I’m sure you’ve had moments marked by a compliment like ‘well done’, a sticker, star, certificate, applause… yet these aren’t progress. Progress itself is really hard to put a finger on.
Whenever you accomplish something, recognition IS important. To celebrate is joyful. When you own your achievements and allow them to become the rings of your tree of life, that builds you and is oh so important.
But what comes next? The ‘next’ is the bit that takes people by surprise. This is the start of the progress – the moving on. Even the Olympian has to step down from the medal platform. And then what does progress look like?
Sometimes it can look (and feel) like this:
Like nothing. Mowed down to a scrubby mess, where the product of all the work seems gone.
How does that compare to the gold star moment in the spotlight of recognition? The moment of celebration recognised what was likely months or years of work, – of becoming, of growth. Once you reach the end of one stage – complete a project, a goal – and begin to move forward, progress can indeed look like a desolate nothing.
But… that nothing isn’t barren. If you look closely, it is still fertile ground and more will grow. -You’ll probably find it is already – little bits of new growth may be sprouting where you least expect.
New growth – progress – can and will happen, as long as you tend to the soil of your life and self, take care, and give it time.
ps I write about this stuff in my book Yes I Can: Learn to use the power of self efficacy. If you haven’t had a look, please do check it out!
The life of a creator is not the only life nor perhaps the most interesting which a man leads. There is a time for play and a time for work, a time for creation and a time for lying fallow. And there is a time, glorious too in its own way, when one scarcely exists, when one is a complete void. I mean when boredom seems the very stuff of life.
(Henry Miller)
https://tachesdesens.blogspot.com/2015/10/fallow.html