What’s Growing?

How are you growing as a person?

Pick one or two areas where you see positive growth.

Pick one or two where you would like to see positive growth.

Examples: Fitness, emotional health, positive relationships, self-awareness, spiritual health, managing stress, serving others, career, compassion and kindness, patience, self-compassion, learning, managing conflict.

Our Experience

To love well, I must first live well.

This obvious principle came as a radical realization years ago to Libby and me. Or rather what it meant to live well.

Speaking for myself, I was inclined to follow the principle in reverse:

To live well, I must be loved well.

Although on the surface that principle seems equally as obvious. But it was deadly.

Why?

It assigned to others the responsibility for my well-being. It helped me develop patterns of co-dependency.

I’m only okay if you keep me okay.

My problems are yours to fix.

If I’m unhappy, it’s your fault.

To accept full responsibility for my well-being was, well . . . radical.

Did that mean that my frustrations, disappointments, unmet expectations, temper were my responsibility, not hers?

Yep.

But where do I start?

Be a person who is always growing.

Especially in self-awareness.

Have the courage to accept my own shortcomings.

Tend to my growth.

Libby is a great example of a growing person. I realized this the other night when a friend was over for dinner and asked Libby what she had been learning in her relationship with God and herself.

“I’m learning to sit down and rest when I’m tired. In that chair right over there.,” she said.

(It’s new for her to even give herself the permission to notice being tired.)

“I’m learning to respect what I need,” she added.

“And I am learning to value myself as a good friend to others.”

“Wow!” I’m thinking.

She has never given herself that credit.

“Libby, those things are big!”, exclaimed our friend.

Each day I see Libby spending more time in silence, solitude, and prayer. She is learning how to surrender taking on the responsibility for everyone else.

And she is gaining the capacity to live well and to love well.

Are you a growing person?