Setting Up Our Seeds to Grow
It’s so important that we find out what keystone behavior are vital to helping us become who we want to become and then make sure that we give ourselves sufficient space and time to do them consistently. That way we will be setting up our seedlings of growth to sprout.
It’s such a simple principle that it might be silly for me to even highlight it, but I’ve found that those kinds of principles often get overlooked, so indulge me for a few moments. As I’ve shared in past posts, I’ve been planting a tree seed in small peat pots every day for the last several weeks. Today marked my 51 plating so far, in fact.
We all are familiar with the elements of growing seeds. Assuming that the seeds are viable—meaning actually capable of growing; there are lots of hybrid plant species who seeds actually can’t produce viable seedling and you have to rely on taking a cutting of an existing plant to produce another plant—the steps are quite simple:
Get a container
Fill it with nutrient-rich soil
Place the seed near the top of the soil and cover with some more soil
Water frequently
And that’s basically it. And once the seed sprouts you make sure it gets some sun and water and pretty much you’ll have a successfully growing seedling. There are obviously some more delicate varieties where they only grow in certain acidic level soils or temperatures or full sunlight. But as a basic principle set, that’s really it as far as growing seeds.
The thing that I was reminded of today, though, is that we need to do all of those things to be successful. If we have the best soil but never water our seed, it doesn’t matter how rich of environment we placed it in, the seed won’t grow. The same is true if we have a great soil base and get in a good habit of watering frequently, if we don’t plant the seed, nothing will ever grow, well except for maybe some weeds that could potentially flow onto your rich soil.
There are some situations and life experiences where doing some of the steps but not all is acceptable. And there are lots of things in life that aren’t nearly as straight-forward and planting and growing seeds. I mean, thinking about becoming healthy. There are thousands of diet plans and exercise regimes and healthy living tips out there. There isn’t just one set of clearly defined steps that will lead to ultimate health. I’d say it’s the same with seeking for happiness. There are so many avenues to fulfillment. There’s probably a tailor-made path for each of us and even within our own lives as individuals there are many ways to feeling happier and more fulfilled.
But there are some things where we really can’t cut corners or do some of the steps but ignore others. There might be many ways to health, but if we do lots of things, but struggle to get enough sleep, that’ll be viscous cycle that leads to bad outcomes all the time. Or if we want to learn a language and we buy the language program and books and plan a trip to visit the country speaking that language, but never practice speaking the language, we’re going to have a very hard time ever learning the language in any practical way. So it’s important that we find out what keystone behavior are vital to helping us become who we want to become and then make sure that we give ourselves sufficient space and time to do them consistently.
And I’d dare say there are a few sure-fire ways to impede our hope and meaning in life too even if we are doing a lot of good things. Dwelling on regret throughout the day, focusing so much on others’ needs but never on our own, expecting the next achievement to completely fill fulfillment bucket without being clear of what we really value or care about.
There are so many good things that we can be involved in, and we absolutely should take advantage of such opportunities. Among all the good things we can be a part of it, though, it’s also vital that we discover our own needs and what brings meaning and hope to each of us individually and then not forget to plant the seeds and water them so they can grow.