Imagining Your Own Future

Recently I was sharing my love of gardening with a colleague.  I am unabashedly a plant person.

In addition to loving time in my garden, I believe it has SO much to teach me

Among the many gardening lessons I’ve reflected on over the years, one has been on my mind lately.

Pruning!

At first I was absolutely terrified of hurting my plants.  Cutting them.  Ahhh.  It felt so wrong.

And yet, the more I’ve done it and seen the results, the more I’ve realized how useful and functional it can be.

What you are doing when you prune a plant is you are imagining its future.  And making decisions today about how the plant will grow and evolve into that future.

You can’t prune well unless you can visualize how you want your plant to look in the future.

And then you have to take decisive action today to set the plant up for that future.

At first it feels like you are hurting the plant, but in time you realize the plant benefits from that focusing of its energy.

Obviously visualizing one’s own future is more complex than visualizing a tree’s future.  With a tree, there are a finite number of branches you could cut or not cut.  In your own future there are nearly limitless paths…

AND, I do still think the metaphor has a lot to offer.

If I want THAT future, what do I have to prioritize today? What do I have to cut?

Cutting can be painful, but it also focuses your energy in a powerful way.