All Posts Tagged With: "rain"

Thankful Thursday: It’s Raining Mentors

photo: anslatadams flickr stream

Late in 2008, I realized I needed some mentorship to take my business in a new direction. During 2009, I was blessed with such a windfall of mentors, it was sometimes a challenge to absorb all that they had to teach.

Being a diligent student, I always tried to get as much out of them as I could. To learn the business systems, the mindset shifts, tools and processes to access inner wisdom – everything from inner reality to outer reality.

Recently, I reflected on how overwhelming this can be. It’s a case of – the more I learn, the less I know. I feel like an open field in a rainstorm. Sometimes the rain is very heavy, sometimes it’s a light, gentle drizzle.

In any field, when it rains, the amount of water that soaks in depends on the receptivity of the ground. When it’s hard-packed and dense, then most of the water will run off and not soak in. If it’s loose and loamy and full of all kinds of dead organic matter and lots of air, organisms and creatures, then much of the water will soak in.

This is an apt metaphor for this last year of intense learning and redesigning my business. It’s really fine if what I’m trying to learn just runs off and does not soak in. I can’t force it to soak in, can’t change the rate of soaking in. All I can do is prepare myself, prepare the ground, to the most effective extent. Still accepting that not all of it will soak in.

I have to simply trust that what does soak in is what I need right then – the nutrients, the moisture that will help me continue to grow. Just like the field – of course, the field needs the rain, but it doesn’t need ALL the rain. Some of the rain runs off, and goes into other ecosystems, streams and waterways, and that’s fine.

The part that does soak in becomes integral with my own way of thinking and being in the world, and that is just a beautiful thing.