It’s not worth blaming ourselves over our apprehension, and sometimes complete polarization, to growth. Our biology and our brains are hardwired to keep us comfortable. Our whole being doesn’t want to put us in distress or discomfort so it believes its protecting us by choosing to play small, not taking risks, not pushing ourselves and our boundaries. It’s just like any progress in a fitness or physical sense. There are plateaus and times when you reach a point of either running at the same speed/distance or lifting the same amount of weight. The discomfort of moving forward completely stalls your progress. The only way to go farther, get stronger, improve, progress- is to push yourself to go beyond your boundaries and plateaus. Let yourself be uncomfortable and demonstrate to your mind/body/soul that discomfort doesn’t equal death but that discomfort leads to continual {sometimes macro sometimes micro} re-births. So run further, have the hard conversations, lift heavier weights, make your art, speak your truth.
I also believe that there’s an inherent fear or apprehension to progress because there will inevitably be “failure”. In a very linear or black and white sense, you either reach your goal or you don’t. You succeed or you fail. But there is nothing about growth and progress that is linear.
There are no straight lines in nature and there is nothing black and white about life.
So why, then, put the stress of success vs. failure on your back when the trees don’t even feel the need to grow to the sun in a straight and linear line? View the patterns of growth among the plants around you. They all bend, turn, snake, maneuver, creep, crawl, burst, bloom, close, shed, bend, sometimes break, and bear fruit. This. This is what growth looks like. There will be periods of bends, twists, turns, and breaks. Periods of blooming and fruits. Periods of growth so slow it feels like a crawl. Periods of shedding and a little breaking; getting rid of what no longer serves your growth or is slowing it down and inhibiting it. But imagine if, in an alternate world, a tree was fearful of all of that. And said, “No! No! Fuck that no thank you I’m completely fine just staying this seed in the ground. Imagine a flower staying a bulb and never realizing its fullest potential due to fear.