photo credit: Per Ola Wiberg (Powi)

“You can only become truly accom­plished at some­thing you love. Don’t make money your goal. Instead, pur­sue the things you love doing, and then do them so well that peo­ple can’t take their eyes off you.” ~ Maya Angelou

See that tree?  Majes­tic, isn’t it!  From years of growth and care, it’s grown into a large and and very spe­cial tree.

“Money doesn’t grow on trees” ~ Proverb

You’ve prob­a­bly heard that say­ing before.  Money’s not just going to fall off a tree, like leaves in the autumn sea­son. Today, we’re going to look at this with a slightly dif­fer­ent lens.  Maybe, just maybe…money DOES grow on trees.  Maybe this tree we’re see­ing up above can pro­vide us with some lessons, some insight into riches, and what that means to us. These are chal­leng­ing times we’re in today.  Maybe you’ve lost a job, or had hours cut back.  Maybe you’ve taken a pay cut.  Maybe you work on your own, and find­ing new clients is dif­fi­cult. Then again, maybe it’s all good right now.  Maybe you’ve recently taken a new job you really love, or been pro­moted where you cur­rently are at.  Maybe you’ve just landed a lucra­tive con­tract in some­thing you believe strongly in.  Maybe you’ve just ven­tured out onto your own, and are steadily adding clients and increas­ing your con­fi­dence. All of this is hap­pen­ing today, just as this hap­pens on any given day — irre­gard­less of the econ­omy around us.  In the ebb and flow of life, there are ups and there are downs.   Let’s look at this in rela­tion to the trees we have in our life, and see if we can’t under­stand it a lit­tle bit bet­ter. The Trees In The For­est Of Our Life

• Seeds: Trees start out as seeds (or maybe some­times from a nut).  This seed is planted in the soil, is watered, and begins to grow.  In nature, sev­eral seeds get planted nat­u­rally, and many grow, although not all of them do.  Life Les­son: Seeds.  The ideas we have.  The things we go about doing.  That which we try.  We might plant one, or we might plant sev­eral seeds.  Some may grow, and some may not.  Some things we do won’t con­tinue to res­onate with us, and we’ll move on.  Oth­ers will.  The bot­tom line in all of it, though, is this tree will never grow if we don’t at least plant the seed — if we don’t at least try this thing we’ve been think­ing about.
• Saplings: We’ve planted our seed.  And our tree is begin­ning to grow.  We have a sapling.  A small tree.  Not fully able to pro­tect itself from the world around it.  It might take a lit­tle more care on our part to nur­ture it as it con­tin­ues to grow.  And some­times growth might seem slow, espe­cially above the sur­face, in what we see.  Life Les­son: Our ideas begin to grow, or the work we’re doing starts to pro­duce results.  Or the col­lege classes we’re tak­ing begin to make sense.  What started as a seed, as a thought — is begin­ning to grow into some­thing.  A sapling.  Still small, although we’re see­ing growth.
• Roots: While above the sur­face, our tree is slowly get­ting big­ger and stronger — under the sur­face it’s the roots that are really doing the grow­ing.  They’re spread­ing out in many direc­tions, giv­ing our tree a strong base on which to stand.  Life Les­son: We have this idea that is grow­ing into some­thing.  Or we have a job that we’re get­ting bet­ter at and see­ing results.  Or a myr­iad of other pos­si­bil­i­ties.  Slowly we’re see­ing that sapling grow a bit big­ger.  Under the sur­face, though, is where we can make the biggest impact.  What are we cre­at­ing as roots for our­selves?  These roots can be many things.  Con­tin­u­ing edu­ca­tion, cre­at­ing an emer­gency fund, sav­ing for retire­ment, invest­ing in stocks or mutual funds, devel­op­ing rela­tion­ships with oth­ers, learn­ing new skills — just a few of the many pos­si­bil­i­ties we can have as roots in this tree, which is part of the for­est of our life we’re cre­at­ing.  The key is that we cre­ate sev­eral roots, to give us a strong base on which to sup­port our tree.
• Storms: Life might not always be easy for our tree.  Wind. Hail.  Light­ning.  Tor­na­does.  Ani­mals.  Man.  All of these could harm our trees.  Storms of nature, ani­mals chew­ing off part of the tree, or man cut­ting the tree down.  Any of this hap­pen­ing could cause our tree to either be slowed in its growth, or to cease being com­pletely.  That’s why hav­ing sev­eral trees gives us more oppor­tu­nity to have a few of the large majes­tic trees in the end.  Life Les­son: We will have storms in our life.  The wind will blow.  Other peo­ple may chal­lenge what we’re doing.  Some of our trees may not sur­vive — much like a busi­ness clos­ing or a com­pany down­siz­ing — some things in our life just might not work out how we’d planned they would.  The stock mar­ket might crash just before you’re get­ting ready to take your money out.  We might sus­tain some ill­ness or injury that cre­ates large med­ical bills.  We might decide there’s a tree in our life that isn’t healthy, and cut it down.  Storms in our life.  They will be there.  If we’ve planted sev­eral trees, and cre­ated roots in many direc­tions — then we are pre­pared to face these storms.  If every­thing is invested in one tree — then you may face real and seri­ous prob­lems.  Hav­ing sev­eral trees in our for­est of life gives us more options should some storm cause dam­age on one of our trees.  And with roots in many direc­tions through­out the trees in our for­est, we are ready when the storms come.
• Growth: The storms also bring rain.  And fol­lowed with sun­shine, and good soil, our trees will grow.  Life Les­son: We’ll have storms, as we’ve seen.  These storms also bring us growth oppor­tu­ni­ties.  And when the sun comes back out in our life, which it will, our trees will grow.  In growth that we’ll see, above the sur­face.  We’ll be reach­ing new heights, and mak­ing wiser deci­sions.  And this sapling in our for­est of life will begin to become a tree which starts to pro­vide much, whose branches are filled with leaves — leaves of opportunity!
• Majes­tic Tree: We’ve went through the life cycle of our trees.  Many have now grown to great heights.  It hasn’t hap­pened overnight.  It’s taken time and effort to get here.  And now that we are, we have this won­der­ful tree, large, pro­vid­ing much  beauty in our world.  Life Les­son: Grow­ing these trees in the for­est of our life will not hap­pen overnight.  It will take our time and effort.  How­ever, as we keep at it, as we con­tinue to nur­ture and grow what mat­ters in our life, these trees will become large and majes­tic in our for­est — our for­est of life.

Where’s the Money? If we do all this, and espe­cially if we do all this while lis­ten­ing to our heart — then the money is the fruit on these trees we’ve grown and nur­tured in our for­est of life.  This fruit, this money, will come if we con­tinue to care for the trees in our life and if we give them a strong base upon which to grow.  And if we have many trees in our for­est, then we are pre­pared should a storm come and dam­age any of them.  Money indeed CAN grow on trees, the trees in the for­est of our life.  And what we get from these trees, what they pro­duce, is a direct result of the time and effort we put in to grow­ing and nur­tur­ing them.

In the for­est of your life, do you have a lush for­est with many trees?  Do you need to plant some new ones?  Or maybe even get rid of some that you have?  This is your for­est, your life — take care of it and riches will come.  And remem­ber also that not all riches come in the form of money…

Do what makes you happy, be it going back to school to become a phar­macy tech or just fol­low­ing your dream!