One of the habits that is key as you reclaim your life is to study from others who have found success. Success leaves clues …
I’ve recently re-read “The Slight Edge” by Jeff Olson and have really found it to be really inspiring. One idea that is both elegant and powerful:
Plant. Cultivate. Harvest.
This is the sequence of required steps in nature and yet we humans in our “always instant, always now” modern mentality expect the middle step to be optional OR only take a microwave minute. As I was reading more of his description around this skewed expectation, it made a lot of sense to me. I see others do it quite a bit and I certainly have fallen into that trap as well:
— We impatiently watch seconds tick off in the microwave display during the CRAZY duration of 3 ½ minutes while a meal is heated up for us to consume.
— We get frustrated when we’re trying to send a txt message and it takes total of 10 seconds to actually show confirmation it has been sent.
— We start a new exercise program after years of inactivity and get frustrated when we don’t have abs of steel after one week.
Planting new habits, new behaviors or new plans is a step. Cultivating is also a required step before we can begin to witness results or harvest the bounty from the efforts. The cultivation step will usually take longer than we’d like but that does not make it any less required or important. You don’t make a seedling grow faster by yanking on it. And, if you mess with it showing little patience, you’re likely to reduce or ruin what you’d eventually be able to harvest.
Lately, I’ve been feeling very impatient with some efforts because I wanted to ‘harvest’ immediately after ‘planting’. This book and the reminder of the true sequence has been very timely and helpful to me, so I wanted to share with others.
Plant. Cultivate. Harvest.
How can you start to use this yourself as you take steps to reclaim your life starting today?
by Sean O’Meara 