I visit an elderly lady in my neighbourhood occasionally to have come clothes mended. On my way there I pass a lemon tree, which bears a surprising amount of fruit - however, the fruit have never turned from green to yellow in the 2 or 3 years I have passed.

It reminded me that we experience growth during our entire lives, literally from the moment when we are conceived.

 Our lives, bring about “fruit”, in one way or the other - we have a choice how "mature" they are.

Many of the conditions and “ingredients” of a healthy tree are not visible when you look at a lemon tree from the outside.

Many of the “ingredients”, the areas of our personality are also invisible to the outside.

We tend to forget that there is an invisible part of our being as well. 

We would be wise to grow those invisible areas of our lives to achieve healthy fruit. I have identified 3 useful areas for growth:

• Growing healthy relationships.

For most of what we do in our lives we rely on other people, we work in a team; we are placed in family; and these areas of our lives work more effectively the more we invest in good relationships.

• Nurturing self-awareness –

This is key. The more we are in tune with who we are, the better we grow fruit. It is about how we impact others, knowing our strengths and our boundaries and limitations are and how we can overcome or manage them.

• Emotional intelligence

To grow we need to be tune in with the quality of our thoughts, and emotions. Did you know that feelings originate with thoughts, not the other way around? Our thoughts tend to wander off to the negative first. Learning how to manage one’s thoughts so that they go to the positive and produce positive feelings is key to developing healthy fruit.

Warm regards

Silke