Allowing Yourself To Grow

It’s going on six years now that I’ve been a single mother and I feel a lifetime wiser than I’ve ever been. I made the decision a while ago to continue moving forward every day and to never again move backwards. I’ve learned though that when certain situations repeat themselves, we have a sub conscious tendency to let old fears from past situations creep up and threaten us. 

Every day through life’s little and big lessons, we grow more and more into who we really are but how well you allow it is up to you. I’ve learned through my own process that we adapt, allow and become more abundant in our happiness and sense of self or we resist our growth out of fear and stay miserably stuck in the past. This was a huge lesson for me and one that I will remember forever. So let me break it down for you because I really believe that you will benefit from what I have learned.

How do we grow into ourselves? Every day “life” happens and whether it happens in a way you appreciate or not, there’s an advantage to everything that happens in your life. You learn what makes you happy and what makes you unhappy. You can appreciate every moment because even if what is happening in the moment is something that you don’t like, your dislike gives you clarity on what you do like. For example, I remember going on a date one time and the guy was putting it on me to make all the plans because he thought this was something that women like. Well maybe some women do enjoy being the dominant one when it comes to date planning but I learned that night that I am definitely not one of them. And from that night on, I gained more clarity about what makes me happy when it comes to dating. I like when the man makes the plans. So no matter what happens in your life, every day gives you more clarity about who you really are and what you desire. The good news about this is that you can appreciate the good and the bad in life. You can appreciate the good because it brings you joy and the bad because it brings clarity on expanding your joy.

What does it feel like to resist your growth? Easy! It feels like being stuck in the past. It feels fearful and empty. Your growth allows you to add a little more to your desires each day. But when you don’t allow your growth because of lack of faith in yourself and fear of change, you feel bad. You feel angry, sad, empty, depressed, anxious, scared alone because deep down you are aware that you’re not allowing yourself to be present in your expansion. Whether you want to grow or not you do every day and any bad feelings that you feel are because you are resisting the expansion of you. I’ll give you an example from my own life. For some time whenever I started to like someone, I would push them away. I didn’t feel worthy of being loved and was scared to death of the thought of allowing someone in so I didn’t. But I’ve grown since then and it wasn’t until someone that I felt a genuine connection with came along that I had to make a decision to resist my growth or to allow it. I felt that I really like this person and all of a sudden I found myself digging up old fears. I had to make a decision of staying in the past and running from this person or realizing that I’m not who I used to be and that my desires changed from wanting to be alone to wanting to be with someone. I had to make the decision to either stick with being miserably secure in a past that would surely repeat itself or having faith in my own expansion and allowing the excitement of a new experience.

What does it feel like to allow your growth? It mostly feels exciting because you’re allowing yourself to experience new things and connections when you allow your growth. As you learn every day, you expand on what makes you happy and if you are allowing this expansion (or growth) you add more and more of what makes you happy to your life. You experience new and exciting situations. You feel deeper connections with not only yourself but other people. You just become happier! For ages people have tried to agree upon the meaning of life and although I can’t say what the meaning of life is, I can say that a big part of life is learning more about the uniqueness of you and what makes you happy every day. But you are the only one who can decide that you are worth this and until you do you will continue to experience unhappiness.

There are two points I want to make that will allow you to start enjoying your growth and the newer versions of yourself that life causes you to create every day.

Don’t try to understand your past. We always try to pick apart situations in an effort to justify why we feel bad about what’s happened but in doing this we just focus more on the bad and this will only prolong our feeling bad about it. Whether you understand why something made you unhappy or not isn’t as important as recognizing that it made you feel unhappy. It’s in the recognition that something made you feel unhappy that you can recognize what will make you happy. So don’t beat yourself up with analyzing things. Just trust how you feel and allow your feelings to guide you and give your energy to what makes you happy.

Remind yourself that you are worthy. Every time you are in a moment and doing something that makes you feel good, remind yourself that you are worth having that very moment. Stop and allow yourself to enjoy it as much as you can. It can be anything from kissing someone to jumping out of an airplane (if that’s genuinely what makes you happy). Just stop thinking and allow your feelings to take over and remember that you are worthy of having those moments. Those are the moments that really allow you to experience who you are and you deserve a never ending abundance of them.