Organic Success

ARE YOU AN APPLE OR AN ORANGE TREE?

How do you tell an apple tree is an apple tree, and an orange tree is an orange tree?

Ask an eight year old that questions and even they will say “you look at the fruit that grows from the tree.”

If the fruit is a reflection of the tree that has grown...what kind of a tree are we.  What kind of a tree are you.

“Who you are speaks so loudly I can’t hear what you are saying.” -Ralph Waldo Emerson

It takes courage to step out of the whirlwind of our life, and truly reflect on that statement.  “What does my fruit reflect that I am?”

Maybe you like the fruit in some areas and not in others.  The garden of life is but a fertile soil that we are granted the opportunity to do everything and nothing.  The garden know’s not judgement, but only to grow that which is planted, and cultivated.

LESSONS FROM ORGANIC FARMING

I love eating organic fruits and vegetables.  Some people have compelling arguments but...I can taste the difference.  But what is the draw?  What is the draw we have to this form of farming?

I think deep down people see how much of our food has been transformed to this processed, insecticide covered, hormone enhanced “unnatural” product.  Organic farming is not NEW.  It’s as OG as it gets.  It’s the natural course of things

BUT WHERE DID WE GO WRONG

Human’s strive to make things bigger and better.  We went wrong when we came at life believing “something is wrong.”  Things shouldn’t be the way they are...people shouldn’t act the way they do...I shouldn’t look the way I look...it shouldn’t take this long.

We try to short cut everything and now our fruit doesn’t look or taste the way we know it could.

It’s that unacceptance that has us feel like we have to “fix it”.

Marriages are meant to last. The human body is made to live as long as possible.  People are meant to be happy.

So what do we do?  We step in and bring our “opinion” of how things should or shouldn’t be and metaphorically throw insecticides on our life and relationships so we don’t have to DEAL with the real issues.  We inject fake pleasure into our oranges to mask the lack of happiness available to us.

We, in effect, don’t get to be human anymore.  At least not organically.

We are the over-marketed, over sexed, over stimulated, silicone injected, Prozac poppin'’ version of ourselves.  

SO HOW CAN WE FIX IT?

There we go again! Trying to fix the fixed. It’s not the right mindset.

Back to organic farming.

RIP OUT THE OLD TREES:

If you want new, quality, organic trees you must first get rid of the old trees so that they don’t strangle the life from new ones.

It takes a moment of awareness that we aren’t living a truly “organic” life the way we were meant and truly “want” to live.

Goals and dreams change in life.  We always live out our primary goals or concerns.  A student who says I want straight A’s, yet is only really concerned about passing class so their parents don’t get on their case will most certainly achieve the latter.

We must rip out the roots of mediocrity to plant the seeds of greatness.

PURIFY THE SOIL:

To be organically certified the soil from which the fruit grows, must remain free from any pesticides or manufactured fertilizers.  

Our lives must be purged of the things that are not natural.   My wife and I went through four months of marriage counseling.  We spent a lot of time reconfiguring our past views of relationships and marriage.  A lot of current day culture was present in our view.

We had to till up the soil purify it to create the right environment for a quality marriage to grow.

It looked like sacrificing things in our lives, completing past relationship issues to set the stage for our marriage.  It wasn’t easy. But fortunately we weren’t trying to plant the seed of “easy”.  We were planting the seeds of “a happy and fulfilled marriage of passionate love and purpose.” 

PLANT THE RIGHT SEEDS:

You can tell the people who have planted the seeds of success because of the fruit they bare.

You can also tell the people who have planted the seeds of fear, anxiety, survival, “undeserving of good things” because of the fruit that THEY bare.

It takes moments of consciousness to plant the right seeds of the life we truly want.  

Again, the soil of life know’s no bounds.  Only the human mind through years of conditioning puts parameters on what’s possible.

“What would you do if you knew you could not fail?” -Robert Schuller

Take the time for self reflection of what’s really important to you and plant THOSE seeds.

HAVE FAITH

In the moments after the seed has been planted, and the commitment to a new way of life is made...nothing appears to have changed.

Tomatoes will not show up the day you plant the tomato seed.  

One must BELIEVE with out a shadow of a doubt that the possibility of the new seeds is imminent.  IT WILL GROW.

Fear, concern, resignation will start to set in when results don’t show.  It is imperative to have faith that all will work out.  

The seeds of “fear” and “doubt”,  like weeds, start to creep up on our dreams and strangle the life out of it before it has the chance to sprout.

People give up on their dreams too easy.  They want the quick fix, hormone injected life.  You can’t make a tree go faster than it is designed to grow. As soon as you do so, the fruit it bares will not be as sweet or juicy as it could.

I started in sales 9 years ago and was always in shock and awe over how much the top income earners made.

I was in fact angry with myself because I wasn’t there yet.  

One day I heard a legendary sales person, now good friend, Hal Elrod say at a conference “The only difference between me and you is TIME and the ACTIONS that were taken in that time.”  

Patience and faith are REQUIRED to grow the seeds of big dreams.

FOSTER AND CARE 

Just like a child in it’s early years, so do our dreams need love and attention.  There are seasons of life where we need different things.

What ever you put attention to will grow.

“The grass in never greener on the other side.  It is always greener where you water it.”

In 2007 I was challenged with the thought of leaving my company.  I had accomplished a lot and was looking for “something better.”

That January I had the privilege of sitting in on a Jeffrey Gitomer Sales Seminar. He said something that I’ll never forget. 

“If you want to leave where you are at because there is a better opportunity somewhere else you will always find the same experience of unfulfillment.  Because everywhere you go...there YOU are.

Successful people make it a habit of being successful no matter where they are.

If you want to leave somewhere, leave knowing that you’ve accomplished everything possible. Because that’s a habit that you will take with you wherever you go and it will make you a fortune.”

Give love, attention and energy to your dreams especially in the early stages.  In any given moment it may not look like much has happened, but you have to keep putting in the energy and love day after day after day after day.

Soon enough, life is amazing, you’re baring the most wonderful, amazing, delicious organic fruit...you couldn’t imagine it being any other way.

This ladies and gentlemen is the way we were meant to live.