Progress can be slow

We can spend a lifetime working on the same things, and that's ok

Sometime between weeks 4 and 6 into this post-partum period, I started having vastly more energy. After a particularly tiring pregnancy, I was thrilled to have energy again. I started writing morning pages again. I thought about potential fun things I could do later in the summer. I wondered when I could go running!

A quick google search later, I discovered that most sources recommend waiting 12 weeks before resuming running (also assuming you were a generally active person beforehand…) or you could mess up your pelvic floor and take even longer to recover.

Despite my impatience, it’s a good reminder that progress can be slow but still happening, not just with physical recovery from something tangible like childbirth but also with personal growth.

Every so often I write and publish something, and then I realize, wait didn’t I already write about this…five years ago? A decade ago? Why am I still working on the same things? 

The themes that seem to ebb in and out? Getting more in touch with what I want. Speaking up for what I need. Navigating different communication styles at work and at home. Making space for what I want. Nurturing my creative self.

Sometimes it feels like maybe I should have checked some of those off by now in my late thirties.

But progress can be slow, and that’s ok. 

In fact, what if I were to embrace the idea that some things are going to be the things I work on in my lifetime, not things I check off and move on from? 

It’s comforting in a way, my life accompanied by these personal growth friends, a handful of things I keep chipping away at, peeling back the onion and meeting challenges at each layer. Like getting better at a game and tackling harder and harder levels and tougher big bosses.

What is it that I want to make space for now, compared to in my twenties? 

What does it look like to make space to write with three kids instead of two?

What does a creative life look like with increased responsibilities and financial needs?

One thing that sometimes rubs me the wrong way with personal growth and coaching is that people often market and sell transformation. Transformation sells because people want results fast — they want to stop feeling whatever pain they’re feeling and they want to see a quick path to their impossible seeming dreams. Every marketer knows these tricks, and so many coaching websites and personal growth books follow the same formula to entice you to buy. 

While there may be some experiences that are truly life-changing, I’ve grown to appreciate a slower, more thoughtful approach in my own personal growth. 

Oftentimes insights or eye-opening shifts in perspectives can be fast and ignite a series of changes, but the ongoing work to change your mindset and defaults takes time. Neural pathways that were formed from your childhood until now need repetitions to rewire and that takes time. 

One moment of insight happened to me years ago. I grew up, as most children of immigrants do, with a deeply ingrained world view that suffering and sacrifice are virtues. The coach I was working with asked me, “What kind of life do you think your children will have, if you pass on that mindset?”

Well, I guess they’d be likely to have a life full of suffering and sacrifice. When suffering and sacrifice are virtues, the idea of gravitating towards ease and joy is considered lazy and unproductive. A healthy work-life balance is laughed at, while working yourself to the bone is lauded.

Somehow it was easier to see it clearly when I thought about my children, but then the same logic applied to myself as well. When you put suffering and sacrifice on a pedestal, you seek it out. And while that may have been an important mindset for our immigrant parents to be successful in this country, it didn’t feel as crucial for my generation, and in fact often counter-productive.

So it’ll be this lifetime’s work for me to continue to deepen my practice of taking care of myself, of finding ease and joy, of prioritizing my needs — and not to think of those things negatively as being selfish or lazy. 

For now, I’ll keep working on writing my morning pages before making breakfast for the kids. On sometimes walking by the full dishwasher and choose to just pick out what I need for tea instead of unloading all of it. On carving out space for myself to write here on Tech and Tea, even when I can hear the baby crying from the other room.

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What about you? Who are your personal growth friends? What are the themes that have been relevant for you over many years or even decades?

Leave a comment, I’d love to hear from you.

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