After talking and counseling with countless people over the years, Sandy and I wrote the curriculum for “Cultivating your Future.” The idea was to use a garden as a metaphor for your life. This allows all kinds of fun ideas to develop of how a beautiful garden is amazing, but how it takes planning and work.

If you look at the image below, you will see two drastically different views. As you look carefully at each of these, consider the differences. What is the story behind each photo? Where would you rather be? What happened before that caused each scene to turn out a certain way? For anyone that has had a garden, they know that it takes time, effort, planning, boundaries, and commitment for it to be beautiful and fruitful.

You see, at any time in our life, each of us is drifting toward one picture or the other. We all change. Change for the better (the picture of the beautiful garden on the right), requires intentionality, thought, planning, resilience, and work. To end with a life depicted by the picture on the left can be accomplished with little or even no effort at all. You get what you “pay” for.

So, as you ponder the picture, you can also ponder something much more important, your life. Where are you in your life? Which way are you drifting? What are you willing to do to get where you want? What is stopping you?

Sandy and I don’t try to “change” people, but we can certainly encourage people and help them to understand what they need to know. We are also overjoyed when our friends and clients begin their journey toward the beautiful garden and away from the demolished neighborhood. Let me finish with a little secret: they are overjoyed as well.