This Is How You Know You’re Growing as a Person
There’s a way to tell when something within you is changing.
A vague sense of dissatisfaction starts to settle over you. You begin seeing your life, almost as if from the outside. Things that were once enjoyable or you did without thinking start to give you pause.
You become restless with the way things are.
For me, it was a restlessness that stemmed from staying too long. In relationships that didn’t serve me. In jobs that didn’t value me. I got to a place where things would become too painful to stay any longer, and I wanted to change the circumstances of my life. I started craving more, but of what, I couldn’t tell you. More connection, self-knowledge, expansion, joy?
I wasn’t sure what it meant; I just felt this pull for more.
This is what happens when you grow.
Your old vices don’t feel good anymore.
Before I started working on myself, my vices surrounded general overindulgence. Binge-eating and drinking, trying to feel something by moving all the time, and dating men who weren’t good for me.
We all have different ways of dealing with our pain. Yours may look different than mine, maybe more societally accepted versions like workaholism masked as dedication, high functioning codependence, or extreme achievement bordering neurotic perfectionism.
Whatever your vice, it’s almost always filling some sort of void.
Mine filled the gnawing emptiness inside me that stemmed from never feeling loved or good enough. I tried to be secretive about how greedy and desperate my need for validation was, hidden by a fragile veil of false confidence, almost fooling myself.
Almost.
Until it crept into my awareness so starkly that I couldn’t ignore it.
Where once existed a frail façade of “self-love,” loneliness, shame, and anxiety took its place. Every time I woke up hungover or pursued someone who didn’t reciprocate, I pushed myself further into a spiral of self-loathing.
Only you can identify what it will look like, but eventually, there is a breakdown. It will end because it’s not sustainable and inevitably pushes you to expand toward something more, whether burn-out, physical ailments, or loss.
You start to change because it becomes too uncomfortable not to.
In the words of Fannie Lou Hamer and often repeated by my grandmother, “you get sick and tired of being sick and tired.”
Your relationships change or end.
Since your old behavior patterns don’t feel good anymore, you may stop doing things you used to or hanging out with people you once did.
When you start to change, a faint shift emerges.
It’s barely perceptible, yet people ask, “what’s going on with you?”
As you spend less time with them or seem more distant in your head working out what these new realizations mean, “what’s going on with you” becomes “what’s your problem?” and “you think you’re too good for us now?”
What’s going on with you is that you’re slowly developing boundaries. You might not know them as boundaries yet, but you’re starting to say “no” to things that don’t feel as good as they used to.
That’s scary for people. It’s difficult because it means something is changing, and they’re not sure what, but they can’t relate to you in the same way they could before.
They may feel afraid they’re going to lose you but can’t quite articulate it because neither of you may be able to vocalize exactly what’s happening.
They may feel resistant or resentful because one day, you’re close, and almost as if overnight, just like that, you’re not. You’re changed.
You are not the you that resonated with that relational dynamic. It worked because you were showing up in a way you aren’t willing to any longer.
Some of your relationships fade, and some of your family dynamics change. It may feel complex and confusing when you’re going through it, and you may ask yourself, “what is going on with me?” but trust it.
You’re becoming a new version of yourself.
You start to feel your feelings.
Many people don’t know how to “feel their feelings.”
Often, we don’t have the language to identify or name a feeling, let alone articulate it and share it.
You may have grown up in an environment where you suppressed, intellectualized, compartmentalized, or didn’t feel safe to express emotions. As an adult, you don’t even know what that means.
But now you’re growing. Now you’re changing.
You start to become acquainted with your emotions, maybe for the first time and listen to them.
You use them to help you gather information about specific places, people, and experiences. You start to notice how they make you feel, whether you feel depleted or enlivened after spending time with them.
You begin to see your feelings as an ally, not a hindrance, and you pay attention to what they’re trying to tell you and use them as a guide.
You take responsibility for your life.
As you mature, you understand that no matter how many hardships you’ve faced, you do not have to remain a victim of circumstance.
You can choose differently, including how you see the world, how you treat yourself and others, and what you do.
You stop blaming other people for the way things are.
You realize that creating the life you want results from developing self-awareness and understanding how your behaviors either limit or serve you and those around you.
You start to recognize your power, and as a result, you begin to make changes, big and small, each time getting closer to your authentic self.
Growth is hard. I once saw a quote that said, “no one talks about how much grief there is in growing,” but it’s true. There will be a lot of shifts that happen as you allow the old you to be reborn into the newer, wiser version.
“Your new life is going to cost you your old one” — Brianna Wiest
