When Progress Translates in the Stillness

How many of you look at your own growth as a form of progress?

When talking about growth, I don't want to just emphasize positive expansion and a sense of personal development. Growth also exists in our failures, in our regressions, and in the changes that can easily be overlooked.

We are taught to have a narrow view of what momentum looks like. We view ideologies and philosophies around development and expansion through a rose-coloured lens. This is because many of us consider growth and success as equivalents. If it isn't specific, measurable, action-oriented, results-driven, or time-sensitive... if with it comes little to no recognition, then few would consider the shift as growth at all.

As we strive towards the goals and aspirations that matter to us, life can feel as though it is subject to our control. We feel as though we hold the power to make life happen the way we choose. Maybe we do hold that degree of influence on most things... yet, there are times where life is challenging us to view progress differently. When we cannot frame momentum in the traditional sense, we can feel as though we are standing in place and not making inroads at all.

That's the perspective I would like the opportunity to explore.

Sometimes growth is what happens in those in between moments we overlook.

Many of us feel ill-equipped to deal with stillness. We would rather the exhaustion that follows a hectic day than sit in solitude with our own thoughts. Life can give you many years where the predictability and ease cause you to lose yourself in the busyness of routine. Then one day you wake up and do not recognize the person looking back at you in the mirror, yet we rarely attribute our inability to identify with our evolving sense of self as a byproduct of growth.

That lack of self-recognition that often translates as a form of identity crisis is proof that progress is happening within us whether we are paying attention or not.

I have learned that irrespective of how stillness and quiet might feel at times, they are necessary, and allow me to witness the growth happening within me.

Finding peace in stillness and confronting my thoughts (because I know that I am not my thoughts) enables me to make choices that keep me moving forward. Presence feels peaceful when you are actively pursuing. It can feel more like a cage when you find yourself in a reality that does not feel like a transition to the destination you are pushing towards.

Would you ever imagine that embracing that discomfort might be a precursor to the growth that is needed in you to influence change around you?

It is a thought I grapple with during those quiet moments when life is not taking the shape that my effort feels entitled to.

In those moments, I am reminded that my miseducation around progress influences my actions. I am reminded, too, of how my inability to influence reality in the timeline of my choosing feeds my self-evaluation around success. I fail to recognize, or to celebrate, the change as it is manifesting within me.

Every day I am pushing towards meaning and fulfillment.

We are each creating meaning in every choice we make in this life.

I have had the honour and privilege to make the types of choices that many will spend their lifetime never being confronted with. I have clarity on exactly the types of decisions that have influenced and continue to influence the person that I am becoming.

The present is fleeting, forever caught in our pull towards the future and the propensity to dwell in the past. Yet, it is in embracing each present moment for the gift that it is, that we hold space for the version of reality our efforts will someday bring to fruition. I know this, because irrespective of what has not manifested in my life as of yet... I am living the life that my past self always wanted.