Trees Don't Trash-Talk Themselves

​So, think back to yesterday.  You and I, we were both living then (one of the many qualities we share – more on that later).  Anyway, yesterday when we did the thing we loved (I sure did, and I surely hope you did – cause we’re alike you and I – it’s a theme in this blog – keep with me), we also did our very best to do it well.  And we probably did do it well.  At least some of it.  And that’s good – yay us!

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​But because we’re smart, and because we’re motivated by the thing we love (if you aren’t smart or motivated by things you love, this is perhaps not the blog for you), we also found things that we could do better next time.  You can’t know what you know today without living through yesterday.  There’s just no amount of proactivity, fretting, or strategic planning that can save us from the evil clutches of life experience.  Yesterday, we only knew all of what we knew up until yesterday; today, we know all that stuff up until then, PLUS yesterday’s stuff, thus making us smarter, more expansive, and able grow more.  Cool, huh?  That’s what I think, too.  See? Great minds thinking alike.

 BUT.

If you’re like me (and I think by now we’ve established that you are), there’s an excellent possibility that when we encounter these “opportunities for growth,” we don’t greet them with great cries of joy.  Because you’re like me (smart, passionate, and a little sensitive to criticism, if we’re going to tell the truth), you probably talked some smack about yourself, using nasty little words like “should have,” and “why didn’t I?”  In sum: you trashed-talked yourself for growing.

Remember the trees I referred to at the beginning of this post? (You thought I forgot about them, didn’t you?) Trees can take only the material created the day before to build upon the next day.  They couldn’t be the tree they are today, yesterday. They needed yesterday to – you guessed it – grow into today’s tree-ness.  You see? Just like us!

But there is one difference between trees and us (okay more than one, but only one for the purposes of this blog): they don’t berate themselves for not being today’s tree, yesterday.  They just take what they did yesterday and build on it today.  They just grow – no smack talk needed.

So what can you and I, two smart, passionate, and a little sensitive people, learn from trees?  How about we both cut through all the recrimination crap and give ourselves permission to grow?  I will if you will.
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What did you learn yesterday that makes you smarter than today?

Photo credit: Polska on Pixabay