Growth with Perspective

     When, I pause to think about how far I have come and actually recognize the distance I have worked so hard to place between myself today and who I was years ago, I am amazed and even proud of myself. See, often times I get caught up running 100 miles per hour, while I have the strength and mindset, but often times, I end up hitting a wall because I couldn't pace myself accordingly and I flop down exhausted and discouraged. I have this difficulty that comes with my internal wiring that causes me to go full throttle in total fixation when I get a vision or a passion for something in the crosshairs of my ambitious soul. I'm still not entirely sure how helpful I am to myself when I am in this rocket fuel motivation movement. But I do know now, from experience that what go comes up must always come down. By now you can probably imagine that I have many burnout sessions with type of movement, and I can confirm that this is true. It used to devastate me so much, and I would sit and scratch my head thinking about where I went wrong. Why did I try so hard and not get the results in that I saw so clearly in my head when I began. As the older I got I realized that I was not very good at pacing myself at all or having the patience to see my results. It was all or nothing for me almost always. And this led to such a burnout and disappointment time and again. 

I'm not entirely sure when I figured out that this was my pattern. When I finally gave myself a "full breakdown assessment" I realized what I was doing. I realized that I was not pacing myself as well as I probably should have, and I also was not giving myself enough credit for the small wins, and that the defeats were merely lessons to help me adjust my actions. Ultimately, my grading card for myself, was completely inaccurate, and I would get discouraged and give up before I had the chance to let my efforts marinate, long enough, to start building momentum. 

This reminded me of when I was a kid, when it came to planting a seed in the ground or pot, and I completely had no patience whatsoever and remember finding myself digging the seed out of the to check if it was "growing". At the time it made perfect sense to me to check on the seed, as though I needed to supervise its progress and growth, or I needed to "do something" to help it grow. Which sometimes meant that I would even drown my seed, because I just needed to do something to help in the growth process.  Unfortunately, with my "method" of assisting the seed, my seed would never grow or get past a certain stage if it did. I just couldn't understand why. I will tell you something funnier, is that I continued this thinking into young adulthood and just finally gave up trying to "grow things" because I was positive that I had no green thumb at all, and that all I would ever do is kill every seed and plant I came across. 

 Now as an adult, I realized that this assessment of myself was completely inaccurate, and that continuously checking on and micromanaging my "seed growth" was actually working against me this whole time. I think it was after I had my first child, when I finally gathered up the courage to start learning how to be a green thumb again. I actually was nervous of failing and almost didn't even want to try because I was positive that I would fail again. But my stubbornness took over and I started to study and learn from those who had success before, I started off with a frustrated and almost jealous mindset of, well, if they can do it why can't I. When I got over my feal of failure, and did some research and experimenting, and with lots more failures or rather lessons under my belt, I finally realized the root cause of my hinderance, and it was simply me. I didn't understand the concept of enduring patience and pacing myself for the task of growing a seedling. 

When I finally had my aha moment, I was able to adjust myself accordingly and after that I became an amazing gardener. I became so good at gardening and growing that it seemed that I would just talk to my plants, and they would grow. I even learned how to clone and graft, and I was in heaven. Everyone I met or that saw my skill, was amazed and would call me a "green thumb". That I had "a gift" I would chuckle and think back to that little kid turned adult who would dig up the seeds and ask it why it wasn't growing. 

I am grateful now for my newly learned perspective and understanding. It helped me take my defeats and turn them into small wins and eventually my big victory. I realized that I needed to take this same concept and understanding into my life with how I approached my ambitions and projects. This has made things much easier for me to learning how to pace myself, because I still have that rocket engine mind energy, or not be as devasted when I hit a standstill or the "germination" process in my journey. I simply need to breathe and reassess, adjust and wait. Sometimes with no movement at all, sometimes only small movement, to which all are necessary through the process of nurturing my "seedlings" for growth in my life. Patience in my journey, grace for the garden of my soul. 💚💙