Ep 80 – Decoding the personal growth journey

We’ve seen it in the movies before. Everything starts well, then the hero hits a stumbling block, goes all the way to rock bottom, chooses to fight at all costs, stumbles, fumbles, but emerges victorious, and ends there, cause well the movie or the book has to end well. And, so embark on our personal growth journey, we face one crisis, and think this is it, we will struggle, fight, survive, emerge victoriously, and live out the rest of our years happily ever after. But life isn’t that linear a game – its a macrocosm filled with countless microcosms like you me, the worm, the snake, the oceans, the sun, and the moon, the earth, the sky, and everything in between and beyond, surely our interactions with the macrocosm in this brief experience we call life cannot be that straightforward. If you’ve been wondering about your personal growth journey and how far you’ve come along, and how much further you are to the destination, then maybe you’d like to hear this conversation further.

As much as fairytales and Bollywood and our own hearts would like to believe personal growth is one linear journey from start to finish that delivers us straight to the dream destination, that is not the case. We might have already seen that we worked on ourselves, studied hard to get that dream college only to realise there are more obstacles and challenges we need to cross – learn more, become employable, diplomatic, presentable, adaptable to get that dream job. And then, the new sets of challenges present themselves.

Have you heard of Joseph Campbell’s monomyth? He crafted a theory that all narratives basically share a similar structure – the monomyth or the hero’s journey.

Campbell summarises it like this:

“A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.”

The journey can be broadly classified into 3 parts:

The Departure: Where the hero has troubles settling into the ordinary world. Receives a call to adventure but refuses as there are doubts fears that come in the way.

The Initiation: A mentor arrives and urges the hero to step into the adventure, trials and tribulations later, the hero emerges victorious.

The Return: The hero returns back to the ordinary world but is no longer the same.

From Harry Potter to Lord of the rings, you can probably see many tales that adapt to this structure. But in life, there’s a slight twist. Since we can pack many Harry Potter movies in our lifetime, the return to the ordinary world is not the end but the start of another personal growth journey.

And, that’s where many of us falter – personal growth is not a one time journey that we are done, and everything will be okay after that. That’s not the case. As Joseph Campbell tells us, the great life is one hero’s journey after another.

We overcome a few blocks, few more appear, ride them, take a turn and realise we are right back where we started and need to pick up the pieces and go again. That’s what makes this beautiful. It’s an endless journey with no starts or endpoints, and it’s an ever-evolving journey. The more progress you make, the deeper you can go, the more challenges that appear.

Personal growth, the way I see it is similar – the journey is endless. The only end is probably death, but even that to me feels only like the end of the physical manifestation of our personal growth. More on that on another day, but personal growth has infinite depths – you can go as deep as you’re ready to dive into.

In the last few years, I feel like this realisation hit home so much more for me. From being a zombie who was nothing more than a slave to the logical mind and its compulsions, I’ve been on a journey peeling one layer at a time and integrating learnings from being my harshest critic to believing in myself, moving from the typical Cancerian mood swings to equanimity, from fear to faith, from the need to struggle and arrive to moving gracefully and effortlessly, from scarcity mindsets to abundance. And, with every level I unlock, there is a whole new path opening up, one which I never knew existed.

Moreover, The personal growth journey is not just in one direction. We all don’t just wake up one day and realise we’ve moved forward, never to return to our old selves again. No, personal growth involves taking a few steps falling back to old patterns and routines and learning again. So if you’ve had realisations but have gone back to old ways, that’s okay, that’s completely normal. With the new insight, you’re no longer the same person now, so see what you need to learn from moving backwards and beginning again.

It’s also not a linear path where we are born, walk straight, cross over to the other side, and make it. It’s more like a game of snakes and ladders. It’s a few steps forward, one side step digression, plummeting down to depths we never knew existed, rising up the ladder on the stroke of luck or sometimes just a snail pace of one step forward at a time.

The beauty of personal growth is that it happens at our pace, depending on how much we’re ready to move forward. Whenever you are embarking on this journey, ask yourself, Am I prepared for the next level? If the answer is Yes, confidently say, “It’s my time now, and I’m ready for the next level.”

Personal growth is a beautiful journey that begins with a simple aspiration or a desire to be better than who you were yesterday. There are no competitors, there are no milestones, there are no rules. You set the pace, you decide the endpoint, you determine the benchmark. It’s an intriguing journey of identifying and challenging your own self-imposed limitations, boundaries, and aspirations. It’s difficult, confusing, frustrating, lonely, but immensely humbling, gratifying, nourishing, and fulfilling.

Have you embarked on a personal growth journey? How has it been for you? Are you stuck at any point? I would love to connect and converse, maybe even exchange notes on personal experiences and challenges. Reach out to me via social media or email, and we can chat over a cup of coffee.

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Until we meet again, this is Shwetha Sivaraman signing off, hoping you have an immensely fulfilling personal growth journey and a fabulous week ahead!