EVOLVE
Growth is a 5-way street
“Often, it’s not about becoming a new person, but becoming the person you were meant to be, and already are, but don’t know how to be.”
— Heath L. Buckmaster
Growth is an amazing subject for thought. The diverse views on growth should be studied. When can you tell that a person is grown? Not referring to the growth that nature mandates and that we cannot do anything about, but the one that man allows in his mind.
We often unconsciously look at growth in one way — CHANGE.
Change is an important agent we all need to move forward in life. But, growth is not always about changing that handwriting or changing the color of that design. Growth may just mean making the writing more cursive or making the design brighter with a lighter shade of the same color.
Now, you may say “isn’t this a given? We all do this, right?” I beg to argue that what 80% of us call growth is change, which, in most cases, we do not need. The thing is that the concept of change can be our escape mechanism, to avoid getting better at what we already know. Thereby, refusing to see who we already are.
This new year, one decision I’m taking is to add things to last year’s resolutions. Making new resolutions feels like a change that is unnecessary. Am I just going to throw away last year’s goals when my list is not even 50% complete? I’m settling in my mind that to evolve, I just may need to finish what I started.
“There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.”
— Nelson Mandela
If we shift our gaze from the one way we see growth, we would rediscover what growth actually means: To go again, to get a brighter shade for our design’s color, or to use a pen with a defined ballpoint that makes your handwriting feel like its best.
People change often and call it an improvement. What if you realize that you veered away because you didn't know yourself well enough? We can’t call that growth now, can we? We do not just evolve because we changed the car but didn’t learn to follow traffic rules or can’t seem to make that sharp turn. We evolve when we learn to pay attention to traffic rules regardless of the car being driven. Other times, we just need to rest and observe things well.
So, next time I hear the word ‘growth’, these words will come to mind: CHANGE, IMPROVEMENT, CONSISTENCY, STRATEGY (planning), and REST. They are the 5 ways that make up the street called GROWTH. New days do not mean new ways, just new opportunities to EVOLVE.
