Conscious

CHAPTER 26Help Your Garden Grow

In the jungle, life is wild, chaotic, and out of control. In a garden, everything has a purpose. You can build strong roots, weed out bad company, and attend to your buds and flowers. Becoming more conscious lets you see the full circle of life from seeding, to growing, to harvesting. If you think of leadership like your garden, you discover others' gifts, create the right conditions for growth, and remove obstacles along the way. This is how you nourish the leadership in others. This is how to make your garden grow.

Growing gardens is the work of Soma Stout, MD. As the executive leader of the 100 Million Healthier Lives Project, her job is to develop leaders from all walks of life. Stout has a plethora of awards and degrees for her efforts, which are committed to helping solve health care's intractable problem of underserved communities around the world.

Stout's approach is deeply rooted in her childhood and family experiences in India: “I grew up as somebody who came from a family that made $10 a month. In the streets and shantytowns without electricity in Kolkata, I saw all around me people who had enormous gifts, talents and capacities that were often un-utilized or under-utilized, because no one thought to actually ask them.” Her childhood observations led her to uncover a sustainable solution: People closer to the problem are more likely to have the knowledge and solutions to address their own challenges. Those are the people who need ...