Hopefully sooner rather than later, I will have my new book published. Here is a small excerpt from it. I call it “Grow Where You Are planted”.
Sometimes we may not like where we are planted. We find the soil is too hard, the nutrients are
Flowers bloom in time.
lacking and besides, the location doesn’t get enough sun. What we usually do is complain that there is no opportunity here. We say that the weather is awful and the people are too provincial or maybe too liberal. We want to go to the city or maybe we want to go to the country. It doesn’t really matter. You are where you are and you must learn to manage yourself right in this spot. What a thought? Often clients come to me because they want to change locations. They have outgrown an area, a relationship, a job or even a house. All they know is they want change!
Before you make the change and move forward into your future, you must learn to embrace where you are and live exactly in that moment in time before the next moment comes. If the person, place or thing is just unbearable, embrace who and what this is all about now. We only live in the now even when we think we can’t bear another second of the now. I have been in some awfulness of the now but I had to still be in that moment of time and know that right where I was standing was all I really had. I couldn’t make the future get here any sooner. By developing faith and trust and embracing the fact that all things are really working for your good, you gain in the ability to grow where you are planted. By working with that moment of time and taking wise steps forward you can advance forward into the new opportunities, relief and healing. In short, you must learn to embrace the present so that you can leave it behind you.
Many people have large goals, dreams and plans. They write them out and create vision boards to visualize the thing they want. They affirm them and talk about them. They join support groups and do exercises that will pull the future wishes into their lives. The key, though, to all of this positive thinking is the willingness to get down in the trenches and embrace their existing job, relationship or location and continue to make it great and terrific to the best of their ability. If the job is tedious and boring, keep at it until your new one is on the horizon. If the relationship is done, embrace where you are in it knowing that you are learning to manage yourself better for future supportive relationships. We all must learn to embrace the present and grow where we are planted.
So many times people will tell me that this location is unworkable. They talk over their problems and give me a laundry list of all the things that don’t work for them. I have found out over the years that many times it has nothing to do with location at all. It has to do with unfinished business from childhood. It isn’t really a geographical problem at all. It is an emotional problem. If they move, they will take it with them and eventually, guess what; the new location will have the same problem.
Many times their timing is off. Working with numbers, signs and symbols of my clients I can see that this is not a year to make a move or to make important changes. Perhaps a future year is the time and even though they may think they are ready, their timing is just off and there is still unfinished business where they are. If you suggest they embrace the now of where they are, they just cringe at the thought. It seems we all want to live in the future or go back to the past. We don’t want to grow where we are planted. But remember this; never lose sight of what you want or the faith and purpose to get what you want. Do everything you can to advance yourself while at the same time advancing others. Help others feel that by associating with you they will create increase for themselves. Show others by using your life as the example that you know how to be healthy, great, loved, prosperous and at peace. Let others feel your power and purpose so they too can advance. You literally can outgrow your place by doing the best work in the most mundane conditions.
Remember to grow where you are planted!
Thanks Gail for the Sage advice. Great to know we all have gone thru this in our lifetime.
Excellent advise Gail. I look forward to your new book!
Thanks Gail for this sage advice. Clever title “Grow Where You Are Planted” – love it!
So true. We take the same mind set and emotional baggage with us wherever we go.
Man;y years ago when I was living in San Francisco, my LA roommate wrote that she wanted to follow me up north. I didn’t want her to come, so I wrote her (by snail mail, by the way) that she moving to San Francisco would not solve her problems, and that she should work things out where she was. I know I said it better than this. I said that because I really didn’t want her to come (I was a bit afraid of her). Turns out my instinct, even though self-serving, was right.
This is a nice article, Gail, as always.
I like this, Gail…thank you !