How Do you Determine it’s your Season of Growth?

Growth (noun): 1. The process of increasing in physical size; 2. Something that has grown or is growing

How Do you Determine it’s your Season of Growth?

When most people think of growth, they associate that with physical signs of the action. Just visualize, planting a seed and constantly taking a photo of the plant until it blooms. Then placing those pictures in chronological order and speeding up the final project and you will visually show the physical manifestation of that plant, i.e. GROWTH.

Just in the same way we physically grow in different ways, we also can grow mentally and spiritually. My definition of growth is not only the dictionary definition but “the progress of developing behavioral patterns and increasing the size of your spiritual connection”. Learning how to grow mentally and spiritually can be quite difficult because it takes a lot of hard work, determination, and patience. If you read my “Fall: Season of Change and Growth” post, you will see I mention a time in my life I just refused to step into a space of growth.

After years of anger, depression, and anxiety, I was so fed up with things just failing I chose to move into my space of growth. So how did I know it was time? Well, I started to notice I was constantly making the same mistakes over and over again, it just had different players/people each time. It felt like I was just in this continuous cycle that wasn’t going to ever break and I didn’t want to live like that anymore. I finally wanted control of how my life would look like and how I felt, then let others influence my thoughts and feelings. Some of the ways I realized I needed to grow and how to start my journey are below.

Ways to Realize Growth Is Needed

1. The Same Mistakes Continue – you will start to notice that the same lessons keeping coming up and you are constantly making the same mistake. The players and environment change, but the end result seems to be the same.
2. Removing Yourself from an Emotional Rut gets Harder – you will probably start to notice it will get harder each time after a mistake to come back to joy or happiness. With the continued same mistakes, your emotions are going to have a hard time getting back to a state of calm and peace.
3. Getting comfortable with the Good, Bad and Ugly – you start to realize it feels way to comfortable in the space you are in even with the outcomes that are quite ugly. It also feels like you are in dark tunnel and light at the end of the tunnel has disappeared, so you see no way out.

Ways to Start Your Growth Journey

1. Study your Mental Patterns – sometimes take a journal and write down just your emotions for the day or your choices for the day. You will start to see a pattern emerge and find either ways to remove the pattern all together or gaps where you can change it up.
2. Change Up Your Routines – sometimes the slightest change in your routine can help you get ready for change and comfortable with the uncomfortable. So maybe start with a new driving route to the gym or even the time you wake up each day.
3. Understand your Past Experiences – this may take a bit of professional help at the beginning of your journey. When you understand how past experiences have shaped the way you think and react to certain environments and personalities, you will be able to strength your new mental patterns into becoming your normal mental thinking.

If you are in the season of growth, take advantage and start to change. At least for me, growing mentally and spiritually feels just like those physical growing pains you had as a teenager. You will definitely be uncomfortable and have to work hard, but the result is always better than the beginning.