8 Lessons on Personal Growth That I Wish I’d Known Sooner
Even second-hand wisdom could take years off your “struggle period”.
Of the many things you’ll run low on as you go through life — lost time stings the most. Time exists as an even more powerful resource when you’re a woman in the field of medicine so I know exactly how you feel.
That said, when certain experiences help you grow through them, it can make even the shittiest ones worthwhile. Because with personal growth, comes wisdom. Wisdom leads to less recurrent mistakes. More forward-thinking, more efficient living. Less lost time in the future.
Over the past years, I have learnt many lessons in my personal and professional life that led me to think that if I knew this sooner — it would have reduced the span of time between where I was and what I wanted to achieve. It would have saved me from banging my head against dead-ends while looking for my cheese in the maze of life.
Here are the top 8 lessons things that lead my life now and might help you navigate life wiser too.
1. The easy way doesn’t lead to the top
Here’s the thing. If there was a short-cut to the top — word would have got out. A new hierarchy would have established where a smart bunch would get ahead of the new pool who just found the key. And it would start all over again.
Yet we look for quick-fixes, we fall for the one solution fits all business campaigns led by people who struck luck themselves and are hell bent on milking it for as long as possible.
I wish I had known about this sooner because every time I started a new venture — my first instinct was to seek out a guru. One person who had been in the field for longer and would hand me all their secrets for a small fee. I never paused and asked myself “Why the heck would anybody do that?” They are capitalizing on their status, why would they want to crowd the industry and that too with people who apply the same techniques as them?
I’ve learned the only hack that exists is to work as hard as you can. Till you learn how to substitute the hard-work for smart-work by navigating through your own systems.
What you can do:
Quit being a “cognitive miser” — it’s lazy to think you can cut corners or simply pay to find the answers for success. Others profit solely off your tendency to solve problems by using the least mental effort.
See what you are being promised before you sign up for being coached. Are they promising to teach you a skill-set, their expertise and knowledge? Or are you being promised a reward that there’s no guarantee you’ll have. Believe that you have as good a fighting chance as anybody else when they first started — put in the work before wondering why your work isn’t taking off. Do the harder thing, instead of sucking on a pacifier made solely to distract you from doing the work. Churn the butter with your mind till you get there.
The point is to discipline yourself by working hard long before you’re successful, if you don’t learn to do the harder thing then your hacks could grow obsolete and you would fall behind once again. Your search for shortcuts will never end if you grow dependent on only shortcuts to succeed.
2. Sit alone in silence so you can find your inner voice
There was a point in life while I was sharing a small living space with 3 other people. I would study, eat, sleep and not understand where all the background noise in my head was coming from because these 3 people were the quietest most accommodating people ever.
Never being alone by myself translated this external commotion into a lot of noise in my head. I had never experienced moments of ‘flow’ or any sort of streamlined thinking because other visual stimuli was always fighting for my attention. I was always talking whenever I had the chance but I honestly didn’t know what I sounded like or which thought prompted which dialogue.
It’s a dangerous thing when you don’t know what is the root on which your actions sprout — it’s like giving up control of who you are going to become because you really don’t know where the on-and-off switch is.
What you can do:
I had no way out of my shared living situation or I would have taken it. And you don’t always have control over life like that. What you can do though is create opportunities of visual silence for yourself by keeping the clutter around you at a minimum or seeking out quiet places you can visit regularly by yourself. Building a meditation routine can also help silence brain-chatter and lead to steadier brain-activity according to a research by Harvard Medical School. It’s one of the things I struggled the most with before getting used to.
3. Give yourself time to develop into your best self before listening to the critics
When I wanted to upgrade myself, I invited everyone and their distant cousin to offer me honest criticism.
I thought I was being brave. I didn’t just sit down, write Tim Ferris’ morning pages and take a look deep inside my soul to find out what was missing. Instead, I made the mistake of looking outward. And a lot of people told me so much was wrong with me and while it might’ve been true, a lot of those weird knobbly things were the very knees of who I am as a person. I couldn’t straight shoot myself in the legs just for the sake of building myself from ground up. It would have destabilized me instead of directed me in the right direction.
Growth like this doesn’t happen over night and if you listened to everyone who told you what is wrong with you, I doubt there would be much to love about yourself or any self-esteem left.
What you can do:
The first thing is to not ask for advice or get criticized by people who are not doing the same thing as you. Secondly, when you focus on a certain aspect to upgrade, you might have to pay less attention to other things in your life and lose balance getting one thing right. Yet correction needs to come from within. It will take time to get even the top 5 things you care about in order and you need to allow yourself time to work on them. Go in on maximum overdrive at the beginning, wear yourself out a bit before you feel content with what you have made — only then be open to criticism. Thirdly, be extra selective in who you take criticism from because it’s a challenge to go at something you love and also tweak it so your closed ones are satisfied with how much time you allocate to it.
4. Be precise when you express yourself
I used to think “be precise” was always coming from people who didn’t care about the depth of your feelings. It seemed like they just wanted to get you off their hands.
But being precise in expressing yourself can help you decode your expectations of others and yourself. It forces you to find the basic idea and define it to the best of your knowledge. We are mice and going in knowing what cheese looks like is much better than only catching whispers from others of what their cheese makes them feel.
I wish I acted on this sooner because if the essence of who you are is lost in translation, you become mentally draining for people. Get too good at tucking away what you want under so many layers and it can cost you a lifetime to dig it back out again. Life runs on our deep longing and desire for stuff we want and the quicker we define it, the quicker we can realign the trajectory of our life to seeking it.
What you can do:
It’s going to be trial and error before you finally find all the answers but when you practice being precise with whatever you do know, you streamline the process. It makes your apology weigh more, it makes you more honest, easier to correct and point in the right direction. To get this one down, you need to know yourself and what’s expected of you in a situation. Pause to think before you speak. Be confident when being clear about a certain thing, you’ll find that it makes people trust you more when you lay stuff in the open with them. Rather than being vague, details help others perceive your command over things and it makes them more eager to accept what you say.
5. Mimic the behind-the-scenes instead of the acceptance speeches of your idols
All my life, I practiced what I’d do after I won more often than I practiced actually winning.
I was too busy dreaming while colleagues wore themselves sick with worry and work — I wondered ‘what the hell are they preparing for?’ Slowly and steadily, their practice made them more efficient at getting amazing results that they used to lose sleep over at some point — I watched them grow and leave me behind still in dreamland.
I could never imagine my idols as scrawny high-schoolers nobody believed in; losing sleep bent over desks as they finished a paper right before the deadline. Hard work isn’t glamorous so it never existed for these outstanding writers, jaw-dropping theater actors or even the surgeon who could talk about finding the right person while doing a Laproscopic Renal Surgery solely from muscle memory. They only existed on a pedestal, in their spotlight — and I had no idea what went into their behind the scenes.
I didn’t have a realistic expectation of how much work went behind the scene to make someone golden. My threshold for “hard work” was pitiful but how could I focus on that when I had my eyes and mind fixed on the shiny success stories. I wouldn’t call what I did “work” now and I used to consider it hard work.
What you can do:
Strip away all glamour from the person who embodies your desired successful life — they have peaked after a lot of struggle. An honest evaluation of most of these people will show you how hard they worked for it. Instead of evaluating their craft and trying to mimic that, mimic the hours they put in to establish their success. Try to channel the focus and concentration, the ethic to sit with the “work in progress” before the success. Another useful tip I learned from Jungian philosophy, is to remind yourself that the ideal exists so you can keep working towards it and never touch it. It might be causing you to dwarf your own self-esteem if you idealize people to an extent that you’re not able to humanize their path to success. Creating something worthwhile might mean you have to detach yourself from viewership or being audience to your idols for a while.
6. The people who believe in you during your struggle-period are special
Earlier this year, a breech in security caused me to vacate my home within 12 hours and I had a night to think about who I could ask for help. Of the swarms and herds of people who are there at the drop of a hat when I want to celebrate, most seemed to be secondhand embarrassed and afraid of what would come next for me. Everyone seemed hesitant to lend out a hand when there was no saying how long I’d need to stay over.
I called a friend I had known for 2 months, never met, and before I could even get into the details of my problem — she was setting up a bed and asked me if I needed any snacks to munch on. I stayed over at her place and lived out of her closet everyday for a week. Nothing felt like a liability and it brought me back to my feet quicker because I wasn’t worried about paying her back.
What you can do:
Hold on tightly to people who just won’t quit on you. Despite my avoidant habits, I have added a bit of consciousness to how I connect with those who have been nothing but good to me. Put a small “clover” emoji or anything striking next to their names in your phone. By doing this, you signal to yourself to get back to them at earliest convenience and prioritize interactions with them over other people even when there’s no physically proximity.
7. Identify people who treat you differently in private and in public
These people I found plain baffling for most part of my life — I wish I knew what was up and didn’t provide so many excuses for their behavior. When you’re in a powerful setting, they talk you up and pretend to be your closest confidants. They just want everyone to assume you’re on the same team, and even you buy it before you find yourself alone with them and they have nothing to say to you. Not a word. Zilch. Their newfound interest in your puppy? Poof. They’ve played their part, reaped the benefits by association. And now the curtains are shut.
Another variety of such people are those who seem to be very close to you in private before they encounter a situation where you’re at a disadvantage. Suddenly, they’re inching away physically and emotionally so people don’t associate you two together. It would be forgivable if they did the same in private but they don’t. People like this is what they call “fair weather friends” and spotting them in advance saves a lot of heartache and confusion. Like leeches they can suck your life sustenance in the form of friends, trust, security, opportunities and better judgement. They siphon on the good bits you have to offer before you even know of their existence.
What you can do:
Work hard on building a strong home-base of friends and family. People who are honest with you and have no problem pointing out these people in your life. It’s always good to have someone who’s got your back even if you’re lured into believing these are honest connections. Another important thing is to build your self-esteem enough to not have it rely on others so much that every compliment seems like a boost-up despite however genuine it may or may not seem. That’s usually how people get you to warm up to them. Someone who genuinely cares about your opinion will make it known with consistency in private and public settings.
8. The person who shows up every day takes the medal
Some people make consistency look like a hard to get trick that they will perform effortlessly and leave you less and less sure each time.
Consistently showing up earns you trust and respect — it makes people more likely to rely on you because they know you’re there. It makes you a person of principle(even if an alarm clock and various other convenience factors are the only virtue you possess). But being consistent is how you put in the groundwork for so many opportunities. For being handed responsibility without second thought and for controlling other peoples’ lives because you seem to have it down with your own life.
I’ve been left behind by many people who were more hardworking, more talented and a better embodiment of a certain role at work. But they have all been left behind by someone who had the same qualifications as them and just continued to show up every day. This might be the one quality that will single-handedly get attention and raise you to the level of people who would beat you otherwise.
What you can do:
Set your aim at what needs you to show up on the daily and then practice, practice, practice! Practicing routines makes you more efficient at doing them. With the essential stuff, work harder to build routines that you can get through on auto-pilot. Hold yourself accountable for the small things in your routine. One thing to keep in mind is you’re not the things you’re interested in as much as you are the things you’re doing on the regular basis — so make that a mindful decision. Showing up every day is the only way to excel at routines, build reliability and trust.
My past self was an unfocused, easy-to-flatter, doe-eyed girl who was high on brain-chatter and would idealize the hell out of people only to slow down her own journey as a result of it. I was not immune to quick-fixes and microwavable success ploys.
But the fact that I gauged my way out of that place and grew from my struggles was possible thanks to these tidbits of wisdom that navigated me. Your path doesn’t have to look like mine; you could be struggling with less or more but anyone can save time by not having to relearn the same lessons.
It makes all the difference when you’re finally in a better place.
