5 Sure-Fire Signs You Are Rapidly Growing as a Person
The secret to achieving unimaginable heights in life is consistent personal growth.
We all go through life, but very few of us grow through it.
Consistent personal growth is the biggest factor for success. As Robert Collier says — “Success is the sum of small efforts — repeated day in and day out.”
Becoming a better person every single day can, over time, compound to unimaginable results. In fact, if you get just 1% better every single day, you’d be a whopping 3778% or more than 37 times better in a year.
But the signs of growth aren’t always straightforward. In fact, it’s even easy to misinterpret them in a manner that hinders our own growth!
I want to share 5 such signs. These are sure-shot signals you’re on the path of rapid personal growth and consequently — wild success.
You Outgrow Your Friends
When I had my first epiphany, I lost most of my friends. I was and still am on good terms with them, but the “relatability” element had vanished.
I soon found new friends, and the days became a carefree blur of wholesome conversations, gaming, and working out. Then the pandemic hit. And the lockdown triggered another growth spurt.
I got back to reading, drastically changed mentally, and found new passions such as writing, finance, and philosophy. And Voila! A few of my closest friends started feeling like acquaintances. And a few acquaintances turned into close friends.
I thought something was wrong with me. There were people still chummy with their childhood friends while I was changing friends like I changed my underwear.
“Birds of the same feather flock together, but as you grow, your feather changes.”
But after some reading and thinking, the answer became clear as day — I was outgrowing them.
It’s like being in a group of joggers. As long as everyone’s jogging at the same pace, it stays a group, but as your pace quickens — you pull ahead and are soon out of sight.
Birds of the same feather flock together, but as you grow, your feather changes and it’s hence time to move on to a new flock. To quote Psychology Today,
People change over time. Friendships may grow in parallel, grow closer, or grow apart. The things that previously magnetized us to our friends may no longer exist, or at least our connection to them may have dissipated.
But this is not always the case. Some of my closest friends are ones I’ve known since primary school. The reason they’ve remained close friends is that they’ve grown at a similar pace as I have.
When you’re rapidly growing as a person, it’s natural to lose friends. While some won’t be able to relate to you anymore, some will just be plain jealous.
Don’t beat yourself over it. Keep running, you’ll come across new joggers running at the same pace.
You Cringe at Your Past Self
The number of times I’ve sifted through old chats and cringed my soul out is beyond count. Same are the times when an old memory surfaces and I go, “Why? Just why did I act that way?”
But this is actually a good thing. When you cringe at your past self, it means that you are ashamed of and disapprove of something you did in the past.
It means that you know better now. It means that you’ve grown as a person.
I’ve made a lot of mistakes in the past. And some of them used to turn me beet red in shame and rage until recently. But these mistakes were instrumental in my growth. As Anne Lamott says,
“You have to make mistakes to find out who you aren’t. You take the action, and the insight follows: You don’t think your way into becoming yourself.”
I’m still making mistakes but I just don’t know them yet. My future self will, and he’ll cringe at my present self.
And I’ll know that I’ve grown.
You Aren’t Personal About Your Beliefs
After my first huge epiphany, I clung to my newfound beliefs as a newborn baby does to the mother’s breast. And I would get pissed off by anyone that expressed different beliefs or tried to downplay my own.
With barely concealed anger and a smirk of self-righteousness, I would explain the merits of my beliefs and denounce the other person’s.
“Your core beliefs are your way of approximating your truth. And when you cling to them, you limit your growth.”
But that’s no longer the case. My belief system has drastically changed since then and I’ve realized that it’ll continue to change. As Milan Kundera says,
“It takes great maturity to understand that the opinion we are arguing for is merely the hypothesis we favor, necessarily imperfect, probably transitory, which only very limited minds can declare to be a certainty or a truth.”
The goal is the truth and if I come across a belief or idea that better resonates with me, I’ll gladly swap it with my own.
Your core beliefs are your way of approximating your truth. And when you cling to them, you limit your growth. There’s nothing wrong with being wrong, only with staying wrong.
“If someone can prove me wrong and show me my mistake in any thought or action, I shall gladly change. I seek the truth, which never harmed anyone: the harm is to persist in one’s own self-deception and ignorance.”
So if you are someone that doesn’t cling to your beliefs or get personal about them, you’ve truly opened yourself up to growth.
You Treat Everything and Everyone as an Opportunity to Learn
Thanks to being called gifted all my life and effortlessly topping throughout school, I used to be an extremely arrogant person.
Sitting on my smart-aleck high horse, I’d look down upon others. But joining college humbled me — there were many people as smart or even smarter than me.
And when I started exploring philosophy, I was truly and absolutely humbled.
“Since it’s only by admitting ignorance that we can hope to learn.”
Compared to the knowledge and wisdom of the thinkers of the ages, I was nothing. This made me see the world in a new light — everything and everyone was an opportunity to learn.
Maybe what Socrates has said is the highest wisdom — “I know that I know nothing.” Since it’s only by admitting ignorance that we can hope to learn.
None of us know anything, really. We’re all trying to make sense of the world in our own way. So, every person, irrespective of who they are, has something to offer to learn. So does every experience.
With this mindset shift, you open up a path of eternal learning and consequently growth.
“Research shows you begin learning in the womb and go right on learning until the moment you pass on. Your brain has a capacity for learning that is virtually limitless, which makes every human a potential genius.”
When you strive to learn from everything and everyone, you’ve put learning on auto-pilot.
Your Introspection Is on Autopilot
Last but not least is something I’ve noticed only recently.
When I discovered introspection for the first time, I deliberately had to sit down and reflect every single day. I’d ask myself questions like, “What made me do this?”, “How could I have done this better?”, and “Why did I react like that?”.
But I no longer do that. I no longer have to, as I recently noticed that my introspection was on autopilot.
Every time I thought, said, or did something, within a few seconds or minutes, I’d unconsciously be reflecting on it.
This was no accident. I had deliberately and regularly spent so much time introspecting that it had gotten programmed into my subconscious brain. It’s the age-old cliche — “Practice makes perfect.”
When your introspection is on autopilot, so is your learning, and consequently, so is your growth.
Final Words
Come to think about it, growth is all about learning — from yourself, from your mistakes, from others, and from other’s mistakes. So consistent personal growth is nothing but an infinite cycle of learning, doing, and repeating.
And the best part about growing as a person is that it doesn’t take humongous effort, all it takes is — becoming a tad better every single day.
“If you get just 1% better every single day, you’d be a whopping 3778% better in a year.”
