Growing in the Right Direction

“Are you green and growing, or ripe and rotting?”
– Ray Kroc (Founder of McDonald’s)

What is a problem? There’s a saying, which says that obstacles are what happens when you take your eyes off your goals. I don’t agree because problems can occur even when you are focusing on your goals. However, I would certainly agree that obstacles are what happens when you take your eyes off your priorities. In fact, to the congruent person, problems are not problems but considered as growing pains.

You are always growing no matter what. Change is, in essence, the result of growing. A “Help Wanted” ad caught my eye when it said: “We embrace change by hiring people who create it.” We do create our own changes. We are always growing, always evolving, always changing. Therefore, since we can not stop that growth, the key to living a fulfilling life is to choose how to grow and to grow in the right direction.

Like a plant that must first be tied to a stake in order for it to grow straight, you must learn to accept life’s garden stakes. Stakes are your teachers; people who have taught you or who are teaching you the things you need to learn. They can hold you back, make it tough for you, hurt you, say nasty things to you, or push you, but what they are really doing is teaching you.

Ultimately, they are making you stronger. They include your parents, spouses, bosses, mentors, teachers, government agencies, partners, customers, bankers, lawyers, competitors, friends, etc. They are like garden stakes that hold you as you set out to reach your goals, because they have something to teach you first and do so whether they intended it or not.

Now, failure and loss are also a part of life. You may lose money, time, people you love, even confidence in yourself. You may fail in business ventures, in reaching goals, in relationships, or in the course of your life. You may even lose sight of your values at some point in time, especially when you have to start all over (as most successful people have).

As life’s pruning processes help you to lose that which will make you grow stronger, you must translate those failures and losses as part of the pruning process of life that will help you grow healthier.

In addition to life’s garden stakes and pruning processes, you probably have to deal with negativity thrown at you from time to time. You must deal with challenges, setbacks, difficulties, and problems. Now, you know what fertilizer is made of, right? It takes that kind of negativity from which can grow into a beautiful tree. Therefore, you must accept getting fertilizer occasionally thrown at you so as to grow stronger.

Life is indeed like a garden. If you want to grow in the right direction and especially in the direction of your own choosing, you must learn to recognize life’s stakes, fertilizers, and pruning processes. You not only have the ability to grow, because we all do no matter what, but also you have the ability to choose how to grow. That’s what really important.

To grow either in age or in wisdom, in wealth or in poverty, in health or in sickness, in love or in fear, or in knowledge or in ignorance is all but a matter of choice. You have the ability to choose how you want to grow and to create the results you want. Benjamin Disraeli once said, “Men are not creatures of circumstances, circumstances are creatures of men.”