“Oh, look! How much he’s grown!” As if it’s unbelievable and not part of regular evolutionary cycle.
Somehow we’ve romanticised growth, dealing with it as if it’s a transformation process worthy of celebration. The montage of before and after pictures are neatly wrapped up in layers of wisdom. But rarely is the painful journey spoken about.
The reality is far less instagrammable. It needs struggle and pain and failure to grow.
Remember the growth pains your child underwent? Or the failures you faced to understand the value of that wisdom? Or the effort you put in to master a skill?
Growth is not passive but inconvenient. It arrives quietly, limping, bruised and confident.
The Pain Isn’t a Bug. It’s the Process.
Every upgrade comes from a base you’ve formed. And discomfort is part of it.
Your muscles pain before they strengthen. The beliefs you held on to, crack before you evolves into a better version. Your confidence builds only after having made you look foolish at least a few times. Don’t you agree?
The pain calls out to you and you’re ready to stop your progress, thinking something is wrong. Nothing’s wrong. It’s just change happening, evolving, transforming.
The brain switches to the ‘flight’ response every time it experiences something unfamiliar. It wants the safety its used to, not progress. It panics.
But growth doesn’t come wrapped up in comfort. It lives in that weird space where on one hand you’re trying to maintain status quo, while the other half of you wants to embrace the struggle and pain to move ahead.
It’s your call then.
Failure Is the Tuition Fee
I began looking at failure as something positive after a particularly jolting incident in my classroom.
I had a child who had difficulty with numbers. Even though a bright child, he would lose out during math exams.
In one of the regular assessments in class, he came to me proudly and showed me that he had got one question right.
His happiness was radiating with pride. That one correct answer gave him the confidence that he can do better.
That’s how growth happens – one step at a time. Failure is the price you pay to learn to do better.
You gain clarity by doing things wrong (repeatedly) and surviving the aftermath.
Every failure takes away from you a little bit of your confidence, your ability, your self-worth. But with every lesson, you gain ground and stand up a little taller.
And that confidence can’t be built in some quiet corner; it has to be out there in the open.
How will you know you’ve learnt something or have made progress unless you’ve someone to notice it, validating the progress?
Every time you embarrass yourself and keep going, you send your nervous system a powerful message that you can survive this.
And that’s how the confidence gains confidence and grows stronger.
Growth Requires Destruction (And That’s Hard to Accept)
Growth requires you to move forwards, leaving old parts of you behind.
Your confidence grows with perfection. The better you get at something the more confident you become.
Like that little boy. Had he clung to his old beliefs that math wasn’t for him, he would still be struggling.
But with that one correct answer, his confidence had grown (though not his grades) and he was ready to take up the next challenge, not just in math.
The outdated beliefs, coping mechanisms, versions of yourself that you once fiercely protected need to left behind in your quest for growth.
It’s like outgrowing the training wheels of your first bicycle.
Of course you’ll fall a few times, have some bruises to show. But those are proof of your efforts.
But if you get too comfortable in your confidence, you’ll again stagnate. The secret to constantly growing is to keep trying, keep learning and failing, keep moving.
So don’t grieve who you used to be, or what part of you you’ve left behind. Embrace the new you.
Choose the Pain That Builds You
Often embracing growth feels scary because it’s painful. You’d rather remain where you are than go through the awkwardness of progress.
But the outcome of that temporary phase is something better, something that lets you discard the old bits of you.
It’s all about your choices – do you want to go through brief phases of discomfort as you grow or do you want to take the easy route and continue with a life wasted on shrinking yourself?
Nothing in life comes easy, not even growth. And that, uncomfortable as it is, is the price of becoming.
It’s for you to decide if you’re willing to pay that price.
