I think you are the Chinese Bamboo Tree
“I’m tired of being tired” what does this even mean?
Being exhausted can be as a result of feeling impatient or disappointed over the lack of any indication of success. Maybe, you are trying to start a business, shed off some kgs, gain some weight, build your online presence . You could be tired of waiting for that long overdue promotion or simply tired of waiting for your tertiary education investment to start paying off. You have poured in the mandatory time and effort into your goals and projects, but nothing seems to be happening. It feels like, you are motionless, stagnant, still, torpid, I can’t seem to unearth the best word which can adequately describe how you are feeling; I guess I will settle for stagnant.
You have done everything you had to do, plus extra, to achieve supreme success. If you are someone like me, a proud member of the past 3 am club, which wakes up at 3 a.m 5 days a week, you have put in early mornings, late nights, sacrificed happy hours and brunches. But then again, your only reward seems to be a front row seat watching everyone around you become successful. Which is also something you should never worry about, as your story is unique and so so different, making it undeserving of comparison.
Its about time you hear about the metaphor of the Chinese bamboo tree, a clear illustration of what is happening in your world. As the adage goes, “Rome was not built in a day.” Do you work out in the gym for one day and anticipate losing all the fat on your body? Not at all, you will not anticipate that. Like any plant, the Chinese Bamboo Tree requires water, manure, soil and daylight for it to develop. Without routinely watering, supporting and giving enough daylight to the bamboo tree, it can never develop. What occurs in the event that you sustain and water it the first month, and afterwards do nothing for the next two months, and just to choose to proceed at it again? It will never experience a full development, and you may even kill it.This is actually how the vast majority treat their goals and dreams. They think about them and work on them in the beginning, yet in the end, they lose steam and never do it again.
In the first year of growing the bamboo, you won’t see any signs if the tree is growing at all. In the second year, nothing too. Not the third or fourth year as well. At this point, your endurance is being tested and you may begin to speculate that you are wasting your time and energy. You truly feel like throwing in the towel , then you suddenly remember that “The Temptation to give up is the greatest right before you are about to succeed”- Chinese Proverb and should you persevere and just keep going into the fifth or sixth year, it’s when you behold what appears to be a miracle! The Chinese Bamboo Tree suddenly shoots up. It grows 80 feet ( 24 384 metres) in just six weeks, looking tall and outstanding!
When others gaze at your Chinese Bamboo Tree…the fruits of your labour…your sweat.....your hard-work......your hustle......your results….they quickly jump to conclude that you have achieved overnight success! Well that's not true.
Most people have the wrong perception and think that success is something that happens in an instant with the right decision, at the right place and at the right time. You need to have the persistence to go through hard work so as to create the outcome you desire. And this is actually where the majority of people fail. Most people don't have the persistence and patience ( GRIT). This is the reason individuals buy lotteries, discover quick approaches to lose weight and search for an easy get rich quick scheme. While I do comprehend that there are exceptions, yet more often than not, these exceptional cases rarely occur. Achievement is tied in with investing consistent effort. We've witnessed this so often. Henry Ford needed to water his Chinese Bamboo Tree through five business failures before he finally succeeded with the Ford Motor Company
I think you are the Chinese Bamboo Tree, and all of the difficult work and right things that you are doing is just making your foundation strong enough to support being an extremely successful person. You are building the type of foundation that will be needed to support the dreams that will sprout to become the largest, heaviest tree in the forest of life. If you stop watering your seed — learning, working, praying, dreaming — your roots will wither and you will too.
Are you struggling to stay focused and continue to believe in what you are doing even when you don’t see immediate results…….keep on watering your Chinese bamboo tree.
