I’ve been ardently studying the idea of “the organic” for a while now. It’s a simple idea we get from creation which shows how the right habits, focused in the right areas, will unlock massive organic growth.
It’s March (or it was at the time I wrote this). Most people have created and already forgotten or broken most of their resolutions for the year. While I am not a huge fan of resolutions, mostly for this reason, I did, back in January, create a solid habit tracker so I could reinforce activities that I want to do everyday. While writing the habit tracker, I was reminded of a scripture from the Bible where Jesus says, “Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin”. The lilies had the right idea.
The fact is, if lilies just orient themselves to the proper tasks, digging into the soil for nutrients and reaching to the sky for light, they grow. The same is true for an apple tree. It doesn’t have to say, “Today I will learn to be more apple-ish and grow some apples” or, “Today I will grow some oranges.” The tree just orients properly and grows. Similarly, we humans just have to know how to orient ourselves. I’m not saying we can just stand in a field and everything is hunky-dunky, but with the right habits we can create the proper environment for growth.
How about a few examples?
I worked on a team a few years back, and we were utterly disorganized. We had no clue what any of the others on the team were doing, and we often stepped all over each-other throughout the day. One of the guys on the team said, “We should get in the habit of doing a quick run-down of what we plan to do each day.” So, each morning, once we got in the office and grabbed coffee, we would push our chairs out to the middle of our cubes and quickly run down what our plan was for the day. That’s it. A five minute coffee chat habit completely changed the way we worked. Not only did we step on each-other’s toes a lot less, our work started to align, and we even started collaborating on projects more. We were able to become more aligned because we aimed at the root of the matter instead of a surface level fix such as, “Step on each-other’s toes less.”
A second more spiritual example is the Fruit of the Spirit. As we meander through life, we often think of ways to be more kind, gentle, patient, good, and so on. But those are all the organic fruit of something else. Some other habit, when done routinely, creates that fruit. The clue is in the name, “The Fruit of the Spirit.” What I found is that as I grow my relationship with God, the habits of prayer and reading His Word organically produce fruit. I spend a lot less time “toiling” and instead more time just being. It’s work for sure, but so is pressing roots down into the soil and pushing leaves up to the sky. The right work can exponentially increase the growth and completely change your trajectory.
My challenge to you today is to evaluate one habit you do or don’t have and simply start tracking it. Ask, “Is this the right habit, and what is the organic byproduct of repeating this habitually.”
And that’s your Tuesday Tidbit. I appreciate you guys and hope your year is going excellently!
Until next time, keep on learning, keep on growing.