Growth is doing. It’s reading every single Medium article tagged as self-care and feeling like they just let you in on some major secret and ‘why don’t they teach that in schools anyway’? It’s religiously listening to every single podcast, sometimes twice, because you had to hang up your laundry and missed 5 minutes of it and ‘how do you know the path to good life was not laid out exactly then?’.
Growth is not doing. It’s skipping Medium altogether, because reading about other people’s stories is great, but living out your own is even better. It’s choosing which podcast to listen to, because three hours is a long time and time is all we have.
Growth is uncomfortable. It’s quitting office gossip and being called ‘weird’ for it, because you finally realize the cost/benefit ratio and, honestly, it’s not all that interesting in the first place. It’s ending a message to your sibling with four heart emojis, because you still don’t have the guts to say ‘I love you’ but you want them to go about their day knowing they are your absolute favourite.
Growth is freeing. It’s having someone call you ‘mediocre’ and not reacting on it, because you know they are projecting, and you have a life full of experiences that are everything but. It’s going to a dinner party and speaking the host’s language instead of English, because getting to know them better is more important than not making one single grammar mistake.
Growth gives confidence. It makes taking the next step easier, because you know you have so much to fall back on already. It shifts the narrative from guilt and fear of missing out towards self-respect and awareness.
Growth increases accountability. Like that time when you were having an argument with your partner and you chose to see a fellow human being sitting across the table, not an opportunity to prove your point. Or when you finally understand that if you told him that ‘it’s OK’, he is not going to turn around and ask you again, so you need to know for yourself when it really is OK and when it isn’t.
Growth is putting yourself first, putting them first, saying ‘no’, saying ‘yes’, showing up, staying in, letting go, powering through, it’s enough to make you lose your mind. Well, what can I say? John Muir put it best: ‘[…] lose my mind, find my soul’.
Anonymous