Invisible Growth
Photograph by Franco Vogt
There are life moments of seemingly little movement or progress that can feel unnerving, yet they are essential to our healing and becoming
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I don’t know about you, but just about everyone I know seems to be experiencing some level of discomfort of late. For most it’s not necessarily about a massive life upheaval or upset, but rather a quieter moment of sitting in the unknown, feeling a little squirmy and unsettled in their lives or businesses — not quite sure what’s going on, what move to make next or how to shift it.
It just feels like change is upon us. Perhaps that comes in the form of loss, endings, beginnings, doors closing, others opening. Change is change and no one really welcomes it because it requires a level of blind faith — that things will be okay, that we will be okay.
As I write this and quickly glance out my office window, instead of taking in the familiar view of the mountain ridge in the distance, the skies are an eerie, unfamiliar, odd yellow/brown hue. An indescribable scent of fire wafts about. It is darker than it should be, making it feel like it is night when it is only afternoon. It’s confusing and alarming. It distracts me.
I am a bit unnerved by it in an odd way I can’t quite describe — it honestly feels like I’ve stepped into an episode of Stranger Things.
But I haven’t, I’m here in the Catskill Mountains engulfed by the remnants of smoke from the Canadian wildfires. I’ve never seen anything like this before. Everything feels upside down and out of control. Maybe because it is.
I want my blue skies and sunshine back. Even the birds have quieted down. Though so incredibly grateful to live in the country, I realize that I’ve taken air quality for granted because today it is gone. There’s nothing like having something taken away to realize how much you valued it, but I digress.
This isn’t actually a blog about the environment or pollution, but rather of sitting within the discomfort of this human experience in whatever form it arrives for you. God knows, during my time on this planet, I’ve endured my share of life upheaval. In fact, I could write a few Lifetime Movie episodes! [wink]
But it’s not all about what has happened to us — what we lost, what was taken away, who hurt us — that defines us. It’s really about what we do with it.
And it’s about the condition we are in when we arrive on the other side of that experience. Those are tools, skills and strategies we can acquire to help us mitigate our own suffering.
I learned a lot of this the hard way, old school on-the-job-training — the up-a-creek-without-a-paddle school of hard knocks. I’ve endured my bumps and bruises but have also availed myself to learning new and better ways to navigate it all. None of us is immune to life adversity, or can necessarily control the timelines, but we do get to decide HOW we handle those circumstances.
Recently during a conversation with a business coach, I was lamenting the pace of our growth and reaching various benchmarks. After listening, she remarked that we were in the period of ‘invisible growth’ with our new venture. Hmmm. Invisible Growth. The term immediately felt comforting and calmed my nervous system.
Consider this, if you planted a delicate flower would you start screaming at it to grow, bloom, produce a bouquet? Of course not, and yet, that’s exactly what we do to ourselves and the expectations we impose upon ourselves when we want something.
In this world of perpetual motion, constant connectivity, instant gratification and operating at a high productivity setting — the notion of ‘invisible growth’ felt like a breath of fresh air. Why? Because we need both action steps and integration. We need time to incubate — to breathe in and breathe out.
Think about it for a minute. When you learn something new you need time to absorb and put it into practice. A doctor does a residency after medical school, a teacher becomes an assistant and so on. Yet we, especially entrepreneurs, rarely avail ourselves of the same opportunity. And let’s not forget us humans navigating pain — and how quickly we can get lost and spiral off course. Perhaps a little patience is a virtue after all.
This should not only apply to the things we create, but also to spiritual growth and healing, yet it rarely does. You can’t take a digital course, read a self-help book, have a session with a coach, drink and green juice — and call it healed.
It’s ironic how little time we avail ourselves of to simply sit in the emotion of a situation without feeling the need to immediately jump to action. Things take time. Consider your own grieving, healing, growing, expanding, becoming, transforming — as a tender seed of inspiration that gets planted. When you create a garden, you till the soil, gently plant the seeds, water, weed, nurture the bed — and you have faith that something is growing beneath the soil — and in time the fruits of your labor will pop up through the ground and sprout beautiful life.
This is what rebuilding, restoring, recreating, repairing, reconnecting and rejuvenating are born of.
This is an invitation into the space of your own invisible growth. Go ahead, lean into it. Don’t judge it, try to fix it, define it, or change it. Simply allow it to be — and be with it. Witness it and trust that it is within this space that some of the most defining life moments are occurring, the ones you will talk about in years to come.
What do you want that story to look like?
Sometimes (actually more often than we care to admit), we cannot see the forest for the trees (or the mountain through the smoke). Could you be okay in the pause, the in-between spaces of your life, and hold onto the conviction that invisible growth is afoot — and that it doesn’t need to be fixed...it needs to befelt?
How does the term ‘invisible growth’ land on you? I’m curious to know if there is an area in your life where you may feel stuck and unable to see through the clouds? Please share in the comments below.