The Seed and the Promise It Holds for Your Life

Your desire for a better life will fuel the pursuit of it

What is it that you long for?

What is it that you need above all else? What empty spaces inside you call out for relief?

What maladies darken your life? What benefits dance forever beyond your reach?

Do destructive actions come from somewhere beyond your control?

Would you prefer healthy connections to others, instead of the conflicts you now have?

Do you fill your days with even more pleasures and distractions, and yet you cannot banish the distress you feel when the nights grow long?

Deliverance from these things is within your grasp.

We struggle.

You, me, everyone who has ever lived. We all want peace instead of strife. Love instead of isolation. Meaning instead of despair.

What if each of our struggles contained a seed of progress toward the things we long for?

We must realize that we need these seeds if we want to become happier.

Not just one. Not a few. All of them.

But the seed is not our survival.

What the seed becomes is our survival.

Whatever you struggle with, whatever is making your life worse — each of these contains a seed.

You can ignore your seeds. Instead, you can hope that the world will just give you what you want.

You can argue that other people should grow their seeds, so that their seeds will nourish you. You can even demand that they do so.

You know you would not grow a seed that does not nourish you. Why, then, do you think they they would do the same?

The seed is what you have right now, but what you need is what the seed becomes.

You begin with the simplest action: you consciously decide to plant the seed. You decide that you will do what is necessary to make the seed grow.

You make sure it gets water and sun, but not too much. You watch for weeds, and you remove them, carefully.

You continue doing this needful work, not just for a day, not for just a week, but until you get the result you desire. This result becomes a crop that will nourish you for the rest of your life.

And every other seed can provide a crop that will nourish you in a different way.

The more seeds you decide to plant, the more your happiness will increase, and the more your life will improve.

You need these seeds. Not for what they are, but for what they can become.

Not just one. Not a few. All of them.

You want the happiness. You want the better life. But you know that you will become weary. You know that you will want to quit.

How, then, will you keep going?

If you struggle with loneliness, then use your longing for connection to fuel the work ahead.

If anger is your harsh companion, imagine how good you will feel when anger no longer controls you. Your desire for this better future will provide the energy you need.

So here is all you need to know:

The things you struggle with contain the seeds of your success.

Happiness and a better life come from effective work over time.

Increase your desire for the ending of what you struggle with, and you will gain the energy you need to keep going.

Remember these things and act on them, and you will become the person you want to be.

You must see every setback, failure, or hardship as a trial along the way, as seeds that are being planted for further cultivation, if you know how to grow them. No moment is wasted if you pay attention and learn the lessons contained in every experience.
— Robert Greene, Mastery