How to stop Growing Backwards and start Growing forward

Introduction

When I teach, I always like using ideas, concepts and things my audience can easily identify and relate to. This is because I believe that nothing can ever be understood in isolation.

In discussing personal growth, there are readily available concepts and ideas to point to in order to discuss it effectively. Take a look around you today, practically everything that you can see, feel or touch is growing.

Growth is a common denominator in life. It happens to everyone at every level but the challenge is that the rates and directions are not the same. Some persons experience rapid growth while many others experience delayed growth.

Some grow forward, while many others grow backwards. Funny, right?

I know it may not seem grammatically right for an English speaker, but, in Africa, some languages have words and phrases that show backward growth.

My goal is not to prove any grammatical point but to pass on a message about Personal Growth and how best to go about it in order to get the most out of it. So, personally I believe there is a backward growth and for the context of this post, be it known unto you that you can grow backwards.

I will first try to explain what I mean by growing forward and what I mean by Growing backwards. I will not go so deep into what Personal Growth is, as I had treated it extensively in another post including how important it is to you as an individual. When I am done clarifying the concepts of growing forward and backwards, I will show you how you can stop growing backwards and start growing forward.

What does it mean to Grow forward?

To Grow forward means to consciously make significant improvements in areas of your life important to getting you to your perceived destination. That is to say, you are growing forward when you are intentionally working on yourself as an individual, taking note of your various areas of needs per time and ensuring that you build up yourself in those regards.

What does it mean to Grow Backwards?

To Grow backwards, on the other hand, is to make improvements in your life in areas not relevant to your perceived destination. That is to say, it is you focusing on the areas of your life that do not matter towards getting you to your goals and destination.

How are you growing?

Having established what it means to grow forward and backwards, the question now is, at what rate or direction are you growing?

• Are you growing forward or are you growing backwards?

Just like many others, you may have a challenge answering the above question. I have come to observe that individuals who have challenges answering that question of whether they are growing forward or backwards lack knowledge of themselves in three areas.

First, they do not have a clear understanding of what growth means to them, second, they do not have a clear understanding of what areas of their life they need to grow in per time.

What does Growth mean to you?

When you do not know what growth means to you, you cannot effectively measure your growth because you cannot clearly tell yourself whether or not you are growing. Also, if you do not have a clear understanding of the areas of your life that you need growth in, you cannot effectively tell what improvements to be focused on.

And when you can not tell yourself the areas you need growth in the most, growing backwards become appealing to you as you will be experimenting with different things.

My High School Experience

Here is an example of this using a point in time in my life. During my days in the High school, that should be in one of my Senior High classes, our class was divided into three- A, B and C. I was placed in C had about 48 other students within it. Classes A and B each had 60 students in them.

And during my High School days, classes A and B were considered to be ‘more brilliant’ than those in Class C. Class C was seen as the unserious students. This is because when school resumes, students are allotted into the various classes as they return back to school. Class C being the last Class category always have those who carefully chose to stay away from early school resumption. So, they were termed ‘unserious’ by teachers and students took note.

In my own case, I found myself in Class C, not because I returned back to school late but because I transferred from another school. And it was already the middle of the term when I transferred. So, I was placed in Class C which was the only one that still had spaces.

At the end of the term, I came first in the examinations and many celebrated me and applauded me. But, I went back home and took my time to analyze the statistics and I found out that though I had taken the first position in class C, compared to the other classes A and B, I was not even in the top five. I found out that I was several marks behind the persons that came first in the two classes.

That put a reality check on me that I decided to look out for areas to improve on. And one of the ways was to move away from class C into class A where the ‘supposed intelligent ones’ were. (Disclaimer: this section here on my High school Experiene is solely for emphasis and is not in any way inferring that growth is to be measured in comparison to others. That is one of the wrong ways to measure growth as the heights of others may not represent fully your potentials.)

If you don’t understand what growth means to you, you may actually find out at the end of the day that you are not really growing. For me then, coming first in the class meant, coming first when the whole class is put together, not just in class C.

What areas of your life do you need to grow in?

As pointed out earlier, the inability of individuals to clearly tell themselves the areas of their lives they need to grow in, most times, is the reason why many can not say whether or not they are growing forward or backwards.

Notice that in my definition above on what growing backwards is, there is an emphasis on relevance. This is because relevance provides the yardstick to measure your growth and performance over time.

Take, for instance, a worker employed as a Customer Care agent undergoing extensive training in football may be growing herself in the football field but such efforts are not relevant to helping her get the job done on her work. Except there is a way she could apply the football skills to her work.

So, the difference between one growing forward and another growing backwards lies in RELEVANCE. Relevance is very much important in all you do as an individual if you must see the results you desire.

In order to tell which area of your life you need to grow in, you should be able to tell yourself, which area of your life is relevant to you. If it is not relevant to you, then you need not bother wasting efforts in that regard as that will mean GROWING BACKWARDS.

How to stop growing backwards and grow forward

I have already pointed out two ways to know or measure whether or not you are growing forward or backwards. Here are steps I believe you could take in order to stop growing backwards now and grow forward in your chosen areas.

Choose intentionality over ‘occassionality’

Being intentional entails being clear about what areas you need to grow in and going fully for it. In his book, 15 Invaluable Laws of Growth, John C. Maxwell outlined fifteen different laws of growth with intentionality as the first law towards growth. This is because as he also pointed out, growth does not just happen.

So, if you must grow forward in any area of your life, you must choose to be intentional and not occasional. Quit doing things when you feel like or when you like, but do them because they are necessary to get you the results you desire.

Become more aware of yourself

Self-Awareness is another important step to ensure you are going forward. Self-Awareness is knowing and understanding yourself by yourself and through the eyes of others.

As my favourite Leadership Author, John C. Maxwell always says, “you need to know yourself to grow yourself”. I believe this to be true because as individuals we are all unique and our various growth needs may vary individual to individual. This is why it is important that after you have decided to be intentional about your growth, you begin your growth endeavours by gaining awareness of yourself.

Be aware of where you are coming from

I am a trained Historian and over the years I trained to become a Historian, I came to accept this fact, “there is no event without a history”. Let me put it in another form, “nothing happens or occurs in isolation”. Where you are today is a function of where you were yesterday. So, find out where you were yesterday, then you could understand why and where you are today.

Be aware of where you are at the moment in your Personal Growth journey

Just like the third point above, you can not grow forward until you understand where you are. This will help you appreciate how far you have come and also how far you still need to go.

Be aware of where you are and where you are going to.

Be aware of where you are growing to

These are the results you wish to see in yourself. Do you want to become a better speaker, a better writer, etc. you need to know what it is you want to become. Where you are going is very much important in your journey towards personal growth. For instance, if you want to travel from Lagos to another location. You need to know the location in order to know how to get to that location.

Have a plan on how to get there

 

When you have decided on the results you want, the next is to develop a plan for yourself on how to get them. This plan should spell out for you what you need in order to get there. So, a good plan should be able to tell you the following:

• What information do you need?
• What training or skills do you need?
• What persons do you need to have in your Network?
• and so on.

Conclusion:

There you have them, practical steps to get you to stop growing backwards and start growing forward. Remember, the first step is intentionality. You have to be intentional about it all. Funny, how we often develop interests in certain things simply by seeing another involved in it or simply by seeing in a movie where it was done and then we unconsciously begin working on those interests.

As much as that may seem fun and good to do sometimes, over time, you find out that it may not be beneficial to you in the long-run. So, be clear on the results you want and remember the ultimate measurement for growth is RELEVANCE.

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Do you wish to keep yourself productive? Read this piece I also wrote with practical steps on how to keep yourself productive. You may also find it interesting to consider our top 10 books as at June 2020 on Productivity.

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