swift lyric? Well, this is somewhat what we are talking about.

Mind Gardening is a nouveau way of managing information. It takes inspiration from the ideas of gardening, such as planting, cultivating, nurturing and pruning and applies it to the thoughts that live rent-free in your mind.

Instead of letting weeds grow out in your mind garden, you can cultivate certain crops in it based on ideas you actually care about. "The idea is that taking care of your mind involves cultivating your curiosity (the seeds), growing your knowledge (the trees), and producing new thoughts (the fruits)," Anne-Laure Le Cunff, PhD candidate at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience.

In French, there lies a saying “cultiver son jardin intérieur” meaning tend to your internal garden, take care of your mind, one of the places the idea of the practice originates from.

Why is mind gardening beneficial?
As per Cunff, one of the largest benefits of mind gardening is that it transforms you from a passive consumer to an active contributor . Instead of being overwhelmed with the constant influx of information, you can pick and choose what ideas to plant in your mind. You can decide to pick a thought, prune it or cultivate another instead. It is said to help with burnouts and protect people from the scorn of doomscrolling , even through their thoughts.

One of the ways mind gardening is different from its counterparts like meditation is that it doesn't ask you to disconnect from the world, but rather makes you responsible for connecting with it consciously.

How to practice mind gardening?
Cunff has a prescribed method for those who want to venture into mind gardening:

First, one needs to plant high-quality seeds in their mind. This means curating the kind of content you want to consume and the conversations you want to have. Pay attention to what inspires you and what you engage with.

Then, you need to focus on these thoughts and nurture them by actively engaging with them. Look for connections between the ideas and analyse what they mean to you and how they add to your life.

Lastly, when you find the connection, share it with the world. Write down about it or debate on it with a friend. You could even turn it into a social media post.

Mind gardening is not a magic bullet, it will take time and effort to connect with as a daily practice in life. But once you do, it is bound to make you feel more fulfilled and make your mind your happy place, rather than a toxic one you are constantly running from.