Grow Down, Not Up

Prefer to listen? I recorded a full audio version for members inside Invisible World.

Heart

Are you there yet Friend?

You know . . . To where you’re going?

To finding that new relationship? Or healing that old tattered one. Forgiving your parents?

Or to hiring that investment banker and finally cashing in your company?

To hitting that 401k number, to hiring that new CFO, to retiring, to building that dream house? To getting thousands of subscribers?

To finishing your novel, to graduating, to selling all your Nvidia stock and paying off your debt?

You know . . . are you there yet?

Welp. It’s Tuesday. So you’re right » time to kick off our new weekly practice 🙌

BTW, how was last week’s practice for you—See the Season? That was good. That was good.

And now what about the things you don’t see? After all, this is Invisible World.

Let’s go back to the trees. During the winter the cottonwood tree looks defeated. It looks bare and bleak.

But like a good card trick, the magic often happens where we don’t focus. Where none is looking.

In winter people race by with their beanies and puffers, shivering, seeking something warm. They don’t even see the magic you're doing under the soil. The consistent root work.

Actually, most of the time they don’t even look up. And they rarely say, ‘wow beautiful tree’.

The grit, your grit goes unnoticed.

Worse, sometimes they even leave you; they take faraway trips to see other trees that are bold, tall, strung with hammocks, and are so popular, impressive and more successful than you.

Yeah, these trees:

None sees the work you are doing in your roots. 🛑 Notice how the cottonwood tree performs its most demanding work during winter.

It’s frigid. It’s facing a season not just of scarcity, but relentless existential threat.

During spring anybody can look good in green. Winter is where the foundational growth happens though.

When it’s -10° and everyone else is in Bora Bora 🌴 

What about Evergreens? Yeah sure they retain their needles, but they also materially limit photosynthesis and hunker down.

🤔 Maybe . . . we are all these trees? Going through different seasons and spaces. Maybe even we are the bamboo tree too.

Bamboo tree shown here at 3 years:

Not much to see here folks. Because bamboo spends years growing down, not up. Where none is looking.

The bamboo tree focuses on inner work. Like you. Is it possible?

Its roots spread underground, quietly building a foundation.

Above ground? Nothing. Just stillness. Maybe even occasional gusts of doubt.

Then one day seemingly out of nowhere → it shoots up. Some species grow up to 35 inches in a single day!

50 feet in a year!

But that day only happens because of all the invisible work preceding it.

Rather, because of its inner work.

And that’s our practice this week: See The Roots

Growth might actually look like stillness. Like a pause. But the roots are spreading.
The structure is forming.

And when it’s time, when the roots are strong, then you’ll rise even faster than imagined.

This week See the Roots 🔎 

My dream? Easy.

What if we were not a tree, but together, a forest. The largest organism in the world is massive forest of aspen trees in Utah that share an interwoven root system.

That’s why I created Invisible World. A place where we punctuate the positive in every inner work session. Stronger Together.

Maybe it matters less if you are ‘there yet’. And more if you are busy growing down on the roots of inner work. Hmm.

Meantime good luck this week. Me too right? See The Roots.

Because the world needs who you were meant to be 💯 

Mind 🤯 

🌳 The world’s largest known single organism is Pando, a massive clonal colony of quaking aspen (Populus tremuloides) located in Fishlake National Forest, Utah.

Pando consists of about 47,000 stems (what look like individual trees) all connected to one shared root system. That root system spans 106 acres and makes Pando the largest organism by weight and landmass ever identified.

Pando is the most famous example, with an estimated weight of 13 million pounds and an age likely between 8,000 and 12,000 years.

Soul ⚡️ 

“A tree with strong roots laughs at storms.”

— Lao Tzu

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