Get these misconceptions out of your mind, and open yourself up to growth in all areas of your life.
Unless you really take time to know yourself, you can’t effectively grow yourself.
We all want to become better versions of ourselves. But the path to do that is less than clear and direct.
We can find a vast array of pieces of advice online or by asking people we know. But the hard part isn’t so much finding out the steps involved in growth, but rather adopting the right mindset about what growth is in the first place.
Specifically, there are 2 big myths or misconceptions about growth that I’ve found to be persistent and pervasive. I’ve seen them in others, and I see them popping up all the time in my own thoughts and expectations.
They’re more than myths, they’re also roadblocks—barriers to growth. So let’s look at them and understand how to overcome them.
Myth 1: Growth Only Happens In One Direction
We tend to view growth as happening in limited, unrelated spheres of our lives. There’s professional growth, financial growth, spiritual growth, and so on. Growth in one area requires a different kind of effort and mindset than growth in others, and there’s really no overlap or relation.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
These areas of our lives are not separate. They’re inextricably linked, and the growth that we achieve at any given time will only look like growth if you look at the larger whole.
Here’s an example. Say things have taken a turn in your relationship, it looks like it’s on the outs. So you spend some more time really sitting down with yourself and your significant other, trying to figure out where to go from here. It’s tough, it’s emotional, and it ends in a breakup — there’s sadness, sentimentality, etc. It pulls your mind away from your work, and as a result, things look worse in your professional life.
But after the soul-searching and the breakup, after taking some time away from ruminating over work all the time, you come out of it with a better understanding of yourself and what you want out of life. You realize why that relationship didn’t work. You realize what your shortcomings are, and what you really want from a partner. You go out into the world ready to build (or rebuild) a better version of your life.
So yes, your professional growth may have stagnated or regressed for a little bit. And for a week or two, it looked like your personal growth was flat or trending downward (I mean, a breakup isn’t a high point of growth, right?). But the time you took to deal with your personal stuff — despite it starting out bad — was indeed growth. On the whole, things are better. You’re out of a relationship that wasn’t good for you anymore, and you’ve learned more about yourself and the life you want.
The Truth: Growth Is Holistic and Requires Shrewd Investment
Did that personal growth come at the cost of some professional momentum? Yes. But that’s okay. That’s how it happens. You need that give and take in the different places in your life. You’re investing.
Growth is growth — whether you’re growing financially, or growing personally. And like financial growth, personal growth only comes through investment. Here, instead of money, you’re investing time and effort. But just like investing money, it’s all about timing.
You withdraw from your professional growth account, and invest what you took into your personal growth. Because the timing was right when you made your investment, though you took something from your professional growth account, you invested it in a place where that time and energy was able to grow well beyond where it would have elsewhere.
Myth 2: Growth Always Feels Like Growth!
Despite all the science and step-by-step processes we might employ on our personal growth journeys, so much of how we evaluate ourselves relies on how we feel. When you’re growing, you can feel it, and when you’re not growing, or regressing, you can feel that, too.
But feelings can be deceiving.
In the example above, where you’re going through a somewhat painful breakup, you’ll be feeling all sorts of negative things. There won’t be the exhilaration and feeling of forward motion that we crave moment to moment. But make no mistake. Growth is happening.
That’s the thing about growing. Many times, it comes as a result of a hearty dose of pain. And it is in going through that pain — rather than finding a way around it — that we grow. Learning to appreciate that, and deciding to appreciate the pain, is one of the first steps to growth.
Truth: Know and Leverage Type A and Type B feelings
Don’t get me wrong, we still need to use our feelings about our progress and our lives as guides; there’s no substitute for that. However, there are (at least) two kinds of feelings we can have about ourselves: (a) immediate, short-term, and immature feelings and (b) higher-level, long-term, mature feelings.
The type (a) feelings are reactive, focused on pleasure in the moment, and feelings of exhilaration and adrenaline. They come on mostly as a result of external stimulus, like things happening to us. But they are short lived. They also tend to distract us from long-term pleasures.
These feelings are terrible guides. They push and pull us in different directions, but rarely toward long-term goals and sustainable fulfillment. They’re also, by nature, fleeting. They come and go quickly.
The type (b) feelings are more proactive, focused on pleasure through reflection and feelings of fulfillment, wholeness, and appreciation. These feelings come upon reflection about where you are, what you’ve accomplished, and where you might be going. They come from within, and as a result of looking at and evaluating your life holistically.
Get to know the difference between these feelings, and gain a powerful tool in your toolkit for growth.
When it comes to growth, it’s worth heeding the ancient advice inscribed at the Temple of Apollo at Delphi: “know thyself”.
So if nothing else: know thyself, grow thyself.