“Strength and growth come only through continuous effort and struggle.” Napoleon Hill
Motivation Mondays: GROWTH – All life forms
Growth demands a temporary surrender of security. It may mean giving up familiar but limiting patterns, safe but unrewarding work, values no longer believed in, and relationships that have lost their meaning. John C. Maxwell
What does growth mean to you? Everything in life goes through a period of growth and ebb/flow. Every form of plant, mammal, animal and other life forms go through a progression of changes as they grow; to reach maturity takes effort, challenges and even failures. From the time a baby is conceived in his mother’s womb, the battle for survival begins. When we are born, we take our first gasp of air and let out a scream because we have entered unfamiliar territory. It takes a while to adjust to our new environment and, like other lifeforms depicted above, we need guidance and help from our mothers or from others that have been through the process. Our security and survival isn’t always assured but our growth demands a temporary surrender of security. The process doesn’t always work; there are times of failure but to keep growing, we must keep performing actions that support our survival.
Why focus on growth?The point here is that growth is lifelong and occurs in stages that are not always linear. Each day, we get up with hope and anticipation for what the day will bring. We perform our routines to get us going and, if all the chips fall into place, we leave our homes and head into the world to interact with other people who are also going through their version of growth. Monday is a particularly anticipatory day because it starts the school and work week for millions of people around the world. The process of rebirth and renewal is still the same. We go through continuous effort and struggle to reach each goal we set for ourselves and once accomplished, we start the process all over again to accomplish/complete other goals. When we fail to complete a task or a goal, we revert to our original steps and retrace them. All of these actions add to our body of knowledge, our experiences, and our confidence level. If something doesn’t work out, instead of abandoning hope, try a different approach, change directions and try something else or new and stay open to that form of growth.
“The key to growth is the introduction of higher dimensions of consciousness into our awareness.” Lao Tzu
Motivation Mondays: GROWTH – Blackbird stages of growth
Growth: Development of a nestling of five blackbirds by Romate.
People are like dirt. They can either nourish you and help you grow as a person or they can stunt your growth and make you wilt and die. Plato
What comes to mind when you look at the blackbirds in the collage above? If nothing else, I hope it reminds you that the cliche – growing pains – has validity for all of life. From the time the blackbirds peck through their egg shells and begin to grow, there are countless opportunities for failure and danger. Because they are unable to fly from the nest, they remain dependent on their mother to fly around and find warms and other food to feed them daily. The baby blackbirds must also fight for space in the nest and learn to cooperate with each other. If a predator finds the nest, they won’t be able to fight it off and so their situation will remain tenuous until they are strong and bold enough to take that first flight to freedom. Even after they learn to fly, other challenges await them because the natural progression of life and growth includes struggle, danger and failure.
What about human growth? The same explanation, as above, can be said of human growth. Growing pains are part of our life experiences and they happen to all of us. We must first learn to walk before we can run and fly the proverbial coop. If we miss a few steps along the way, we find that gaps will appear in our learning curve, and we must go back and repeat the process till we truly imbibe the lessons deep inside of our being. Of course, we don’t walk around every day thinking about the gaps, misses, and failures in our lives because they are part of our natural progression through life; they fitseamlessly into the daily travails of living in the world. When we fail at a task, instead of beating ourselves up, we should contemplate what lessons are being taught and how we can improve our lot. Some people don’t take leaps of faith because they are afraid to fail or think failure will make them less valuable in the eyes of XYZ. On the contrary, it takes great courage and strength of character to stay true to who we are and to face our successes and failures with the same degree of introspection and gratitude. Where are you in your growth?
The details for Motivation Mondays are below. Join in! The themes for April and May are:
04/06 – PERFECTION
04/13 – MISTAKES
04/20 – GROWTH
04/27 – MINDFULNESS05/30 – APPRECIATION
05/13 – COMFORT
05/20 – FITNESS
05/27 – SERVICE
MORE BELOW!
“Without continual growth and progress, such words as improvement, achievement, and success have no meaning.” Benjamin Franklin
Motivation Mondays: GROWTH – Butterfly stages of growth
Ever since I was a child I have had this instinctive urge for expansion and growth. To me, the function and duty of a quality human being is the sincere and honest development of one’s potential. Bruce Lee
What areas of your life need more growth? We all know people who are stuck in a rot. We know folks who seem to no longer grow because they have allowed fear, limited thinking and negativity to get in the way of their growth. Sitting on our laurels is the road to stagnation. We must always be testing the limits of our skills and strength, and find ways to broaden our minds and world view. If we keep doing the same thing day in and day out, we will soon become like a factory machine that produces the same stuff over and over again.
What are you doing about it? Push yourself a little. Fail at something. Try a new way of viewing your work and see how much more you will open the door to new experiences and growth. A life spent playing it safe is a limited life and growth doesn’t dwell there. Now go do something new and different today. It can be something small or even learning a new skill or trying your hand at a new approach to old tasks… nothing dangerous, just different.
For More:
Positive Motivation Tip: Every day is an opportunity to take a courageous step and grow… Let go of your stereotypes, recriminations, and limitations, and just blossom.
Motivation Mondays is open to anyone who wishes to share a motivational quote, photo, personal challenge or a post that encourages others to start the week on an upbeat note.
Basic Instructions: Each week, I will have a motivation word to help us create a response. (See listed words for end of November and all of December below)
Email address: You may email or share your post as a comment and I will add it to the round-up of related posts. email it to: contact(@)mirthandmotivation(.)com
Category tag: – Share your post using Motivation Mondays
Twitter hashtag: – Use this on Twitter #MotvnM
Dedicated Page: There is a dedicated page for Motivation Mondays. It has the same instructions and will include other helpful tools and a link to the round-up
Facebook Page: MotivationOnMondays Join our page and add your post and/or any motivational piece you think will be helpful to others.
Facebook Community: We have a Facebook community forum to compliment the page. It serves as another way to share uplifting posts and thoughts. Please join in and add your voice.
Badge: – I created a fun badge using PicMonkey’s free photo editing tools. You can create your own, use WordPress’ integrated tool on your blog or you are welcome to use mine. (see dedicated page)
Tag: – Motivation Mondays
Hashtag: – #MotvnM
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PHOTO CREDITS/ATTRIBUTIONS: All Photos: 00 days old” by Romate – Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.” target=”_blank”>Hatching blackbirds by Romate, Butterfly, via Wikipedia
Until Next Time…
Ask. Believe. Receive. ©
Elizabeth Obih-Frank
Mirth and Motivation
Positive Kismet
