Growing is part of life. We all grow physically, mentally, and even spiritually through many aspects of our lives, in one way or another. If I said that I did most of my Growth during my youth into my teenage years, I would be lying. I had learned more and have grown more since being in my mid-20s than I ever did when I was younger and in education. I feel like I am at a point where I am a sponge to things more than ever. I am more open to learning new things, listening to people about different things, and growing and being a better person in life.
To grow in life, I needed to find out what Growth means.
What is Growth?
- The process of increasing in size
- The process of developing, mentally or spiritually
- The process of increasing in amount, value, or importance
The main definition of Growth that I am writing about is growing physically, mentally, or spiritually, as I stated at the beginning of this piece. I have had to overcome many ups and downs within myself to get to this point, and I have had to make mistakes without learning from them repeatedly. I questioned why things would keep happening the way they were and why a pattern kept occurring.
It wasn’t until I truly understood everything had occurred because of my actions/reactions to things. I had to be honest with myself; I had to tell myself that things weren’t changing because I was in denial. I couldn’t listen to others and became ignorant of what others around me were saying.
I am a true believer that everything happens for a reason and in its own time. I have never been one to rush anything; I never aim to do things by a specific time; that has never been me. Being that type of person can have positive and negative outcomes in my life. A positive would be that I am very optimistic about things in life, I never let anything in life get me down, or at least I try not to let it. I try to be positive as much as I can throughout my life. A negative aspect would be that I am an optimistic person.
You’re probably thinking, how can both be a positive and a negative aspect of my life? I don’t blame you for thinking that because it can seem confusing. It can be both because as much as my optimism can be great at times, it can be my downfall also. I have been optimistic about many things in my life; when things are going quite negatively, I would just ignore and believe that everything will work out without doing the work to change the outcome physically. My optimism became my excuse to neglect the work I had to do to change things within my life. Instead of being optimistic, I needed to be realistic.
When I needed to be realistic with things, I couldn’t do so. I would ignore and downplay the seriousness of things, throwing my optimism and ignorance around for sport. I don’t think I was mature enough to be realistic with myself, if I am honest. I had a childlike mindset when it came to life. I only ever wanted things to be perfect and positive, but life doesn’t work that way.
Being an optimistic person can be frustrating to those who are the exact opposite, and it means there will come a time when I eventually am able to have changed the way I approach things. That time arrived over the past couple of years, and I now know what I must do to grow and develop into a better person. I would settle in a job, settle with simple things, whilst wanting the finer things and best things out of life, without putting the work in and relying on the thought that everything will work out for the better, without truly bettering myself.
In order to grow, I needed to be able to move on and let go of things. Let go of things that hurt me or things that I took personally. How could I grow if I allowed myself to continue to hold on to grudges? And continue to be petty in situations? The truth is, I won’t be able to grow by doing these things. This has been the most challenging thing for me; I haven’t been able to let things go quickly, and I struggle to do this.
But I have taken the steps that I need to work on to get to that point in my life. Breathing exercises, journaling, speaking about how I feel and being open about things rather than letting things fester and eat away at me. These are the steps I have been doing to work on myself. Each one has helped me in many ways. It has helped me build better relationships with people and enabled me to work on speaking on things that I would usually find difficult, among many other ways.
The older I get, the more I realise that life is what we make it. The more I focus on things that take away from my craft or take time away from me working on myself, I will indeed hinder myself from reaching my full potential. Hinder myself from becoming a better version of myself.
I still have much growing to do in my life, and there is a lot that I still need to work on. But I can say that the steps I have taken thus far have put me in a positive direction of where I need to be, where I want to be, and where I should be in life.