The Orchid's Lesson: Consistency and Patience

I get it. You’ve been trying SO hard for days, weeks or even months. But I’d like to share a story about my Orchid that may give you a new perspective, or a timely reminder.

I’ve had the same plant for over 2 years. I was never consistent with the watering and it even got to a point where it looked like it was dead. I believed it still had a chance and gave it to my mum while I went travelling for 7 months. Throughout the Spring, she had called me to tell me it wasn’t in fact dead, and it’s actually producing flowers! Now we all know what Mum’s are like, they’re good at everything, especially looking after plants so her news came to no surprise.

When I got back from travelling I vouched to myself that I would give all my plants a consistent watering schedule, instead of pouring loads of water into the soil when they started looking droopy (cringe).

And so I watered this Orchid consistently for over 6 months, with no clue if a flower would bloom. Low and behold, in the first month of Spring I started to notice flower buds. YES! But weeks went by with still no flower. I kept watering it - no more or less, even though my impatience wanted to try speed the process by giving it MORE… more water… more sunlight. But no, I knew it was thriving with it’s current environment, so I remained patient and most importantly… consistent.

Then one fine afternoon I was sitting on the couch when something caught the corner of my eye… A FLOWER.

There’s only two primary things I did here…

• Be consistent

• Be patient

Is that really all there is to it? Why does it feel much more complicated in real life projects, yet watering a plant is so simple. Hmm, I wonder what would evolve if we applied this same concept to all of our projects in life…

Now I guess we could also break it up into sub groups which may likely also be a factor:

• Environment

• The soil it’s planted in

• Positive talk (yes there’s studies on the effectiveness of this on plants, don’t “woo woo” shame me)

So if we apply this same methodology to our projects or goals in life it would look like this:

Primary focus:

1. Consistency

2. Patience

Keep an eye on:

• The environment

• The soil - does it need tending to with nutrients etc?

• Positive self talk

And let me remind you, it took 26 weeks of me consistently watering the plant. I kept it in the same place the whole time, I didn’t try to speed up the process by constantly changing the routine, the amount of water or the environment. I just kept it all the same and eventually, a flower bloomed (yes I know Spring would have had something to do with this, but that’s beside the point).

So what does this say about how we can approach our projects or goals?

We don’t constantly have to reevaluate, readjust, or change things just because we aren’t seeing results instantaneously. In fact, if we go back to plants for a second, that would have actually hindered the growth of the flower and thus could hinder our projects if we’re constantly trying to change things before seeing the results.

Life feels so fast at the moment, I get it. But what if we took a leaf out of nature’s book and moved at the same speed. Perhaps it takes 6 (or more) months of consistently working on the same thing and keeping it simple without panicking and moving from one technique to the next. Maybe then we will start to see results.

I could even throw in another metaphor of how sculptures are created… slowly chipping away, bit by bit on the same sculpture until it turns into a masterpiece. And heck I can even throw in another one about climbing a mountain… if you consistently take one step after another, you will eventually end up on the peak of the mountain. It’s impossible to not end up at the peak of a mountain when you are taking consistent steps towards it (assuming there’s no injuries on the way of course). So it’s impossible to not reach your goal when you are taking consistent action towards it (generally speaking).

Now the quote that is coming to mind to dismantle what I’ve just proposed is

“Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”.

If you’re also arguing this point, then hear me out… The key difference here is results. My proposal is that we make consistent steps, and remain patient while on our path to the one result. If when we get to that result and we desire a different outcome, then you wouldn’t do the same thing over again.

So if we go back to the beginning of my story, I kept sporadically watering the plant, the plant wasn’t flowering, so I stopped doing the same thing and changed my methodology to be consistent.

In summary, just keep going. Don’t give up. Be consistent and remain patient. If you’re doing all of this, your thing IS coming.

And if you aren’t doing the above, how can you start to add more consistency and dedication to that thing?