Sowing good seeds for the future

The life you now have is one that you built over a period of time.  It’s true that goal setting, having a good set of values and being compassionate and so on is useful.  We reap what we sow so therefore what you have today is the result of what was sown prior.  A wise man once told me, ‘You want to harvest something?  Plant a bunch of seeds!’  The same goes for personal development.

What we sow is what we grow

The problem with the future is that it doesn’t stop turning into today.  By the time I finish this sentence it will already be in the past.  So what can be do presently to shape our lives for the future?  I believe there are several things:

1. Begin to question the way you frame things

Is there some area of your life that you wish you could change.  Chances are it relates to how you think.  If you are like me you get hurt when abusive vacuum salesmen knock down your door.   How do you react to that?  Initially by punching his lights out!  No, you offer the man a coffee or a glass of water and they pray for God to bless his work.  Why?  You stop the cycle when you learn to frame things from another point of view.  Look at the situation from his perspective.  Why does he get upset when we say we can’t afford it?  What’s he going through?

2. Stretch yourself on a daily basis. 

Recently I was reading through this interesting debate at  John Cricket’s Business Ideas and Opportunities website and it struck me how much of a stretch doing more study is for some people.   It is truly hard for some and a breeze for others.  One old guy called Joe that I used to teach really struggled with the way academics think and act.  Especially when it came to demonstrating his knowledge.  He often used to tell me what his experience was and never relate it to theory.  He didn’t seem able to do it.  But, he really stretched himself and went there without sacrificing his pragmatic edge.   You want something from your future, why not begin to stretch out and do something that challenges you on a daily basis.  I have found blogging to challenge me.  It has really given me something to think about and made me work on how to explain academic ideas in a way that normal non-eggheads can understand them.  That’s been a stretch but given that I like blogging… it’s been well worth it.  As you stretch yourself on a daily basis you begin to expand your own capabilities inch by inch.  You are sowing towards a great harvest in the future.

3. Challenge old mindsets

When I started blogging I hit a wall.  Literally I was like , ‘wow how does this work… I am not sure I can actually make this work’.  Now I am no Problogger or anything like that so I had to learn it all from scratch.  I learned what people think and (as imagine we all are) began coming to terms with how google finds me.  I had no idea that people would search they way they do.   Why wouldn’t you want to look for ‘epistemology’ instead of ‘how do I know things?’  I had to shift my thinking to suit the blogging world if I had any hope of finding an audience.

4. Set big goals with small targets

This was a huge revelation to me this year.  Say you are like me… you have a BIG goal of owning a house.  Well that’s great.   So how are you going to get there?  Fishing?  What I learned this year was this: set a big goal and then visualise and speak out small targets.  It has worked wonders in my personal life and professional life as well.  You know a mountain can be moved one piece at a time?  Try it, it works very well.

As you begin to look towards the future in your life, you will begin to see that the things you have now are the sum total of what you did in the past.  In order to have a great life you have to set meaningful goals of course but more than that you have to do things regularly to cultivate those seeds of greatness.  You have to build it, care for it, set small progressive targets on the way to the top.   Sure, some people are born into wealth or just get lucky (like Justin Timberlake) but my guess is that to maintain there is a lot going on in the background that would astonish you.   I am not really talking about those people though am I?  I am talking about people like me who aren’t mega-wealthy.   As they say in Pirate movies… steady as she goes Captain… steady as she goes.

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