Today’s blog post stems from yet another recent encounter with the feeling “I like it”, cue brain block to change.

Odd subject matter!

You would be very surprised how an attachment to something you like can fog your ability to consider something else or consider altering it all.

You may be even more surprised that this emotional attachment may be the no1 cause for your tree not taking the next step in its advancement.

But I like it, so why would I change it…?

Well…this is where it gets muddy. We should all respect that everyone enjoys bonsai and practices it in its various shapes or forms for their own personal reasons/ enjoyments and rightly so. Not all desired outcomes are aligned.

That being said, if you are open to considering educated decisions that will advance the quality of your tree/ composition based on technicals than feels, then this post may be prevalent for you.

You may have seen the recent Nothofagus I worked on. During the design process I had a strong attachment with creating two apices both with flat tops…I know right!! Interesting! Having done this I then blocked my mind out to altering that aspect of the composition and consequently spent extra time struggling to make the rest of the design cohesive with this “ I like” decision. When in all reality I was trying to put a square peg in a round hole. (As to why it didn’t work, I’ll cover that in a future blog post).

Having realised I had fallen into the “I like it” trap, I once again opened my mind to other possibilities and it wasn’t long after that the design came together.

It’s not wrong to like something or have a bias to something, just be aware of the power of this and whether you should step back and consider it a bit more.