Mustard Plants & You: Your Environment's Impact on Growth

nobody@vox.com(Amp It Up!) — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 18:24:08 -0800

It's much more complex than you ever imagined. A recent study by Richard Lankau of the Illinois Natural History Survey in Champaign and Sharon Strauss at the University of California demonstrates that a mustard plant's environment has a dramatic impact on its evolutionary contribution. If aphids are the trouble, then smaller plants win out, since aphids choose the larger ones. If slugs are the problem, plants with higher levels of a defense chemicaI called sinigrin will do better than plants with lower levels. If the plant next door is another type of plant, though, Mother Nature throws her dice, and her choice about which plant will be a stronger evolutionary candidate takes into account an enormous array of possibilities that at present only Mother Nature can interpret.

I ran into an example recently of the environment's impact on growth. A business colleague knew that her assistant was not really performing to her expectations, yet every time she thought about letting her assistant go, a customer would call to tell her how fabulous her assistant was. Here she was thinking that her assistant wasn't meeting her job requirements very well, but her customers seemed to disagree with her. Who was right? She was filled with questions about what she should do. Who else could she get to do this job? It was hard to find trained people. If her customers were so happy with her assistant, shouldn't she hang on to her?

One day her assistant announced that she was interviewing for another job. My colleague experienced instantaneous and profound relief. Her contingency plan immediately surfaced. A woman she'd met in another context had seemed interested in the job, and so she began her pursuit of that person for the position.

But really. If my colleague had trusted her own instincts...do you think the problem would have been solved much earlier? If she had accurately measured the impact that an inadequate assistant had had on her business,do you think she might have moved sooner to correct it?

What are you tolerating in your environment? Are you tolerating it for the right reasons, or to avoid confrontation, short term difficulty, or fear? If you removed this stressor from your environment, how might your situation improve? What positive impact might you receive by doing so?

If you'd like to examine this sort of dilemma and find a possibility pathway out, visit my website at www.KimMarcille.com and sign up for my Possibility Tips newsletter. You'll be invited to participate in our next Possibility Workshop series.

Wishing you every possibility in this holiday season! --K.

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