Sometimes you plant a seed, watch it grow and hope you get a precious plant. With high expectations you sit and watch, go away and come back… But you don’t see any plant growing. So you make the effort and plant another one. This time it will work, it has to! Again, you put all your energy in observation, analysing why the seed doesn’t work its magic. You have done your job, now some results should be seen… after all you deserve it! Perhaps you give it another try, and then give up. It just didn’t work. What a waste of time. How embarrassing was that? Others are able to grow a precious plant with just one seed and one attempt. Just me poor me gets nothing. How unfair. I did everything I could!  

Planting a seed and anxiously watching it

interrupts the process and its magic.

I’ve learned that planting a seed and anxiously watching it interrupts the process and its magic. Every seed is unique, with its own power of transformation and own course. You could compare it to art. Imagine you want to make a precious painting. You prepare the canvas, the paints, brushes and all you need. Then you think about the first line, the colour and shape it should have. You paint it. Then you step back and analyse if the line is perfect. You think about the next step. Second line, another colour. Observing it you secretly hope it will transform itself in this awesome painting you had in your mind. But you know it won’t. It stays there, rigid, sterile, two poor lines carrying all the responsibility of success or failure.

100% analysis, 100% effort. But 0% art, 0% passion, 0% letting the process take its free course.

Art just doesn’t work like that. And success neither.

Success is ALWAYS a by-product of something else.

Success is ALWAYS a by-product of something else. If success is your primary goal, you won’t reach it. You need to focus on your mission and nurture it with the best you can give of yourself. Set zero conditions. What do I mean when I say zero conditions? Do it because you love doing it, not because you want to get something out of it.

Paint a painting because you enjoy painting, it makes you happy. If you create a masterpiece, well done! If not, it doesn’t matter, you enjoyed the process anyways, so no regrets.

Plant a seed because you enjoy the process of creation, because you admire nature’s power of all kinds of beautiful transformations.

Success is a phenomenon that happens when you give the best of yourself to a mission that is bigger than yourself,

bigger than the reward it may bring. 

When you allow the process to flow, when you enjoy it and you don’t set any conditions nor expectations… this is when things start growing under the surface. You don’t see the changes, and you don’t mind, you give your best anyways. And then, suddenly there comes the day you see it, the day it takes its shape. The fact that you couldn’t see anything doesn’t mean there wasn’t anything. Success is not what you SEE. Success is a phenomenon that happens when you give the best of yourself to a mission that is bigger than yourself, bigger than the reward it may bring. 

The recipe for planting the seed lies in doing your best because you love what you do. And the secret ingredient is setting no conditions whatsoever – when you get successful, great! And when not, it’s also fine.

That’s the mindset of letting go, of unconditional love towards your Ikigai – your personal mission, and of growing a giant success carrot.