Planting hope

"To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow, " said Audrey Hepburn apparently, in her humanitarian phase. It’s a concept that all gardeners understand and I can't think of a better one for the first Sunday of October.

I promised myself there would be no excuses this year, and I'm overjoyed to report that the bulbs have finally made it out of the kitchen. Some years they have made a brief trip to the shed and are unearthed in January, looking rather sorry for themselves. This year there are daffodils going in, guerilla gardening style, in the grass verge outside, a scattering of alliums for late spring in the borders and some tulips in pots by the door. Kneeling in coldish soil with a trowel and a mug of coffee going lukewarm on the garden table, I thought once more about how bulbs are an act of faith.

You bury something that looks like a dried-up onion, on a damp, grey day and then you walk away. You won't see a thing for months. Yet you do it anyway, because you trust that spring is coming.

I see the same quiet faith in my clients, though they rarely call it that. The student who books one revision session with a friend. The widow who agrees to sit in the garden for ten minutes with a cup of tea. The teacher who decides that Wednesday will be the day she leaves at four. None of these is dramatic. Each one is a bulb in the ground.

Why looking ahead helps

There is real science behind this. Imagining a future you'd like, even a modest one, engages the brain's reward and planning systems. It gives us something to move towards, and that's why solution-focused work asks "what would you like instead?" rather than "what went wrong?". Hope isn't fluffy. It's practical, and it's how we get moving again after a hard stretch.

The small size of the action matters too. A bulb doesn't need a five-year plan, only a hole, some soil and a bit of patience.

Try this week

Choose one small thing to "plant" for the months ahead. It could be a phone call, a walk, a class you've been meaning to book, or a real bulb.

Notice what you're already doing that's working, and do a little more of it.

Write down what you'd like to see "flowering" by spring, in one sentence.

Autumn is a good time to look forward, and there's something rather lovely about working with the season instead of against it. If you'd like company while you work out what your own bulbs might be, I'd be delighted to hear from you. One conversation can be enough to shift things, and we can even do it with a walk through the autumn colours.

Cally x