02 Jul The Value of Sacred Gardening Time™
{3:40 minutes to read} When my clients experience a flooding of dividends from their social capital, they often call me in a panic. Whether they’re receiving a wave of new clients or invitations to collaborate, how do they handle all these opportunities coming their way? To quote Einstein, “The challenges we have cannot be solved with the same level of thinking that created them.”
When the garden of relationships we’ve been nurturing starts to produce at a greater level of productivity than we’re used to, what can occur is a breakdown in time allotted to support that garden which has new needs and therefore requires a different sort of attention from us.
Imagine you decide to put in an actual garden. You dedicate a weekend to weeding, planting, watering, and fertilizing. And now comes the challenge: your current lifestyle is likely not set up to take care of a garden; you have to build in the structure. You literally have to “create time” for weeding, watering, and nurturing those plants as an ongoing practice for that garden to thrive.
Have you put the time in your calendar for those tasks?
As all high achievers know, if it’s not in the calendar, it doesn’t exist. Only that which is scheduled will get attention. That’s why I coach my clients who are developing their social capital to set aside a certain amount of time each week for Sacred Gardening Time™.
Whether it’s once a week for an hour, or twice a week for 30-45 minutes, the key is that this appointment holds a spot in our calendar. It’s got the word “sacred” in front of it so we treat that time as a high priority. If a conflict comes up, instead of simply “deleting” our Sacred Gardening Time from the calendar, we honor it like any other important appointment and we reschedule it. Holding this time as sacred ups the integrity level.
There are two reasons to schedule in Sacred Gardening Time:
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It provides a dedicated time where the entire focus is on making deposits into the relationships you’re cultivating with your VIP’s (i.e., strategic partners, referral sources, and alliances). This focused time could be used for sending e-introductions, extending invitations to upcoming events, etc.
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It serves as a “capture tool” for your promises to your VIP’s when you’re “out and about.” You need a way to manage the explosion of opportunity that happens when you’re out interacting with people.
For example, having Sacred Gardening Time in your schedule makes it easy to tell the person you’ve just met at a Tuesday luncheon that you’ll send her that art opening invitation Thursday afternoon, because you know that Thursday from 4-5pm is when you’ll be at your desk focusing on gardening activities such as sending invites. The key is to open your calendar while at the Tuesday luncheon, open up to the Thursday Sacred Gardening Time “appointment,” and enter the reminder (along with the recipient’s info) under the “notes” section of your gardening appointment. This way you remember specifically what you’re meant to do when you sit down at 4 pm on Thursday.
This is what Sacred Gardening Time™ is for — a sacred practice dedicated to the nurturing of your VIP’s. It has nothing to do with promoting yourself or your business and everything to do with bringing value to your key relationships. What we focus on expands. By focusing on nurturing key relationships, you unlock the flow of more good unto you. Sacred Gardening Time may even end up being this beautiful spot in your calendar where you reconnect with one of the most essential expressions of being human: the desire to serve and make a difference with others.
Cynthia Greenawalt
954-214-2511
cynthia@seachangenetworking.com
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