Caroline Cavanagh tells a parable about a bamboo farmer who waters seeds for five years with no visible growth, then watches the plant shoot up rapidly. She connects this to anxiety: instant-gratification culture fuels self-doubt, but consistent effort builds the confidence that kills anxiety.
Chapters
Hi, I'm Caroline Cavanagh, and I would love to share a story with you, because when I heard this story, first of all, it had a big impact on me. And I've subsequently told this story to a number of my clients, and it's had a really big impact on them in terms of helping them manage their anxiety. And the story goes something like this. A bunch of farmers were given some bamboo seeds to grow. They all took them away, dutifully sowed their seeds in the ground, watered them, tended the ground, day in, day out. Days went into weeks and nothing. No crops, no little green shoots. Carried on a little bit longer, still nothing. And over time, one by one, most of the farmers stopped tending their seeds, stopped watering them. And they started to blame. Was it the quality of the soil? Are the seeds— were they dead before we even started? It's just a waste of time. And all of their excuses, all to do with things that were outside of them, outside of their control. But one farmer, he kept on going every day, watering, Tending the ground. Weeks went into months, and very soon a lot of the other farmers started to ridicule him, saying it was pointless, he was wasting his time. What a muppet. But he carried on going, watering, tending, day in, day out. And then finally, after months, a little shoot popped up above the ground. But this little shoot, literally within days, grew in to be a 10-foot Piece of bamboo. The other farmers weren't laughing then. The moral of the story when it was told to me was all about not giving up, just keep going. But I love these stories and sort of looking into them, there's always a little bit of poetic license in there. So I googled about bamboo and apparently it's true. There's one seed that I was reading about, 5 years it takes underground when nothing apparently happens. But then when it does break the ground, within six weeks an eighty-foot plant has grown. That's a phenomenal rate of growth, and it's that that really made the story even more powerful for me. We live in a society that's very busy; that's all about instant gratification. You want something, you want it now. It's not about waiting; it's about now. And if you don't get it now, Give up and do something else. And that puts a huge amount of stress on people, and it really heightens the perception of failure. If you don't get that success immediately, then you failed. And of course, that's not true. But if you're constantly perceiving yourself failing, that affects your self-esteem, and low self-esteem is something that anxiety loves to feed off. So when I thought about this story, And the bamboo. It was very much about consistency. What that farmer did that kept going was just doing the same thing over and over and over again. It would have taken him a little bit of courage to stand up to all those other farmers that were saying, give up, but he kept on being consistent. And what I know through my working anxiety is the more that you do something regularly, the easier it becomes. It becomes a habit, something that you almost do without thinking. And it led me to this realization that courage to keep going, and sometimes even to get starting, but then you add in consistency and you just keep doing that thing day in, day out, will lead to confidence. And confidence is very much like that bamboo. Once it sprouts, boy, does it grow really, really quickly, and you end up something that's With something that's really strong and really powerful. So next time you think about giving up, if it hasn't worked straight away, please think about that bamboo. Know that if you keep watering that seed, if you keep doing that little thing that you need to do day in, day out, then it will sprout. And from that little sprout, confidence will grow. I hope you enjoy that story too, and perhaps even take your own meaning from it. If there's something else you can see in this story, please do share it with me, or let me know what you've taken from it. But for now, I'll leave you with that story. Take care.
