Growth… It Often Looks Like Failure

I’ve spent the last two years or so of my life working on growing and developing myself. In particular I really wanted to get good at a few things:

1. Staying positive no matter what is going on.
2. Not letting negative people bring me down.
3. Not negatively reacting or being bothered by other people and what they do/say.
4. Waking up every day excited for the day.
5. Going to sleep with a grateful heart.

Of the last two years, I can honestly say that there have very few days where I have accomplished all five things. However, I have steadily gotten better at doing all of them, in on way or another, and I am VERY good at noticing when I am not doing one of those 5 – and stopping to reassess my behavior.

It took me way too many negative nancy moment, way too many tears, way too many arguments with people on Facebook, and way too much frustration to realize I had a problem. I used to constantly argue about politics -and feel like banging my head against a wall when I couldn’t make every single member of my friends list agree with me. I used to argue all day about one thing or another until I realized it was eating up my life and a complete waste of energy. And more importantly – all the negatively, arguing, and frustration was getting me nowhere fast in terms of my life and my goals.

I’ve learned that growth involves a lot of failing forward.

I’ve gotten really good at being focused on my goals regardless of what my day is looking like, what obstacles come about or what random project gets thrown my way that throws off the next 87 days that I had planned down to 30-minute intervals. I’ve gotten good at focusing on what I need to get done, and gaining that “I’m accomplished” feeling. That feeling just feels so damn good #amiright?

At first, my approach to not letting negative people bother me was to simply block them all away. If I can’t see it.. it’s not really there, right? Yes, that’s right. But I’m also not learning how to deal with the negativity in a way that doesn’t affect me. So a few weeks ago I unblocked everyone on my block list and let pandora’s box be what it may. I must add though, that the unfollow button is a true blessing. No one likes a constant complainer… and I no longer need to see them whine about how awful it is that their Barista can’t get their name right ever or how TERRIBLE the MTA is every.single.day.

Now, I rarely argue on Facebook – there are a few special characters that can bring it out of me, but I always notice it and I always try to end things – make peace and move on with my day to being more productive. It used to eat up hours, now it eats up minutes (most of the time).. we’ll just call that growing because this one was particularly hard for me to do.

I finally have a job, work environment and all around life where I am excited for each of my days. I feel like I’m constantly helping people and feel like I’m growing personally and professionally. Both my day job – being a Financial Planner, and my evening personal gig- being a Health Coach, are personally rewarding in a thousand different ways. It’s frikkin’ awesome (and I am eternally grateful every single day)!

I have also gotten in the habit of writing out my gratitudes. I don’t do it everyday, but whether I do it before bed, when I first wake up, or dead center in the middle of a client meeting.. it still gets done… and it brings my entire perspective right back to what’s really important.

So fail forward. Fail forward every day to get closer and closer to whatever your personal goals are… I sure am!