Far too many people are totally fine with living in the comfortable misery that they know instead of taking a chance on growth.
Because growth is uncomfortable, and most people don’t want to be uncomfortable. So they impose limits on themselves. They stifle their own growth and potential.
But you’re here because you’re ready to take the next step – aren’t you? Well, here are eight things you can expect…
1. You stop waiting for permission to live life on your own terms.
Whose permission are you waiting for to finally follow your heart or dreams? Is it a spouse? A parent? Someone else you deem to have some kind of hold over your life?
You are the one who needs to live your life, for better or worse. You cannot live by other people’s standards because then you have to make yourself smaller to fit into their box of expectations.
When you go all in on your own growth and start living more for yourself and your own dreams, you begin to realize that, and you find that their approval means a lot less than you thought it did.
In a perfect world, the people around us would encourage our dreams and want us to pursue the life that we want. But, unfortunately, that’s not always how it works out.
Thankfully, you don’t have to let that fact hold you back anymore.
2. You get more comfortable with disappointing other people.
What you will find as you begin to focus on what’s best for you is that disappointing other people isn’t going to cause them any real harm.
The people that you want in your circles are going to support your choices. Sure, they may express concern or want to make sure you’re thinking clearly, but they will ultimately leave the decision-making to you. Because people who genuinely have your best interests in mind will support anything that helps you grow.
The ones that don’t? Well, they’ll be disappointed, and that’s okay.
It’s not the end of the world. The only person’s approval you should be living for is your own. After all, you’re the one who needs to live with the repercussions of your choices, for better or worse.
Does that mean you’ll make right choices every time? No. But, for many people, it’s better to fail on their own terms than succeed on the terms of others.
3. It becomes harder and harder to tolerate your own excuses.
I can tell you from personal experience how hard it gets to tolerate your own excuses when you’re not doing what you feel called to do.
In my case, I wasn’t putting in the work into a personal project that I really should have been for a long time. I made a lot of excuses for it. Every time I would make an excuse about why I couldn’t or shouldn’t sit down and get on with it, I had that voice in my brain clearly pointing out, “Just another excuse…”
Eventually, I reached a point where I was so disgusted with my own behavior that I said screw it and dove in headfirst.
Doing that quieted that voice in my head. Yes, I’ve made mistakes along the way. That’s just part of life. But I am one of those people who would rather fail trying than sit in mediocre complacency.
4. Growth becomes a part of your identity rather than a one-off project.
As you start living for yourself and your growth, you may start viewing yourself as a continuous work in progress.
I’ve always disliked the narrative that we are “uncovering” who we are. Instead, I like to think of myself as an ongoing act of creation – like I’m a sculptor constantly chipping away at the marble to reveal the art within the stone.
After I finished one self-improvement project, I would then start looking at other aspects of my life where I wanted to be better. I made choices to grow my skills, expand my education, improve my health, and a number of other things.
At this point, I feel like I just can’t settle for one little sliver of self-improvement when I can clearly see how I can be better in other ways.
5. You start outgrowing relationships that no longer align with you.
One of the most painful parts of growth is losing friends and leaving people behind.
As you grow and improve, you may find that some of your biggest haters are the people who claim to love you.
The reality is that they just loved what you could do for them. Or, alternatively, they found you easy to manipulate and control. But once you start making decisions for your own best interests, the users and the manipulators start to fall away. And often, so too do the people who don’t want to grow themselves, because your growth shines an uncomfortable light on their stagnation.
It’s a painful realization to look at friends and family who you’ve had all your life and realize that they won’t have a place in your future.
They could be there with you if they chose to, but some won’t. They’re comfortable being stuck in whatever rut they’re getting left behind in.
6. You start realizing that confidence comes from action.
A lot of people wait around to have the confidence to get moving. But that’s not usually how confidence works. Instead, confidence often comes from taking risks and accomplishing things. And if things don’t work out, you can take pride in the fact that you at least tried. You can’t succeed if you don’t try. That’s really all there is to it.
Nelson Mandela once wrote, “Courage is not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it.”
You can’t have courage without fear. You can’t be brave and confident if there is no adversity to face.
Once you go all in on your growth and start facing adversity and challenging yourself, you’ll find that you are more capable than you may have realized.
7. You become harder to influence and manipulate.
An interesting byproduct of taking a proactive approach to living your life is that it makes it harder for others to manipulate you.
Why? Because you’re not basing your decisions on the words of other people. Instead, you’re making decisions that better align with your own values. You start seeing how other people use their words to influence you into doing what is best for them over your own interests.
It may be a bit confusing at first, as you start thinking, “I don’t want to do that. That doesn’t align with my goals.” But the gap between what aligns with your goals and what that other person is trying to accomplish is usually quite revealing.
Guilt, shame, flattery, fear – all of these things are common tools of manipulation that start losing their power once you go all in on your own growth.
8. You shift from external to internal validation.
There are two major types of validation – internal and external.
External validation comes from trying to earn favor from other people so they will feed your self-esteem with praise.
Internal validation comes from finding inherent value in yourself because you are living in alignment with yourself.
As you start to build and grow, you’ll find that you need that external validation less. Other people’s opinions become less important. In fact, you may realize that they really don’t matter at all at the end of the day.
What matters is that you can lay your head down at night and be satisfied with what you accomplished that day. You can be satisfied with your own efforts and the way you’ve conducted yourself.
Sure, it’s nice to be recognized or acknowledged for doing a good job. But you’ll find that doing a good job or doing the right thing is a reward of its own because you did it on your own terms.
In closing…
If you’re a person who has spent your life trying to make other people happy, it’s going to feel strange to finally decide to put yourself first. It’s going to be hard and a bit scary.
Don’t let that stop you.
You’re probably going to lose people as they find out that you are no longer their tool of convenience. That’s okay. The loneliness and loss are normal. That’s the old falling away to make space for the new.
Don’t let that stop you.
We waste so much time on situations and people that aren’t right for us when we aren’t living in our own truth. In my opinion, it’s better to be alone and on the right path than surrounded by the wrong people on the wrong path.
