Hi everyone and welcome back to my blog. I have been MIA for a while because of work but I am back now and I hope in the meantime all my lovely readers have been taking care of their mental health.
We finally made it to June, month 6/12, and I think that it’s important that we do a mid year mental health evaluation to see how we have progressed in the past 6 months. With that being said, here is a list of questions we need to ask ourselves today: Have I grown in the past six months? Have I achieved the goals I set for myself at the beginning of the year? Have my priorities shifted since the beginning of the year? What are my priorities and goals for the next six months?… The purpose of this article today is to talk about personal growth and no matter how positively or negatively your answers to those questions may be, I just want you to know that you are doing great, don’t beat yourself up. You still have 6 months to turn everything around.
Recently I was having an argument with a friend, and at some point there was a phrase thrown around and it was this one : “This is who I am, I cannot change”. This phrase got stuck with me and I have been thinking about how it’s not uncommon to hear people say that. Such beliefs can be a significant barrier to personal growth. Growth is a lifelong process, and it’s never too late to embrace change and strive for better.
Before we get into it, we need to define the term “Personal growth”.
“Personal growth is a process of both understanding yourself and pushing yourself to reach your highest potential. It means always asking yourself who you are becoming and how you plan to get there.” 1
Like the term says it very clearly, this growth is personal and we often make the mistake of thinking that it involves a quick change of becoming a whole new person. It’s more about making baby steps everyday. In an interview I was watching, John Maxwell, a leadership expert said that they often ask him what makes him good at what he does and his answer is always this : “It wouldn’t be leadership, it wouldn’t be entrepreneurship (which are things he’s renowned for). It wouldn’t be the things that people would think it would be. The key to my success has been that everyday I grow.” This statement is so amazing as he is emphasizing on the importance of consistent, incremental progress in various aspects of life. To sum it up, personal growth is a daily process the journey is as important as the results. We often see the results in most successful people, but we don’t really think about what’s happening backstage when the spotlight is not there.
Moreover, going back to phrases like “I am too old to change now” or “This is who I am, take it or leave it”, I can honestly say that the idea of associating growth with age is a myth. Personal growth doesn’t mean doing a whole 180 and becoming a new person, it’s about making daily improvements and embracing the idea of becoming better.
It’s normal to feel stuck, it’s normal to feel like we are not growing because we aren’t reaching our goals at the pace that we wanted. It’s not a black and white topic, there is not a right or wrong way to grow, what matters at the end of the day is that we are open to it, and we are trying.
I don’t want to be too long today so I’m going to end it with a few things I need you to keep in mind going forward in your journey of personal growth :
1. Don’t compare your growth with someone else’s, like I said multiple times on my blog, comparison is the thief of joy ;
2. Relax! Allow yourself to grow at your own pace. Don’t put a timeline on your results ;
3. Every steps count, it’s not about perfection ;
4. Growth is a process, and it’s never too late to embrace change and strive for better.
This is it for today! Thank you everyone for reading my blog and thanks to everyone who checked up on me during my absence. I hope you enjoyed reading this article as much as I enjoyed writing it. Until we meet again, stay safe and be blessed… always!!!