Life is Like a Rose Bush

Pruning helps blooming

Too many priorities? Prints of this

Hello!

Thanks to everyone who pointed out my ‘deliberate’ errors on endonyms and exonyms (and eponyms for that matter). It helps me correct and improve 🙏

A metaphor about life this week.

Have a good one,

Jono

Imagine your life is a rose bush. Each passion, interest, or piece of your attention at any time is a flower. To allow each bud to blossom, you give it your attention and care.

At different times in my life, I’ve had flowers blooming for family, my partner, music, studying, football, staying fit, hiking, exploring, new friend groups, being a father, working on a house, this project, swimming, my career, photography, drawing, a video game and more.

Thinking of my life like a rose bush encourages me to realise that putting all my attention across all of these flowers means none of them can be as full. There is only so much time and attention I can give.

It leads me to what I think of as The Rose Bush Rule: a rose blooms best when past blooms are pruned.

In order for another interest or passion to come in, it may be necessary to prune an existing bloom. When you do that, you give yourself more time and attention to the new things you care about and allow them to blossom to the full.

The same may be true for a business as in life. Too many competing priorities ultimately diminishes all of them and leaves you constantly switching focus.

Just like saying “no”, I don’t find it easy to prune things I enjoy or consider part of myself. But perhaps it’s just what I need. Is there anything you might benefit from pruning so other flowers can bloom?

I learned this metaphor from James Clear’s essay, What to Do When You Have Too Many Ideas and Not Enough Time, and he learned it from Travis Dommert. As James wrote:

“…new growth is natural and it’s normal for tasks and ideas to creep into your life, but full growth and optimal living requires pruning.

We All Need to Cut Good Branches“

Related Ideas to Life Is Like a Rose Bush

Also see:

• Rivers and buckets

• Everyone’s a geek about something

• Discovering truth and beauty

• Only dead fish go with the flow

• Rose, thorn, bud

• Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

• Languishing

• Trying new things

• 5 Ways to Wellbeing

• The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek—Joseph Campbell