I’ve noticed some people want to grow continuously. They undergo a number of challenges and stressors (often going out of their way for them) in the hope of reaching new heights as a result of growing from each one of them. Here’s my take on this.
To start, constant growth is impossible. There are limits as to how much anyone or anything can grow physically, intellectually, emotionally, and in every other way. Aside from that, nobody can grow without appropriate amounts of rest and recovery. It’s not the pain or challenge that makes you grow but how well you recover from it. Dedicated athletes understand this well. As intensely and consistently as they train, the successful ones know that they have to be equally as committed to their recovery if they’re going to make it in their chosen sport. That’s why they prioritize good nutrition, quality sleep, sufficient amounts of food, effective stress management, and a variety of other aspects of self-care before and after an intense training session. If they don’t, then they risk slower progress, regression, injury, and losing to their competitors who prioritize recovery.
What doesn’t kill you may traumatize you. If it does, it’ll take a huge amount of time and work to heal from that trauma. Some things build character and others build trauma responses that can take a whole lifetime to heal. This brings us to the fight-or-flight system. That’s another name for the sympathetic nervous system. It’s intended to get us out of dangerous situations by diverting our bodily resources to wherever they’re most needed in an emergency. While the sympathetic nervous system is meant to turn on only in dangerous situations, it remains active constantly or almost constantly in many people who have undergone a great deal of trauma. This can result in chronic anxiety, depression, digestion issues, sleeping trouble, mood swings, poor decision making, and a host of other problems.
There is also the parasympathetic nervous system. This is what activates after the danger has passed and allows us to resume a state of calmness. It can be activated through a number of calming activities: floating, letting go, meditating, listening to soothing music, watching a comforting video, etc. Relaxing physically and emotionally allows the body to heal in ways it can’t while under the endless stress of being in constant fight-or-flight mode. When one system is active, the other is inactive. Good health requires regularly deactivating the sympathetic nervous system and activating the parasympathetic nervous sytem.
I’ve known several people who were regressing rather than growing because they faced endless challenges without ever taking time to recover. They took out their pain and stress on nearly everyone around them (even people they claimed to love) due to never getting enough time to rest and heal. They were always in fight-or-flight mode and often chose fight even in casual situations. Some of them intellectually understood all of this and even knew multiple ways to activate their parasympathetic nervous systems but they rarely, if ever, practiced what they preached. That was also the case for those who knew how to communicate effectively but almost never did. That showed me that it’s not just about knowing what to do or understanding this stuff intellectually; actually putting that knowledge to work on a daily basis is what brings good results.
So many people seem to be addicted to challenges. They’re always looking for something stressful, whether it’s a difficult sport, verbal fight, physical fight, and so on. What kind of growth are they looking to get from this, and to what end? When they do complete one of their many challenges, they don’t even get to enjoy the good feelings that come with that accomplishment before moving onto the next challenge. As a result, they always appear to feel restless and unsatsified in life.
Even if biting off more than you can chew doesn’t traumatize you, in can still hurt you in other ways. It’s easy to get hurt by taking steps that are way too big. Plenty of people end up with lifelong injuries from lifting way too much weight, running far too fast or far too long, getting into the ring with fighters way above their skill level, etc. Any good weight training program for new lifters will involve starting light and gradually ramping up the weight as strength increases. The Couch to 5k running program starts off with short bursts of running in between long stretches of walking; the amount of running gradually increases and the amount of walking gradually decreases as the runner builds up endurance over time. And a quality fighting instructor will start out by teaching new fighters the basics and only take them to the next level once they’ve mastered the previous one. Doing things once you’re ready for them prevents injuries, learning bad technique, and other issues that can come from rushing instead of progressing steadily and resting as needed.
Additionally, I disagree with the popular notion that growth only occurs outside of one’s comfort zone. I’ve experienced plenty of growth from within my comfort zone. I’ve also grown through gradually expanding my comfort zone instead of instantly exploding it open. That’s how exposure therapy works. You start off with a bit of interaction with something you fear. Once you feel comfortable at that level, you slowly add more interaction over time until you no longer fear that thing. This is how I’ve been successful at nearly everything I’ve done. I start by building habits around what I want to do. These almost always start off slowly, such as by spending a few minutes a day working at a particular thing. Once that thing becomes a daily practice, my focus on it expands until it fits in nicely with my other routines. This is a much better approach for me than jumping fully into something, immediately feeling overwhelmed, and then backing away from it for a long time if not forever.
I enjoy a combination of intensity and relaxation for a sustainable, enjoyable life. There are days in which I do lots of physical activity: my monthly juggling event, helping someone move, doing manual labor for someone I know, etc. I often feel better as a result of the increased activity; I tend to sleep better, feel more inner peace, and shrug off things that would normally upset me. All of that, however, depends on me getting a break to rest and recover after the activity is over. If I get that break, then I can enjoy a nice meal, stroll, or conversation. If I don’t get it, then I’ll feel even more exhausted, stressed, and irritable. I may also get sick if my body is so busy attempting to recover from too much activity that it can’t fight off a disease I’ve picked up.
I make sure to give myself extra time to rest and recover during challenging times. Since I lost my dog Sawyer a few months ago, I’ve been pursuing comfort as best as I can each day. This includes getting enough sleep, spending lots of quiet time by myself after being around people, releasing a lot of painful emotions every day, and avoiding negative situations whenever possible. Making time to rest and heal from this and other painful past situations is allowing me to recover and enjoy life again.
Recently, I had two hard weeks in a row. These consisted of tons of emotional pain, many nights of rough sleep, and feeling on edge each day. I needed a good week and, fortunately, that’s what I got in the final week of June thanks to much more letting go, consistently good quality sleep, avoidance of negative situations, and quality time with people close to me. All the rest and recovery I got that week did the trick. I now feel better overall than I have in a long time.
Although I can’t know precisely what would have happened if I’d had three bad weeks in a row, I do know from past experience that I’d have gone to a bad place. Whenever I’ve been unable to catch a break for that long, I’ve felt like a video game character who gets knocked down, starts to get up, and then gets knocked down again before he’s fully back on his feet and stable. I need time to get up, dust myself off, and then carry on. Those times when I couldn’t do that were always extremely painful, draining, and demoralizing, and it took me a long time to recover from them once they were over.
If I have to do something quite stressful, I’ve found a comfort sandwich to be incredibly beneficial. A comfort sandwich is where I do something pleasant followed by the stressful task and then finish with another pleasant activity. That’s much nicer than having nothing but stress all the way through or having a stressful ending to an otherwise pleasant experience. A bad ending can totally ruin my day even if I enjoyed everything else about it up until that point so I do whatever I can to make each day end on a good note, especially during stressful times.
In general, I prefer to enjoy what I’m doing instead of constantly challenging myself to get better at it. If I’m hating activities I do for fun rather than loving them (which can easily happen if I focus too much on practice and too little on fun), then I change how I approach them so that I can enjoy them once again. Sometimes I enjoy doing something super easy for fun, rest, and relaxation. This is extra beneficial if I’ve done a lot of difficult things and failed at several of them; at that point, I just want something simple that I know I can succeed at fairly easily. That small sense of accomplishment always makes me feel better and allows me to carry on with other, more challenging things. Sometimes it’s good to simply play and have fun instead of constantly practicing and attempting to get better.
It’s taken me almost three months to heal as much as I have from losing Sawyer and I still have a long way to go. Most days I still take it slow, even slower at times than I did in the earliest days after his death. That has allowed me to continue healing and feeling better even as I go out to visit, play, help, and do other meaningful things with other people. If I had thrown myself right back into my work or anything else without dealing with the strongest emotions while they were still overwhelming for me, I doubt I’d have healed at all these past few months. If anything, I’d probably be feeling even worse due to all that pent-up stress. That very thing occurred in 2020 with intense pain (though still less intense than what I’ve felt this year) that I ignored for more than a month before I finally started working through it. I don’t go for the approach of putting my head down and burying myself in busyness. That’s never helped me feel better. Feeling through the emotions is the only thing that’s ever given me lasting relief.
Even before Sawyer’s death, I’d been taking lots of time this year to rest, recover, and heal from pain, trauma, and other negativity, whether from early in my life or earlier this year. The remainder of this year and each year after will be much better without all that negativity weighing me down. This is the most rest I’ve had in any year since 2018. That extra rest is allowing me to finally heal the deep-seated pain I’ve carried with me for most of my life. I don’t know yet where this is taking me but it’s already taken me farther than I ever imagined possible. I look forward to seeing where I go as I continue to heal, rest, recover, and grow.
