Content for this post has been swimming around and around in
my head for weeks now. I hope writing will give my thoughts more cohesiveness
and structure.
To give some background to my thoughts, I want to share a
bit about my short life. I write this as a 26 year old struggling entrepreneur
and volunteer. Im not working in the field I graduated in and have had 2
professions unrelated to my university degree since my graduation from the
university.
In my naïve head, I envisioned graduation from the university seamlessly
melding into an international career, a family and ‘Saving the World’. Come to
find out, that’s not how it works, not for anybody! I have just finished
reading a Business/ Personal Development book titled “The Slight Edge” by Jeff
Olsen. He adequately states “Success does not happen in a sudden quantum leap.
There are no quantum leaps in life.”
I wanted the
harvest. Or I wanted the planting, harvesting, and cultivating without
struggles, confusion, anxiety, course change, and dead ends. That not how the
harvest works though. Some of your planted seeds will die, some will struggle
for survival the whole season. Some seeds you plant will be nourished and
flourish. BUT If you don’t plant any seeds, you will have nothing to reap.
Unfortunately the growing season rarely is seamless too. It comes with
droughts, floods, broken hoes and equipment, long, hot, sweaty days of pulling
out the “weeds” that pop up trying to suck the nutrients away from your seeds.
The harvest of a bountiful reaping never can come from a quantum leap. Its
comes from daily tending to your seeds. A successful harvest comes from daily
water, daily sun, daily weeding, and nightly rest. Even then, some harvests
will still fail altogether, and all you have to show is your care, your work,
your diligence and what was cultivated inside of YOU, you the gardener.
I have had to plant
the ‘seeds’ of a few different ‘crops’, most of which bystanding eyes would
call ‘failed crops’, for the only harvest to show for is the harvest of change
within me.
Whether it be
in your formal careers, your relationships, your health and wellness, your
spirituality, or other interests. This same principle applies. You can’t get
away from being the gardener of your own destiny. So plant the seeds. Start.
Yes, some, many, or most of the crops you
plant will fail. But look at stats, the gardener who plants and tends to and
harvests more, in the long run, reaps more.
