"Am I Growing?"

The most common question I hear and the four things I have to say about it...

Being worried about your performance is not a new thing. It's a very human thing and yet can be excruciating to feel and deal with as well. The worst part is that we are on some level aware that when we worry about our performance, we could also be negatively impacting our performance. This causes a vicious cycle. The reality, though, is that once we start learning about our anxiety caused by the worry we experience, we are confronted with a long road, a long road of trying to understand how to comfort ourselves, process meaningful feedback around that which concerns us, and try to find the balance between chilling out and striving for better.

First Things First...

If you're worried about your progress, if you're just thinking about whether or not you're doing enough, then you're doing better. By purely worrying about it, hands down, you're making progress because simply worrying about it will make you think about it, promoting self-awareness. It reflects that, ultimately, you're trying to do better. It's a pretty natural sort of progression of things.

Self-awareness promotes a desire to do better.

#2 A Little Reminder Goes A LOOONG Way

Second, you're not reminding yourself enough of your progress. So when you go into these swings and those lows, "am I doing better? Am I not doing better? Am I the person I want to be?" one of the reasons is that we have to be retraining our brain to constantly remind ourselves of what it is that we are doing and that we are making progress on.

"I am doing it every day, every moment I show up, every moment I do something, even breathe, I am doing better."

Even when we're doing worse, we're doing better in the grand scheme. We must recognize that when caca hits the fan and we're simply showing up, even if not gracefully, we're still breathing and doing what we can.

One breath at a time. This is an essential emphasis because your physical existence reflects your multi-dimensional self. So remapping your thought patterns or neural pathways is also a reflection of the overall healing that you're going through to rise up and embrace your excellence. So to strengthen that, you do have to constantly keep reminding yourself, okay, I am doing better, I am doing better, I am doing better, I am doing better.

Make It A Daily Exercise

Continually remind yourself that you are doing better and what that better looks like. And it can be the smallest of things some days, but those things are still very important. If our brain and energy have been committed to old patterns for so long, you must realize that you're retraining all of that. So it takes time, but you're also retraining your entire energy to flow a different way other than what it's so used to flowing in.

So every single day is going to be impactful. By virtue of the previous point, you are promoting self-awareness from within. You have to be giving yourself the benefit of the doubt. You have to give yourself that time and that space to be like, Yeah, it's happening. I am getting better. You have to be doing that because if not, there is a shadow side of that worry, and that's my third point, which is worrying too much ultimately leads to another ego.

#3 The Ego

The first time I went through this was about a couple of years ago, and I was consumed with worrying about my progress and if I was doing what I was supposed to do and being who I needed to be. So I went to my healer, I went to my teacher, and she said in this beautiful Israeli accent,

"you know, when we overly worry about ourselves, it's another ego"

And it was a massive aha breakthrough moment. For me, it's another ego because we're putting all this attention on ourselves. When we worry about ourselves, we get up in our head, and there's this whole world happening up there. So it starts to grow and grow and grow. And then it takes up so much space that the present doesn't even exist anymore.

Different Shades of Ego

Now it's important to clarify that there are different kinds of ego, different shades. The ego is important, and every human has an ego. It helps highlight our uniqueness in this big, beautiful cosmic universe.

So when that all-consuming worry slash ego happens, we need to refocus. It's not like, Oh, I need to think about other people. I'm being selfish now.

Grounding

It's just that you need to stop consuming yourself with yourself. Which is a big statement. I get it. It's just that you're not enjoying the present moment. And that's right now. One strategy I love is a tool commonly taught to folks when they experience panic attacks. It's called grounding, and you bring into focus different things around you, and you identify them, even bringing awareness to how you're feeling physically. allowing those sensations to move through your body.

This ultimately brings you back to your body and helps establish a sense of active presence. The brain is a Power (capital P) thing and can throw such a powerful signal that it can reshape the physical world around you. The present is a gift, and it's only in the present that we can craft our destiny. So give yourself the gift of being present.

#4 The Real Commitment

The fourth and last point I want to make is that I love this question because it's very common. We all go through this, especially when we start the self-discovery journey and spiritual awakening. But the fantastic thing is that when you start the journey, you don't go, "oh yeah, this isn't for me," and turn around and walk away, right?

You don't do that. You go, okay, here I am. And you'll think to yourself, This sucks; this is hard. I'm this, I'm that. Why does this suck? Why is that happening? What's going on? Right. When you ask yourself meaningful questions, but you don't sit there and go, You know what? I'm just going to boxes up and ship it out of here.

Now, that's so rare. And you can do that maybe with different projects or a job or a relationship, you know, you can run away, but you can't do that when you start the self-discovery and spiritual journey. So you go through these depths, and that's why this question is so common. Am I even progressing? Am I even doing better?

Even though two days ago, I'm sure you were like, "I am a boss! I have come so far in my life, like, oh my God, I am a survivor. I am so much happier than I used to be," right? So when you go through those dips, you need to be kind to yourself because they will happen. Do that self-care.

Do that self-love around yourself. Bring yourself back to the present and remind yourself daily that you are doing better.