Now ask yourself this, have I grown recently?? growth starts with the mindset - are you ready for growth? I don't mean in height or weight, I'm talking about the specific areas of your life that you have set goals for. The goals have been set but are you mentally ready to start making changes that will facilitate your growth?
Growth needs to be intentional
We want to see growth but in order to grow we must condition our environment and be ready to make the required sacrifices. If growth is stunted then clearly something different needs to be done like a change in habit.
Let old habits go!
Growth requires change and change promotes growth. Sometimes these changes are not comfortable but they are necessary!
Sometimes you need to push things & people out of the way, sometimes you need to be alone to nurture your roots.
In order to see yourself grow you are required to make a change. This change needs to be visible to yourself before it is visible to others.
If you are not making a sacrifice when trying to grow then you are not growing.
To improve fitness - requires time in the gym and eating the right food.
A Christians spiritual growth - requires prayer, meditation and reading the word of God.
Learning to cook will most likely require a cook book or watching a Youtube channel.
Getting a new job might require gaining a new skill or qualification.
In order to be a skilled runner - one should train as often as possible.
To Grow is To Change
If you feel stressed – change your environment
If you feel like you aren’t coping then it’s time for change, grow into new habits.
Growth takes a lot of patience, persistence and courage
Growth isn't a walk in the park - it requires sacrifice
Do you think a caterpillar wants to stay in a cocoon? Regardless of how the caterpillar feels, the cocoon is the required condition to to become a butterfly.
An example is when you go through the education system, you progress from one stage to the next stage and at that point you will see that you grew through it all, through the sleepless nights and the hardships you continued to grow. There are different exams for different levels - the exams test our knowledge and prepare us for the next.
Healthy Arguments between partners causes growth because you begin to understand what the other person expects from you and you also communicate what you want to see in the other person.
Growth should never be easy, if it's easy then nothing has really changed. Don't expect to grow without nurturing and feeding yourself.
Just as plants need the sun to grow....you need to figure out the factors that will promote your development. The prime example is a plant, when a plant dies its because the conditions to keep the plant alive were not met. The same with if you are dying inwardly its because the conditions to keep your faith alive and to keep you going was not met.
When growing there can be a lot of pain, a lot of hurt and you may even feel like you want to give up. But when you begin to see your progress, everything changes.
I remember at school we had a project where we had to grow watercress, it took ages to grow, we would monitor it's progress week by week. The day i saw a sprout of a leaf I was so happy, this should be the same for us - how do you measure your growth. If you don't measure your growth then how will you know that you are making progress?
Growth is part of life, naturally we grow older, plants grow, animals grow - Growth is one of life's most phenomenal factors.