How To Increase Your Chance Of Success In 2022

HOW FERTILE IS THE SOIL YOU’RE PLANTING IN?

“To forget how to dig the earth and to tend the soil is to forget ourselves.” 
Mahatma Gandhi

I am fortunate to live with a massive forest behind our home. This forest has taught me so much about myself, and what makes things possible. Nature is an incredible teacher. While I have lots of gardeners in my family, this skillfulness hasn’t rooted deeply in me (yet). I’m slowly finding my own way though, having planted some vegetables last summer quasi successfully, as well as big flower pots that grace our front steps all summer round. These small acts are more than a new pastime, they are about an openness to the deeper truths and values that matter to me. 

While the view outside is one of stillness and white, this letter is about the annual planting season we’re in within our work and workplaces; or perhaps by now all that will be planted has been decided. This letter is about increasing your chances of success in 2022 as you plant so that you as gardener can thrive more fully and your plans have a greater chance of success. Nature and seasons are an excellent “lens” through which to consider how we plant and work. To our demise, our capitalist society perpetuates a belief that we need to be an “endless summer and harvesting”. Working and living in this ways is unsustainable, self-damaging and exhausting. This letter offers you some new way to plant using the metaphor of gardening. 

If you are here, it’s likely that you’re a do-er, accomplished, get sh*t done, list making type. Yes, you are my people! More than anything I want to honor your way of doing, and give you more sustainable ways of doing. Can we explore a new way?

A New Way

As a coach, I am always curious about the work and “doing” of my clients, to see how rooted it is inside them. Do-ers have a way of moving quickly through the world, and their day, and can sometimes “do” for the sake of doing. This way can be exhausting, so the more rooted and connected the work is to our interior and who we are on the inside, the more likely we are to find meaning and joy in the work. The doing becomes more grounding and nourishing! 

How do I discover what’s going on inside my clients? I ask. It’s simple as that. While they are plenty of clues offered in body language and words, our interior self is private and unseen.

Our interior is an amazing part of ourselves generally unknown. In a world that heralds doing, who can be shocked about the fact that the interior experience of ourselves is less attended to. We all have access to our interior self, but we vary in our skillful access and connection to it. So, by turning our attention inwards, we are essentially nurturing our soil and supporting it’s fertility.

On behalf of a year of fruitful plans, here are a handful of ways to “check” and explore your own inner soil that you’re planting in.

What guides your planting?

Every year I plant big summer pots that sit outside our front door. When I go to the nursery to find plants I could honestly take one of everything. It might work out that they look nice or it might not. So I usually try to find a color palette or decide on how I want to feel when I look at the pots. This is an overarching theme or feeling I want to work with and I let it guide the creativity and work. A theme also ensures that plants and plans play well together and are synergistic!

Do you have a word of the year? Or is there a feeling you want more of? While I know you’re a rock star at creating strategies and goals, I feel curious if you can bring a different dimension into your planning that allows for creativity, or how you want to feel as you go through 2022?

Values make for the best kind of harvest.

Do you have a set of values that matter to you? Values can endure all kinds of seasons and weather. Whether you achieve all your targets or plans or not, I can tell you that looking back over a year and being able to say you’ve lived into your values is a form of success no one can touch. There is no right way to align your plans to your values, in fact the most important thing might be to ensure they find themselves expressed.

What values matter to you? Health? Financial wellness? Making an impact? How will your values find expression in the work you do? Is there a part of your work or life where values aren’t considered? Why is that? And what new value might be wanting to arise?

Do you know why you’re planting?

Asking yourself why you’re doing what you’re doing, and continuing to dig a little deeper to discover why you’re planting the seeds that you want to plant is like grabbing the hoe, and pulling back the soil to allow the seeds to nestle into and be protected by the soil. You want to give those seeds the best chance of growing!

Why do your plans matter to you? Why do you want to put your precious effort to these plans? Why do they matter to the people serve? And why, when the work gets tough, will you want to stay in and do it? And then ask yourself why all over again. Let your why teach you about what really matters to you, on perhaps an even deeper level than before.

Are you leaving room for the shit?

Call it what you want, manure, compost etc. poop is a thing in planting. We all have our own brand of poop that we hold at arm’s length, my personal go-to is shame. I have an uncanny ability to make failure personal, and then to put it under wraps. The thing with planting is that our personal poop can help create incredibly fertile soil — if we allow it. We can also spend considerable energy hiding or concealing our personal shit, so perhaps this year, the energy can instead go towards embracing the fertility of your personal manure.

What are you trying to leave out? Or not include? What key life lessons or experiences can you invite in? Is it shame you wrestle with? Perfectionism? Doubt? Low confidence? It’s time to welcome all the parts of you and let the sunshine bring light to the darkness.

Are the gardener & the garden seasonally matched?

Often we try to plant like it’s spring, but we’re in a personal winter. Oh Beauty, this isn’t going to work. It’s akin to walking outside and dropping seeds on the snow. All the prayer and tending and watering and sunshine on those seeds will not cause it to bear fruit or flowers. And you risk resenting the garden….

Can you be more honest with yourself and your own capacity right now? Just like spring always follows winter, you can trust your personal winter will be a season only. Consider how you can adjust your plans and/or resource yourself. A big dose of compassion and realism will go a long way here. And plans for the year can always be revisited or re-imagined down the road.

And breathe.

Seeds aren’t a fan of tough rocky soil. The soil needs to be light(er) and full of oxygen so there’s room for things to take hold. Breathe deep and allow the soil and seeds to plant and settle. Trust that with your kind yet firm hand your plans will bear fruit, but also remember to breathe and to trust that it’s not all up to you. Sunshine, wind, little animals scampering through our garden, insects, all of these are needed — along with a good night’s rest will help a garden grow. Is just isn’t all up to you!

In closing — a fun practice.

I invite you, in closing to write a letter to yourself, dated December 2022. Take yourself out for coffee, and write, with pen in hand, a letter. Write about what happened, how it made you feel, what you learned and how you became more of yourself throughout the year. Feel into all the possibility and play of the year. Really imagine how it’s all going to “grow” so you can feel fully into your plans. 

If you’d like to share some thoughts with me, I’d be open to receiving these (and they may even find you in December 2022). Or you may tuck your note away to open later. Future you will be ready when you greet her!

May your-kind-of-successful find you and fill you today and in all the days to come!