The bid was too high. It was more than twice what I was prepared to pay. And boy had it felt good to anticipate being rescued - to have someone else take the responsibility and get the job done. But it was clear that I was going to have to do most of it myself. I had to change my perspective - not about what was possible - but of how it was going to be achieved.

No, this wasn't a huge business deal, but the lesson resonated deeply through my life and my choices. I could no longer allow myself to be "rescued", to entertain the idea that I was no longer capable of getting the job done. If it was going to be done I was going to be the one to do it. The huge shift was from feeling helpless to feeling powerful.

I Think I Can, I Know I Can

This profound shift was a gift from my overgrown front yard - the one with the hefty slope that I found tricky to navigate because my right knee is currently not a very happy camper. I nearly fell into the aging trap - you know that one where we allow ourselves to think we can't do it anymore because we are a certain age. That's the most dangerous trap in the world.

Let Your Vision Pull You Forward

But I had a vision - a sustainable front yard with tiered paths that I could comfortably walk on to care for whatever plants I decided would live there. The vision was particularly grand when I thought someone else - mostly strong men - were going to do it for me. But my vision pulled me through. I wanted to have the yard look the way I had planned so very much, that I stepped up to do it myself. The drive to fulfill my vision was huge.

Take Smaller Steps

So I began - one bush at a time. It turns out that the most blatant row of overgrown plants should have been trimmed every year. Now, eight years later, it was not about trimming, it was about sawing through two inch branches near the base. But when I cut through a branch, it let me pull out huge hunks of the plant which included two feet of dead plant material and four inches of new growth. One effort, precisely placed, reaped huge results.

Clear a Place to Stand

First I had to clear a place for me to stand to get close enough to cut the base branches. It was my platform, so to speak, the place from which I would launch my plan of action. I had to find the place from which to begin my work that would give me the greatest leverage. (Are you thinking business here?) And then I began to work on one branch at a time.

Clear Out The Old Growth

And I did it! I cut back all five plants on the hilly slope and they looked awful - bare and stubby - but I had won, I had done it - I had cleared out the old and made room for new growth. I had cleared part of the overgrown path I needed to walk on in order to care for my yard. Now I will level the pathway, one shovel full at a time - leveling a place to stand, then standing on it to level a space on the ground ahead.

The gifts I received from my overgrown front yard have changed my perspective in both my life and my business. At the end of the day my body was excited to have been of such service and was willing to do more. I dropped my "maybe I'm too old to keep doing that" momentary lapse in judgment. And I saw once again that one strong action in a strategic position can clear away a lot of the old growth and make room for all manner of new adventures. Hold on to your vision, look at it from a different perspective, approach it one step at a time and be steadily persistent. That's how you can achieve the results you want.