The Growth Pendulum

Growth processes can have life on a swinging pendulum that oscillates between phases of insufficiently challenging life and phases of overwhelmingly challenging life.

This is not as fun as it sounds. Insufficiently challenging days can leave us feeling hopeless, while overwhelmingly challenging days can leave us feeling helpless, and finding equilibrium can seem like a far-fetched reality.

So what can we do to maintain sanity in these phases of life? There are 3 things that I have found to be very useful in coping with the oscillating phases of growth and progress and these are centered around making growth the actual learning process that it is. This article is dedicated to talking about them.

1. Learn something new: The less challenging phases of growth is often an invitation to gather information. While reading is the surest way to learn something new, it can be difficult for some people to follow through with this. Reading can also fail to offer new information as humans have an unrecognizable tendency to buy books that talk about things that they already agree with. Nonetheless, reading is still top of the list for learning something new. Pick up a book that is unrelated to your field or preferred category. Try reading a fiction. If you don’t find direct knowledge in it, you could find an applicable strategy that you can employ in the challenging phases of your growth.
2. Learn something interesting: There’s always the ever present subconscious temptation to think that what we already do in our daily lives is the most interesting thing about life – it is not! There are so many other interesting things about life that we don’t sufficiently explore for the fear of coming off as an unserious person who is not expressing sufficient anguish or suffering for their prevailing reality. Learning something interesting is how we build insight, and insight is an important aspect of mentation that needs to be constantly grown. Going to a Zumba class for example, can open up your mind to understanding group dynamics and your role as an individual within a group. This insight can be applicable in other aspects of life.
3. Learn something challenging: There’s a sense of power that comes from engaging in self-assigned challenges. Most importantly, the reward for self-assigned challenges is confidence. There’ll never be a time in life when confidence shall not be an essential component of growth. I once went zip lining during a challenging period of my life, and I struggled through the last climb to get to the point of zipping across, I felt an enormous amount of confidence surge through me. I returned to life feeling more capable and less helpless. Sometimes, a physical reminder of how strong you are can be the thing that reminds you of what your mind is capable of when employed to good use. Try kayaking too. A good adrenaline surge can be useful in building resilience.

Now, there are very many other things that we can do to create balance or something like it when life is having fun on a pendulum. It starts by managing our sense of helplessness and hopelessness, and this we can do with other basic, fun, nearly passive aspects of life.

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