If you are ready to chase after personal growth, congratulations! Acknowledging that you want to become a better version of yourself is majorly important – with this first step, you’re preparing yourself for a big voyage into a better life for yourself.
To make personal growth easier to achieve, it’s important to understand that it won’t always be an easy path to take. You will face challenges along the way, and one of the biggest challenges to overcome is high expectations that make personal growth harder to achieve. Before you set off on your journey, let go of these common expectations you may be holding.
Life should be easy or fair.
No matter how much success you find in life, you’re still going to be surprised by setbacks and challenges. This is a normal, natural part of life. No matter how “together” you seem to be, life will find ways to throw you curveballs every now and then. Facing these challenges are opportunities to learn and grow, so while life isn’t always going to be easy or fair, you can still find good in it.
Happiness should be your constant state of emotional being.
Being happy all the time isn’t normal. You aren’t going to be happy all the time, even if you achieve tons of personal growth. You’re still going to have down days, experience sadness, and even feel depressed at times. This is because humans experience a huge spectrum of emotions – and all of them are valid.
Success has to look a certain way.
You may convince yourself that success must look a specific way – perhaps you idolize a particular friend or role model who seems to “have it all,” and you want that same outcome for yourself. Letting go of this expectation is important because success looks different for everyone, yourself included! Focus on building your own definition of success instead of chasing after someone else’s.
Other people must validate you.
Seeking external validation means you will always rely on others to make you feel like you’re doing the right thing. In reality, other people may not understand what you’re doing and why it’s important to you. Focus on self-validating instead – when you know you’re doing right by yourself, you can let go of the expectation that other people must give you that validation. When you’re seeking personal growth, it can be damaging to let how you feel about your efforts fall into the hands of others.
You have to be productive all the time in order to be successful.
Being constantly productive sounds nice, but in reality, it’s an impossible expectation to meet. You must have downtime for resting and relaxing in order to find personal growth and success. Let go of the idea that you need to always be busy and give yourself permission to take some breaks.
You can’t start something unless you’re already good at it.
If you follow this expectation all the time, you will never start anything new. Instead, let yourself settle for “just getting something done” instead of getting it perfect on the first try. If you aren’t afraid to make mistakes or do a poor job, then you will never be bold enough to try in the first place.
Relationships will always stay the same.
It’s foolish to believe that all your relationships will stay the same forever. In reality, strong relationships need constant work and effort to keep them healthy and happy. You can’t expect a relationship to stay the same forever, so if you want to keep them going throughout your personal growth journey, it is necessary to continually work toward keeping them strong.
Growth is going to be easy.
Many people perceive growth as a “natural next step” in any area of life. As you age and move through life, the idea is that you will naturally progress upward. In reality, that expectation doesn’t totally encompass the amount of work and effort it takes to make progress and achieve growth throughout the different parts of your life. True growth can be messy, painful, and difficult work – though extremely worthwhile. Let go of the expectation that growth will “just happen naturally” and feel easy.
You have to already know all the right answers.
Unfortunately, many people enter personal growth journeys with the idea that they absolutely must know all the right answers immediately. This leads to trouble when you inevitably don’t have a right answer and aren’t sure what to do next. You don’t have to fake knowledge or experience when you don’t have it yet – instead, give yourself full permission to acknowledge when you lack information and then seek to find it, learn it, and apply it.
You will eventually reach the most perfect version of yourself.
This false expectation leads people to believe that there is an ultimate “perfect” version of themselves that they must constantly strive to find. In reality, you are never going to reach a perfect and complete version of yourself. Personal growth is a lifelong marathon rather than a quick sprint. This is because there will always be something new for you to learn or new ways for you to improve yourself as a human being. At every age and stage of life, you should seek to keep learning and growing. Even the oldest and most experienced people can still better themselves and seek personal growth!