Growth

Almost all of us wake up everyday, do whatever we do, with one intention and one intention only, to pursue growth, in one aspect of life or the other. Even while sitting with a packet of chips by your side and scrolling through Instagram mindlessly, we intend growth in our comfort levels.

But, is there something else about growth that we should know about? Is growth exactly what we think it is, or is there more than what meets the eye? Today, let’s take a deeper look at this globally yearned and pursued facet of life.

Human history is highly nonlinear and unpredictable.

Michael Shermer

Let’s take a small trip down memory lane. Think about the time you were five years old.

There is a recently launched toy, which is all the rage right now. None of your friends have the toy right now, but all of them have vowed they will purchase it in the near future.

You go back home with a determined look on your face, with a good shining redness on it, as kids do. You reach your parents, and make a royal decree to them, “I shall have this toy, come hell or high water”

(Not in these exact words, because of two reasons; one- if five year old’s start to have this audacity, we are going to see major amendments in laws against parents putting their hands on children. And two- if five year old’s start to have a vocabulary that includes words like “hell or high water”, which I had to Google myself, I might as well hand my blog over to a five year old).

Well parents being parents, they have to burst your bubble and bring you back down to reality. They remind you of the raid you had last week at the toy store and point to the resultant loot of 25 toys you bought, which you did not place back in the box before you left to have the little chat about the plaything with your friends.

“No, that’s not happening”, exclaim your parents.

(Again, not in these exact words, because apparently when you speak to a five year old like that, they start to wail like a kettle with boiling water in it).

Well, the toy was already very valuable to you. But, upon listening to the denial from the powers that be, the perceived value of this toy becomes as much to you as a scarce resource, like food to the starving and money to the destitute. So, you do the most logical thing that you can do. Throw a tantrum.

Irrespective of the time of day, taking a note of what your parents are doing, you drop to the ground, get up, stomp your feet, unless you get what you have asked for. Your parents amidst the rumpus, feel pity for the little brat they see, and finally cave, drive you to the store to buy you your 26th toy in two weeks.

All the efforts you put in, making the decree, throwing he tantrum lead to growth. Growth in your toy collection and growth in your personality where you discovered that throwing a tantrum of a certain intensity will make your parents yield and buy you a toy (maybe something bigger in the future).

Now the latter wasn’t really the best example of growth, but there are a couple of properties of growth that we get to learn from this.

Growth takes time

By simple extrapolation, we can see that this could be with growth in any area of life; physical, mental, psychological, financial, social; what have you. This is a well established fact of life. So, I will not talk about this in meticulous detail.

Growth is non-linear

This is one property of growth that seems to elude many of us, and is cause of a lot of distress in life.

Remember your childhood story we just referenced a while back? You didn’t get the toy at your first wish, did you? There was a possibility that you wouldn’t have been bought the toy at all. But you decided to do your thing anyway.

In this constant grind and chase for success, many a times, we forget a couple of things :

• There are always some factors that are out of our control. Due to these factors, the outcomes we face may not always be what we had intended to do.
• Whenever we build our resolutions, we forget to keep enjoyment and fun in the picture, and create unnatural expectations of ourselves.

We all know what happens when expectations don’t meet reality; stress. Stress is something we tend to avoid at all costs.

But, as much as we love the notion of life being a constant upward trajectory, it is almost certain that if that were a reality, life wouldn’t be fun anymore. If there weren’t be any challenges between you and your target, your resolution, the target might as well not be the target at all.

This non-linear nature of growth is what makes life worth living, and our dreams worth pursuing.

So, the next time you feel stressed, think about the bigger picture, cut yourself some slack, and despite the set back, do it anyway. 🙂

If you stuck around this far, thank you for your time. If you enjoyed this, share this with one friend of yours whom you think will benefit from reading this. Thanks for reading, and I will see you in the next one.

Talking about growth, please show some love to Cremewich, a venture a friend of mine has started. The contact details are linked below.

• Cremewich Instagram
• Cremewich Facebook

Thank you.