Business Unfolds Like a Bloom
Blooms unfold in their own time just as business unfolds.
Business happens in it’s own time. It unfolds like a flower when it is ready. Not ever in the timing that we expect it seems, but on it’s own schedule. Ideas, plans, and movement forward coming to life when they’re suppose to.
We’ve been waiting and waiting and waiting for our morning glories to bloom this year. In years past, it’s been one of my favorite rituals of summer days to admire their striking purple and pink flowers opening each morning. In years past, they’ve been prolific and begin blooming mid-summer or so. It always feels later than I think it should be, but this year is absolutely baffling.
We didn’t have one bloom all summer. The vines trailed the trellis and climbed higher and higher, fuller and fuller, but not one bloom. I’d hoped and hoped. Then, just when I gave up hope, Michael marched me over to the plants one afternoon and there they were. Morning glory blooms in October! Not only that, they were blooming in the afternoon! What an odd, odd timing.
They bloomed in their own time. Unfolded when they were ready.
I’m struck again and again by how similar gardening is to business and to life.
Business happens in it’s own time. It unfolds like a flower when it is ready. Not ever in the timing that we expect it seems, but on it’s own schedule. Ideas, plans, and movement forward coming to life when they’re suppose to.
Sometimes we get a gift — a glimpse into another realm of life. And I had one of these moments recently in an unexpectedly deep meditation. I haven’t practiced meditation consistently in some time, but on this particular day the sinking feeling, the dropping in to a deep trance, came easy. And I sat in a setting that was all too real.
From within, I was being validated and being told my distinct gift in life. In this meditation I was seeking what is next though — answers to how I should use my gift. And I was told I wasn’t ready to know that answer yet. That my current job with this gift is to write for writing sake and the project I’m searching for will unfold when I’m ready.
I was baffled and utterly disappointed. Crushed to think I’m not prepared for this knowing yet. And then, clear as day, it was said “you are not ready yet because you have things to learn between now and then”. “You haven’t learned the things you need to know yet.”
My initial reaction was to rush learning then — to ask, what do I need to learn and how can I learn it faster?! But, it was clear that’s not the point. The knowledge will come in it’s own time. My job is to be curious. To follow after the knowledge with a curious mind.
And after mediation as I sat with this information then had a conversation with a very dear friend I realized a vital thing: if we knew the things that will happen to us we would be overwhelmed.
Good or bad, knowing the things of the future and their timing would cause excessive worry. Worry about the bad thing that would happen or worry that we would mess up the good things that will happen. By trusting the timing, we are protected from the overwhelm of the future.
I look back on past movements in my business. If I had known all the steps I’d needed to take to move along the path I would have been so incredibly overwhelmed that I would have been shocked in place. I would have been engrossed at the sheer amount there was to learn or do.
In this way, I think it is a gift that we trust the timing of what’s to come. That we let the blooms unfold in the time that they will.
The other altnerative is to be anxious about the timing. To push, pull, and prod. But what if that simply creates too much pressure on the vessell and shapes it into a different form that it would have appeared before?
Trusting the timing isn’t always easy, but it does create ease.
What are you trusting the timing of right now? What would it feel like to simply go on the journey, trusting the magic that will unfold?