As I’ve stated before, when we don’t grow, we stagnate. When we stay in place and ‘maintain’, we stagnate. The only way to go is up.
Growth requires effort and patience. Not everything will come easily or quickly. It can involve putting away instant gratification and avoiding the easy path. Most of all, it requires the humility to see that growth must occur, and the inner strength to muster up the traits that make it possible.
It has been said that growth can happen when something catastrophic occurs that set up the conditions for it to occur. This assumes, of course, that someone takes up the opportunity to do this. After all, having events occur that puts your life in a tailspin won’t feel like an opportunity at all. It will feel like hell.
The hardest thing to do at this point is ultimately what is best.
I won’t go into gory detail as to what this sort of life crisis feels like. Putting the negative aspects aside, it’s something like a coming to a crossroads. You can either let the event(s) color who you become in a positive or negative way, and it won’t be obvious to you that this is, in fact, a form of crossroads. The pain and agony are real, and you’ll be reeling. The negative path will be as seductive as a siren on the beach playing the sweetest music just for you.
Seeing that the positive path exists require a large amount effort. Personally, it required getting real with myself for what seemed to be the first time in my life. I had to look at my faults and get comfortable with them, and view at them as things I can change. It may not be easy, but it can be done. As someone who’s been through a lot, I can certainly say that this was much easier said than done.
To take the first steps and turn my back on the siren’s song was the hardest part. This event that sparked this could’ve been just another event showing me the message that I was worthless. Instead, I made the conscious decision to see it as the ultimate wake up call to become better and do the self-improvement necessary to bounce back and change the course of my life in countless ways.
I'm not saying a crisis is necessary.... but in some cases, that's what is needed.
While I would love to say that you don’t need to go through a large negative event that shakes your foundations as you know in order to experience growth, sometimes this is what is necessary for real growth to occur.
The hardest thing was eating the humble pie and not throwing it back up to protect my own ego, and not see myself as worthless. I had to consciously get real with myself, while staying objective about how I looked at all that. To be real, yet nurturing, is a delicate balance that wasn’t easy, but is possible with enough effort.
The growth mindset requires this kind of humility. I still work on myself, even now. This is a mindset that you must carry for life. This is a journey and not a destination. Many people think growth is a goal post, and while it often involves goals, it’s more like a long journey of improvements, big and small, along the way that are made over time.
Learn to love this journey. Embrace the growth mindset. You’ll be seeing more content about this in the near future.
Image courtesy of psv16 @ Shutterstock