(This article originally appeared in The Weekly Simplifier #7.)

by Shawn Tuttle

Our yoga instructor read author and doctor Christiane Northrup’s quote to us one morning: “Balance: You have your foot on the gas when you need to, but you also know when to put on the brake.” I liked the active feeling of this observation—that balance isn’t a singular, ultimate goal but an ongoing dance.

Soon after, driving down a rural country road, I was struck by the beautiful shapes of the oaks. These trees are massive, unevenly shaped, and beautifully proportioned. They definitely had never been pruned.

I pulled off the road and got out of the car for a better look. Long branches reached out from the main trunk. They were bare, except for knobby bark, until the ends where all the leaves clumped. Each leaf received the amount of sunlight it needed to live—wouldn’t have grown otherwise.

Here was another perspective of balance–a leaf supporting the health of its tree and receiving all the sun and nutrients it needs to flourish. What I particularly like about this concept of balance is the relation of the individual to the whole.

This can be applied to the business, and thus the questions arise: Does my business contribute to the health of the whole? Is my business poised in a place that can easily receive sunlight and nourishment?

I want to grow my business like a tree: seemingly effortlessly, consuming the right amount of time and energy, not an excessive or wasteful amount. I want to be in the place right for me—one look at the apple tree in my front yard shows how important this is. This poor tree has been “pruned” (read: hacked) over the years to maintain an appropriate size for its urban location. It now looks like some weird mutant organism intent on life against all odds. I have to admire its tenacity…

Everyone who passes this stunted apple tree is affected by the shortsighted choice of this tree for this location. I know I’ve spent considerable time contemplating this tree—how to give it a little more organic shape, should it just come out? And in sharp contrast to the magnificent oaks on that rural road that made me sigh in appreciation, my “little” apple tree gives me a small jolt of “something’s not right here.”

There are lessons to be learned from nature—none of which am I going to postulate here. Rather I suggest an exercise. First, the assumptions:

• We humans repeat patterns, good or bad.

• We can change our patterns.

• Changing patterns is a more complicated affair than our conscious minds can comprehend.

Now, the exercise:

Go for a walk in nature. Stop when you see a tree that looks particularly, and naturally, beautiful and balanced to you. Relax your forehead and let your brain take a break. State that you want the balance of this tree to be your balance. Appreciate and enjoy the moment. Over time, your patterns will be affected by your chosen tree. For more lasting impact, recall the memory often (or better yet go back and visit often!)

Nature acts with a kind of knowledge that is uncluttered by the umpteen-million things we have loaded into our minds (and hearts, and spirits). And while a tree may not know how to send an email or attract more clients, it “knows” how to grow—naturally, and with such success as to inspire awe in we humans (or at least this human!) What better source of learning about growth than from the tallest living things on the planet?

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Shawn Tuttle is founder of Project Simplify