Lessons from Nature: The Bud has to split for the flower to bloom

Something I’ve experienced and that I see consistently as my TPPA clients grow their practices is that it leads to them outgrowing situations or relationships.

It would be great if I could say that there’s a way to do this easily and painlessly. 

Sometimes, I suppose growth can be an evolution. But the kind of growth I’m talking about comes when you need to shift and transform in order to move in to the next stage in the cycle.

The ties that held us into our old way of being need to be broken, sometimes even the relationships, as after a period of mounting tension, stresses and strains, something breaks loose.

The French-Cuban-American writer, Anäis Nin wrote of this, “And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom. Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death.

This can mean the death of relationships too. I experienced this in my own private practice in 2013 when I realised I’d outgrown a ten year old professional relationship and needed to move on. But it was an abrupt move, prompted by something happening that caused a sharp refocusing of the pain of ‘staying in the bud.’ The risk was that I would stop growing, stagnate, and that my practice, the new life I hoped for – that dream would die.  I quit the relationship.

Today is the first day of Spring in 2021. This morning, the Quince tree we planted at Christmas is budding nicely and on its way to blooming. TPPA clients are 5 months in to the 10 month programme and their practices are budding and readying themselves for blooming throughout the rest of 2021.

Spring is a tumultuous season filled with sun, wind and rain, and there will come times in this season where we need to crack open the bud in order to bloom fully.

I’m sure you can feel the sap rising too. As it meets the resistance of the limits you’ve held for yourself, see if you can find the places that feel softer. Where you can reach out to explore new relationships and experiences. This will help you find your new areas to grow, the fault lines where the natural cracking of the buds can happen.

Before you know it, a new bloom will be spilling through and you’ll be on to your next stage of growth.

Share this with that colleague who you know is going through this painful spot so they know they’re not alone.