Why Growth Isn’t Happening For You (at the pace you were hopping it would)
Growth is at the core of the definition of Life itself. It is embedded in our cells. “Increased empowerment” (as the French pedagogue and educational reformer Célestin Freinet put it) is an inherently observed feature of a child growing into adult… under favorable conditions. And this reservation is critical for our understanding of ourselves and that feeling of being stuck or trapped.
For many of us, growth is inhibited and our development becomes stale if:
as a child, we grew up in an environment of intergenerational trauma - and it was as common as the air we breathe so we didn’t realise something was impeding our growth, we just felt and still feel unfulfilled. The family loyalty became a perpetration of victimhood patterns and learned helplessness.
We grow with toxic shame and interiorise that something is inherently wrong with us - while the shaming coming from (seemingly) adult people around us was just a reflection of their own limitations, luck of self-regulation and resources to deal with the exuberant child we once were!
The fear of not fitting in prevents us from letting into our consciousness the fact that we are, in fact, not happy with the default option people around us seem to accept without questioning it. As an example, even if feminism made a dent in it, many girls are still raised with the tacite expectation to become wives and mothers when they grow up, and embrace the housewives life as if it was their ultimate destination. What if they have a different destiny they secretly long for? It takes courage and self-awareness to go against the current that previously ensured survival and (relative) safety.
But the biggest obstacle of all is a wrong conception of error, intertwined with negative moral judgement. When I was learning the joyful and - alas - uncommon Silent Way approach to teaching languages (which I still practice today), I was struck by the fact Caleb Gattegno called mistakes made by students as 'gifts to the class'*. In fact, it is impossible to learn anything without trying and it is completely natural to make mistakes while we are learning something new! To truly start growing as human beings, we must revisit our definition of success, and, in the footpath of Lean Startup approach, define success by validated learning. We must understand the delusional nature of hoping to execute a flawless plan from the get-go. This is our ego trying to appear perfect to feel appreciated and loved. Instead, in a growth-friendly way, success should be defined as acting with awareness and observe the consequences, so we can directly and immediately learn from them. This approach enables us to dramatically reduce or even eliminate internal critic’s heavy shaming. Internally, it looks like a wise loving adult inside who attends to the inner child and verbalises why this mistake happened and what she should do differently next time, without judgment. This directly paves the way to a behaviour change in future, and it actually feels loving in the moment. And this is the oh-so-misunderstood self-love and self-care so many of us need to learn on this path of inner growth. This is also where therapy comes in handy, as a safe non-judgemental place to help you analyse the root cause of the mistakes, and to rehearse new behaviours and responses (as opposted to reactions) from a resourced state. This gives you the best chance of embodying the changes you wish to embody next time a similar situation presents 🎁 itself. (Head here to book a free discovery call)
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* I applied to a PhD study at the University of Melbourne back in 2014 with the idea of doing research on typical errors of VCE students in French as second language, the insights necessary to correct those errors and structured ways to lead students to these insights. In my work in various Victorian schools back then, I collected many fascinating errors impossible to fake... alas, those notebooks are now gone. My application was unsuccessful because of the lack of available supervisors. Was it a failure? ;-)
