In my part of the world, it is harvest time. Even though it’s been very wet, the combine harvesters are busy on the roads at all hours and the harvest is being brought home. While I have been noticing this in recent weeks, it was just today that I saw this great share on LinkedIn extolling all the lessons leaders can learn by Thinking like a Farmer.
Thanks to Ashok Naratyanan and Adam Danyal for the share.
This is the image they shared:
As I said in response to their posting, “I believe this is good advice not just for those in leadership but for many roles any of us may inhabit – as parents, teachers, friends and colleagues.”
I also think it is great thinking to support you in bringing your vision to fruition and I’d like to break that down further in today’s blog.
As a transformational life coach, the key tools and strategies I support my clients with are creating a vision for the life you’d love and developing the mindset and strategy to achieve it. Thinking like a farmer can empower you on both the mindset and strategy side of things.
The first three points here can really support you in developing a vision-oriented mindset. If we take the crop as being your vision, of course you don’t want to shout at it or blame it for not growing fast enough or uproot it before it’s had a chance to grow! That’s probably fairly obvious – nothing responds well to such negativity. But what do you do instead?
I have a client currently who is looking to create a new relationship with a significant other and she said she felt she was constantly pulling up the seeds of that vision that she has planted and looking to see if the roots were taking. She realized that it was not a good strategy for allowing those seeds to take root and grow and it was a great analogy!
So what can you do when you have those moments in the context of your vision, when you’re feeling stuck or that things aren’t happening fast enough?
The first thing is always to notice what you’re noticing – “I’m frustrated, angry, disappointed, [insert how you are feeling] that this isn’t happening fast enough”. Breathe into that to bring some balance back into your nervous system. Allow it to be ok that you are feeling that way and also sequester those feelings – “part of me is feeling this way”.
Then connect to the wiser part of you, that intuitive side of your nature, that part that knows you are more than your conditions and circumstances. From there, bring great compassion to the part that is feeling unhappy at the current state of affairs and then remind yourself that it can take time to bring great dreams to fruition and that we never know how much time is involved.
A couple of activations to help you with this include:
- I am more than this delay
- This is just what it [my life] looks like while it [my vision] is all working out
- What possible good could come from this delay/condition/circumstance?
The remaining suggestions around acting like a farmer also provide great guidelines for supporting your vision to come to fruition! If I adapt them in that context they’d run something like this:
- Think and emote from the highest frequencies in support of the outcomes you’d love – this means thinking and feeling from your vision. How does the woman or man in your vision show up, what does she or he do, say and feel? What can you see, hear, taste, smell and touch as the person in your vision? What are all the ways in which you can do any of that now? Start with that – think those thoughts, feel how you would feel if you had the results in your vision now – maybe you’d feel free, secure, loved, confident, successful? Inhabit those feelings now. Take the actions you can take today that will move you in that direction. For example, if I want to be fitter and healthier and walk 5km with ease, I can start walking today, even if it’s just for 10 minutes.
- Remove limiting beliefs. A limiting belief is any belief that causes you to feel contractive or keeps you stuck in the context of your vision. Ask yourself is this belief true? If it is true, then it must be true for all people, in all places, at all times… Even if you think your belief might meet that high bar, you also want to ask yourself, is it serving me to think/believe this? If not, change the belief! You are the only thinker in your life! You get to chose the thoughts and beliefs you entertain. If a belief isn’t serving you in the context of your vision, change it to a belief that will. And remember, a belief is just a thought that has been repeated many, many times. When you initially start to work with a new thought, you won’t necessarily believe it. But when you repeat that new thought to yourself often enough, it will become your new belief.
- Fertilize with empowering thoughts and by celebrating the seeds of growth you can see an empowering thought is any thought that causes you to feel expansive and/or is supportive of your vision. Engage with those thoughts repeatedly and act upon them. Then, as I always say to my clients, in our work together we celebrate our way to success. Celebrate all the small actions you are taking – a thought pattern interrupted, a small step taken in the direction of your vision, resisting a habit or behavior that you are wanting to replace. As you capture these mini-successes, you build your belief in your vision and in the mindset and strategy that is genuinely taking you there.
- Use Inversion practices to support you in preparing for and overcoming delays and setbacks. In this context, think about all the challenges that could arise and make a plan for what you will do in those instances.
Farmers also think ahead. Just as they are harvesting at the moment, so too they are preparing for planting winter crops and getting ready for early spring. You want to do that too!
A great way to support yourself in this regard is to come to the Vision Workshop Live on 14 & 15 October in the Clayton SilverSprings Hotel in Cork. Join a community of like-mind, growth-oriented, vision-focused people and nurture and nourish your vision to support its strong and sustainable growth.
Details and Early bird bookings here.