Grow Where You Are

 You got a new plant. First, you put it in a cute terra cotta pot. Then, you changed your mind, dug up the plant and put it in a nice glass container. Nah, maybe the plant would look better in the ground. No, better yet, let's put it in a beautiful hanging basket. Actually...

You keep planting and digging up that beautiful plant. What do you think is going to happen to that plant? At the very least, nothing -- it won't grow, it won't die, it would just do nothing. Why? Because it has nowhere to flourish.

Once you establish the plant somewhere permanent, it would get some time to get adjusted to its new home. Growth will be slowed at first, but once the plant is able to spread its root in its new home, it will flourish!

We are just like plants. We can't grow if we're always switching things up, always trying different things, always going here, there, and everywhere. We can't grow if we can't be decisive. We can't grow if we can't stay put anywhere. We can't grow if we don't establish ourselves somewhere.

See, all of us are meant to flourish -- just like plants. We are meant to grow, get strong, and produce much fruit -- or at least produce a lot of flowers. We can't do that if we can't stay put where we are. If we are always moving about, committing a little time with this, a little time with that, and always doing something different, we won't grow.

It's like learning a new language: if you focus on just ONE language, you could not only master it, but you could be extremely fluent in it within a short amount of time. You could find yourself speaking another language with ease within a matter of months. But if you want to study 10 languages at once, devoting only a little time to each one, how long would it take you to master just ONE language? Well, you may never master any language. Ten years would pass, and you still wouldn't have mastered any language.

It's also like having a fitness goal: if you focus one just ONE goal, you would not only meet that goal, but you could meet that goal very quickly. Let's say that your goal is to do 100 push ups at one time. How can you accomplish that if you do 5 push ups here, 20 sit ups there, 100 jump ropes here, 50 squats there, and a few push ups every now and then? Ten years would go by and you could only do 5 push ups at a time.

If you want to flourish, then stay put. Stop changing course. Stop trying out everything you see. Stop moving all over the world. Stop having your hands in everything. Just stay in one spot and see how successful you could be in that area.

Remember this: once you change course, you'd be starting from scratch. Let's go back to languages. You've spent several weeks trying to learn French, but got bored and switched to Japanese. You've spent a few days learning Japanese and got interested in Korean. You're learning both Japanese and Korean for a couple of weeks, but thought to add Swahili. You dropped the Asian languages, spent a few days on this African language, and got bored again. Every time you've switched languages, you started all over, and every time you start over, you prolong your chances of mastering any one language.

Now is the time to decide where you're going to stay put so that you could flourish in something. If you're not sure where you want to stay, then just pick something and commit to it, even if it gets boring and frustrating. The road to mastery is committing to something when it's fun, when it's boring, when it's frustrating, and when it doesn't seem to have any rewards. Continue to stay put. Plants don't grow vigorously all the time. They take a while to sprout, go through a short growth spurt, plateau for a week or so, get a little more growth, plateau again, and get a major growth spurt. Eventually, it will produce flowers and fruits, but it can't do that if it doesn't have a place to stay put.