A Process for Growth and Working with Failure
Photo by the blowup on Unsplash
This article originally appeared on Medium.com 12/28/2020
Working on your growth, and achieving your goals, may feel difficult but the process is actually pretty simple. The difficult part is building consistency over time.
Even though the process of growth is simple it may not feel that way. The whole idea of ‘growing pains’ illustrates how many of us feel about the process of growth. Yeah, maybe it’s simple but, it hurts. When things feel difficult or challenging we can be less likely to willingly engage in the active process of growth.
There may be areas of our life that we neglect or put on the back burner because we may not want to invest time and energy into making something better. Or, maybe we tell ourselves that, “we’ll get to it eventually.” Maybe we anticipate what the experience may entail which can create anxiety or distress.
We create stories and expectations about how we want things to be, or turn out, which life rarely adheres to. The uncertainty of how things may turn out can often be a hindrance.
These narratives can then impact our motivation and prevent us from taking action where it’s most needed thereby avoiding areas of our life that need attention. Avoidance can then become a 2 fold problem — avoidance leading to procrastination and the additional stress that is created from the actual circumstance holding us back.
Just because we choose not to work on something doesn’t mean that it won’t find a way to sabotage us later on down the line in our life. Actually…when we choose to not work on things that are holding us back, we are actively engaging in self-sabotaging behavior. We are sabotaging our ability to be better and do better.
Sometimes the fear of failure can hold us back. If you believe you are going to fail, you may be hesitant to participate in the process. If you half-heartedly commit and don’t fully participate in the process then it will most likely lead to failure. This will only reinforce the hesitation to engage. Then, failure comes about as a result of being afraid of failing.
It’s a vicious self-fulfilling prophecy. If failure is inevitable then why do anything differently? This is learned helplessness…it’s a bit more nuanced but hopefully, this paints the picture.
The textbook definition of learned helplessness is, “a condition in which a person suffers from a sense of powerlessness, arising from a traumatic event or persistent failure to succeed.” It is also helpful to know that learned helplessness is commonly present in cases of depression.
Just take action, little by little
Nobody can tell you how to not procrastinate or take action. At the end of the day, only you can do that for yourself. You have to find the thing inside yourself that gets you to move and set things up in your environment to help facilitate that process.
What is your purpose for wanting to grow? What is the meaning you have attached to it? It is compelling enough to inspire you to act or do things differently?
What I will say is, the process goes a little something like this:
Take small actionable steps daily
Set goals
Plan
Create systems in your life that move you in the direction of your goals
Fail / relapse
Repeat
Make adjustments to your plans
Take more steps
Fail and fall down a bit more
Make better plans
Take more accurate steps
Fail and fall down again
Keep going until you die
This is the overall process for directing the process of our growth. But, the most important part is getting used to taking small daily actionable steps. This is where everything starts — taking small actionable steps.
If you find it difficult to take small steps then you are likely taking steps that are too large. Break down the task even further and take one small step. Focus on that one step and don’t worry about taking any other steps until it’s time to think about that. Don’t get ahead of yourself and stay present with the current step of the process.
You can’t shortcut growth. You can’t shortcut the process of becoming who you are meant to be. If you try to shortcut the process, you are just shortchanging yourself (pun intended).
Failure is a necessary part of the process
If we avoid failure, we are avoiding life. Did you ever hear the joke about the baby that decided to stop walking after falling down a couple of times?
Taking one small step repeatedly is the most important thing you can do — it’s how we learn to walk. Do the thing that helps you take that small step in the right direction. Then, do it again. And, again. Build on it over time.
Problems in life will never go away…we just get better over time at dealing with challenges. Your challenges will grow as you learn and grow. It doesn’t mean you will get to a place in life where it’s easy mode or your problems vanish, you will just develop the skills to play the game better.
Along the road of life, you will pass goals, benchmarks, and a whole host of other signposts on the road you travel. These are just meant to convey information and point the direction in which you are traveling. Each sign and goal you pass will communicate some type of information to you.
If you were traveling cross country, you would be able to keep an eye out for monuments, signs, and other things that would communicate whether you were traveling in the correct direction or not.
What are the signs you are passing in life communicating to you? How do you feel about the road you are traveling? Is it fulfilling? Stressful? Stressful in a good way or a bad way?
Learning to be present with your experience will benefit you greatly — this can come from developing meditation and deep breathing skills, plus some deep emotional work with a therapist. There are plenty of other things you can do to develop these skills, these just happen to be my favorite.
The key here is to — connect with your experience, assimilate the information you are receiving into your process, make adjustments accordingly, support your long term growth potential.
…and, just as we pass signs and goal posts along the way, we must also learn to let go of them and continue on the path…
Make these commitments every day you are alive
Commit to the process of doing the work every day. The weeds grow every day. This is what it means to exist. All things are in constant flux, movement, and change. There is no escaping it, only finding balance and tranquility amongst the chaos.
Commit to taking a step every day. Life is not about moving a million miles an hour or getting to your destination tomorrow. It’s about getting into FLOW with life and constantly moving until the day you die. If you can’t maintain the process over time then you are doing too much and need to take smaller bites — consistency is key.
Life is a marathon, not a sprint. Make sure you’re running somewhere you enjoy the scenery and the people you are running alongside. If you don’t then you’re probably running to the wrong destination.
Commit to making yourself uncomfortable every day. Growth happens outside of your comfort zone. The point is not to be uncomfortable all the time in ways that create suffering. It’s about opening ourselves to new opportunities and situations to expand our experience. We can’t learn new things if we don’t experience new things. And, you can’t learn everything all in one day.
If you find yourself having a difficult time accepting and integrating a particular failure into your experience, then work on reframing the failure to integrate it more holistically into your experience.
Sit with it a bit and practice gratitude with the experience. What have you learned that you otherwise would not have? How can you benefit from this experience? What information has been communicated to you that you can use to make better decisions down the road?
Every day you wake up, commit to the process, take one step at a time, move slowly and consistently, and make yourself uncomfortable.
Good luck and Godspeed on your travels!
