The Personal Growth Cycle

Photo by Khamkéo Vilaysing on Unsplash

I’m going to tell you a truth that might change your life forever. But I'll warn you, you might not like it. At first. 

That truth…?

You’ll never get there. 

What do I mean by there? I’m referring to that place in your life, your development, your growth, your career where you feel like you’ve made it. Where you’ve got it all figured out and you’re the best version of you, you’ll ever be. 

Why? Evolution, Baby. 

As a human, heck – as a living being on planet earth, you are always evolving. You’re never going to stop evolving and everything and everyone around you isn’t going to stop either. So to think at some point you’ll reach the summit of your own potential, just isn’t possible.

The traditional world of education and work has mostly taught us there are steps to take and a ladder to climb that lead to an eventual top position: CEO, PhD, Dux of the class, President. All we need to get to the top is to work hard, keep learning, keep developing, impress the right people and we’ll get there. And if we’re on one of these linear paths, this may be true in. But this is not true for you and your own personal growth and development as a human. 

Because you are constantly evolving, your personal growth occurs in cycles.

I’ve been a keen student of my own personal growth cycle and those of my clients, friends, and colleagues for a long time. The below is the model I’ve created to illustrate the stages we go through as part of this cycle of personal growth. 

At any point, we are likely to be in one or moving between two of the stages. Technically, there’s no starting point. But if we have to begin somewhere, the ‘Define’ stage is a logical place to kick off.

Define

At some point in our life journey, we hit a point where something feels off. We’re not sure who we are, or what we want. We might have been moving in a certain direction or towards a certain goal, but it no longer feels…right. Or perhaps we haven’t really been moving forward, but have been kind of drifting without purpose or intention. At this point, we come to realise we need to define the new now and ‘what’s next?’. What do we really want? What is important? Who do we want to be or become? What is our vision? Even if the vision is hazy or not fully formed, it’s very difficult to move forward without it. So in order to move forward and continue to develop, we need to work on this definition.

Align

Once we have made steps to defining the goal or vision for this new version of who we are seeking to become in our self, life or work, we need to take steps to align to this. The likelihood is we are still somewhat operating in line with an old model of ourselves. It’s kind of like trying to run a new version of software on your computer that isn’t compatible with your old operating system. An example of this in more practical terms might be something like this: you’ve just gained some new skills and experience at work from being on a challenging project. It’s really shifted how you see and feel about what you do. You’ve decided this is something you would really like to pursue more in your career (define), but the project was a once off and now your role isn’t providing opportunities for you utilise this new ‘upgraded’ version of yourself. So you need to begin to take steps to create this alignment. Until you create alignment, you will continue to feel off, stifled, uninspired, unfulfilled and like you’re not utilising your potential.

Flow

Until you’ve created alignment, it’s very difficult to get to the phase I feel so many of us seek: Flow. Flow is the phase where everything is humming. Where things feel like they are happening with greater ease, less friction and where we are totally in ‘the zone’. The famous positive psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has written a whole book on Flow. It’s often defined as ‘optimal experience’ and happens when we have the right blend of challenge and ability. When we are in flow, we can get completely lost in an activity (in a good way). Flow often refers to specific activities, but I’m a big believer we can get into a state of flow more broadly in life and/or work. You’ll know this if you’ve felt it. Opportunities are coming your way without you feeling like you’re even trying. You feel like you are on fire! You feel like this is the person you were born to be and you’re doing what you were born to do.

The wonderful thing about flow is it produces an amazingly effortless sense of forward momentum that can take us to new places. 

Grow

The natural result of getting into a more prolonged burst of flow, is slowly but surely (or in some cases rapidly), we begin to grow. Our experiences require us to try, learn, and understand new things and parts of ourselves. We have hit our ‘edge’, but with the momentum we have built up in our flow phase, we can move that little bit further into new territory, and so we begin to grow. I’m a skier, and the times I’ve often had the biggest jumps in my skiing abilities is when I’ve been out a bit longer on the slopes, really getting into my groove (flow). Once I’ve hit that place, I’m way more likely to try that tricky looking black diamond. And when I do (and make it down in one piece), I’ve had the experience that’s enabled me to take my skiing to the next level. 

The one thing I’ll say about flow and growth, is there can be a bit of cycling back and forward between them. We can be in flow for a bit, which puts us into growth. After a period of growth, we might get into flow again and round it goes. 

Evolve

And then the magic happens. Through periods of flow and growth, and flow and growth, something begins to shift. It’s not just about learning and doing and understanding new things, we actually shift our ‘Being’. The fundamental nature of who we are (or an aspect of who we are) transforms and we are somehow…different.

With this change, our needs change. Our desires change. Something may be different internally, but everything else that supports us or drives us (both inside and out), may not have caught up yet. It’s like we’ve grown wings, but haven’t yet learned to fly. 

A great example of this is what happens when people take up a mediation practice. After a while, something in them adapts to being more present and still on the inside. Then other things begin to feel different. For example, their crazy, fast paced job might not provide the same motivation it once did. They have moved beyond needing the ‘rush’ of the deadline or the feeling they get from landing that big client. The feeling might still be good, but they have shifted something fundamental inside that means it no longer holds the same meaning. They have evolved. 

And so the growth cycle continues

With this evolution, I’m sure you can see where we end up. Back at the need to define (or perhaps redefine) once again. Only when we’ve defined, can we then start aligning everything else based on the transformation that’s just occurred. Which will get us back to that desired feeling of flow, from which we can then grow and once again, evolve. And so we go. Round, and round, and round. 

So why is this all important? 

By being able to identify where we are in the growth cycle, it can give us the best chance of moving through it with less friction. We may always be going round and round (like a record baby), but sometimes we can get stuck or slowed down along the way. As humans we need to feel a sense of meaningful progress. So if we lose momentum somewhere along the cycle, it can really weigh us down. If we can pinpoint where we are in the cycle, we can apply the right type of strategy to move forward with greater ease. We can also stop beating ourselves up for not being somewhere else in the process. 

This doesn’t just apply to us as individuals either. It can be relevant for teams, businesses, communities, families and more. There’s no point trying to ‘grow’ your business for example, if you haven’t even ‘defined’ what it is you do and who your customers are. 

Finally, just knowing we are in the cycle helps us let go of the unachievable. We can stop getting frustrated when we move the goalposts on ourselves, yet again. To grow and evolve is to be human. Whether we realise it or not, we are seeking it out. So, by understanding the growth cycle we can stop being surprised each time we find ourselves back at the beginning of the ride. A little different, a little more expanded than before, but no closer to the imaginary ‘there’.