Lately, I’ve been thinking about the stages of growth I’ve gone through, especially in the past decade. My ambience is perfect for this conversation brewing in my mind—outside, it’s all cloudy and cold; inside, I’m tucked in my duvet in my living room, listening to an amazing podcast by Jay Shetty, with a hot cup of chocolate. I live for these moments. As an introvert, I thrive in such ‘zen-ness’. My mind goes on overdrive thinking about my dreams and ambitions and how I can conquer everything in my heels! 

So back to growth. We all have a basic understanding of what growth is. However, what we tend to ignore through ‘selective amnesia’, is the process of growth. There’s a process to it. Nobody just grew from being an infant to an adult overnight; it took time, energy, attention, and the investment of resources such as food, care, love, education, shelter, clothing, etc. 

Growth is inevitable; we grow whether we like to or not. And nobody can stop the process of growth until the time of death. But what we grow into or grow to become is our responsibility. It will depend on what we invest in ourselves. What content are we feeding on? What are we committing our time to? Who are we listening to? All these factors put together make us grow into a person we can be proud of, or a person we loathe and are ashamed of. 

And with growth, comes ‘outgrowth’. This is the process of growing out of something. Think about a seed. When planted, it stays in the ground for a couple of days or maybe weeks or even years (consider the Chinese bamboo that stays in the ground and requires watering and care for 5 years before it shoots up overnight! Talk of patience!). However, a point comes when that healthy seed that was planted needs to outgrow the buried environment it was in. Slowly but surely, it begins to grow upwards and starts to penetrate the surface of the soil and within a short time, the plant appears and grows to its full size if all conditions are met for its growth.

The process of outgrowth is inevitable in the process of growth. You cannot grow and stay the same. Think of the clothes you wore at 10. It is impossible to fit into those same clothes 30 years later, no matter the latest diet fad in town (And I’ve been on a couple of those😖)! Outgrowth in our lives comes in many forms, and sometimes those forms can hurt. We can outgrow our childhood best friends who we swore to remain BFFs with. We can outgrow businesses and careers and no longer feel the drive that pushed us there in the first place. We can outgrow some habits that used to bring us so much joy. The list is endless. 

And the interesting thing about growth is that sometimes it doesn’t look like what we would expect. Sometimes growth can look like a painful experience that we think we may never recover from, but 3 years down the line, you discover it was for your good to have gone through the pain because it made you a better person, and your story ends up uplifting somebody else. Sometimes growth may look like retrogression in a certain area of your life, yet when you take a deeper look, it’s actually you being pulled back like an arrow so you can be shot to go further. 

I’m slowly-but surely-learning to embrace my growth process. The curve (or lack thereof, because sometimes it feels more like a zigzag upside-down graph) may not look like what I had envisioned, but all the same, I’m growing. Someone said, “It’s not about being the best. It’s about being better than you were yesterday.” I want to be better than I was yesterday.

Parting shot: Be kind and gentle with yourself as you grow. You may fall at times, but that’s part of the growth process, so make sure you get up. You got this 💪🏽.

Always,

Posh 💕