Moving through our life in a healthy way can be challenging. Staying emotionally, physically, and spiritually balanced has plenty of difficulties. Then you throw in the random life curve ball – job loss, divorce, death, illness, financial crash- and it all goes sideways. But how do we explore the deepest opportunities of life and find our true self? It will require intentionally engaging the process of growth.
We have to grow on purpose.
Our growth can only come as the result of our cooperation with the natural process of life. Here is your simple 5 step process of growth. (Yea, right!)
1. Life hands us an uncomfortable curve ball
2. We choose to see it as an opportunity to stretch ourselves and grow
3. We frame the situation properly in our lens of perception
4. We choose our response to it from a place of centeredness
5. Life responds with a gift of an expanded heart
Sounds easy huh? We all know better than that.
Growing is simple, but not easy
The concept of participating with growth to see our life expand is simple. But the reality of actually doing it is not so easy. Simple and easy are miles apart. Taking pictures with a camera is simple. Making art with a camera is not easy.
All of our growth comes as a result of us pushing up against the boundaries of some part of our life. It is that pressure that creates the diamond of growth in the hard moments of our life. Finding the right tension between pushing vs. trying to break down the barrier of growth, that is part of the mastery of life.
I need the tension of a boundary pushing back on me to grow. But I don’t like it! It’s painful and disruptive to my comfortable life. But it is the necessary piece that allows me to wrestle with where I currently am and where I need to go.
You can’t fix it all
I have always been a fixer of broken things. From working on my toys as a kid, fixing my broken bikes as a teenager, fixing my broken heart as a young adult, fixing people as an influencer in my chosen field, helping broken situations in the third world, to fixing my own broken dreams and beliefs today. I have always enjoyed fixing things. Sometimes more than I needed to. It is part of why I became co-dependent and have to work hard at not fixing every broken thing or person that I see.
Some things can’t be fixed. Some situations can’t be undone. Some tensions won’t resolve. I’m learning to see that is actually OK. It is needed in the world. It is necessary in my life for me to grow.
The unresolved tensions in my own life cause me to learn how to sit with the discomfort until it is no longer irritating, frustrating or uncomfortable. It just is. That is the moment of growth. That’s when my life gets larger. That is when my soul expands. That is when I get better. That’s the precise moment when my capacity to experience this amazing gift of life get’s bigger.
Where is your growth trying to happen?
Are you rubbing up against something in life today? Is there a situation that despite all your strategy, influencing, leveraging, manipulating, just won’t change? Then it is probably there to help you grow. So lean into it. Don’t try to fix it. Just let it be. And learn to be with it. Unresolved. Broken. Unfixed. Soon you will find your breakthrough. You will feel the click of growth. You will enjoy the embrace of acceptance of what is. And the world around you will enjoy the benefit of your gift of a growing life.
Who knows, your cracked shell could be emerging the seed for a new version of YOU!