Sunday, November 6, 2011

Self growth

I consider myself to be a relatively self aware person.  Over the years, I have engaged in a lot of self-analysis, soul searching, and self reflection in an effort to understand what my problems are and to figure out how to deal with them.  I spent a lot of time learning to like myself as a person.  I taught myself not to immediately act on feelings of insecurity or jealousy, which ultimately led to me having fewer feelings of insecurity and jealousy.  I learned how to portray self-confidence (even though I didn't feel self confident), which eventually generated feelings of confidence.  I learned to listen when someone gives me negative feedback and to avoid becoming so defensive that I am unable to consider the validity of what I'm being told.  I learned to accept responsibility for my role in a conflict, even if part of me clings to the need to be right.  I learned to say no and set limits as needed.  I started forgiving myself for making mistakes.

When I compare how I used to be to the way I am now I think to myself, "Wow.  I've come a LONG way."  I worked hard to become a better, happier person.  I experienced a lot of emotional pain but I grew from it.  When I consider how far I've come I feel proud.

And then I got married.  A romantic relationship is, without a doubt, the best context for personal growth to occur.  In my opinion, personal growth has to occur for a relationship to be a satisfying one.  Why are romantic relationships so uniquely suited for self growth?  Because while these are the relationships that typically bring out the best in us, they are also the relationships that are guaranteed to bring out the worst in us.

Think about it.  What other relationship makes you feel as vulnerable as a romantic one?  What other relationship so consistently triggers your insecurities?  And who besides your romantic partner is likely to be as forthcoming with you about the not-so-pleasant parts of your personality?  A romantic partner typically spends more time with you than anyone else; he or she will notice things about you that others never have the opportunity to see.

Needless to say, my new marriage has provided innumerable opportunities to re-examine myself.  I firmly believe that people should always seek to know and understand themselves and should always be willing to grow.  These are lifelong endeavors.  Still, it's been really difficulty for me to re-examine the way I do things yet again and make changes.  I suppose that because I'd only just reached a point where I was satisfied with who I am I wanted to sit back and enjoy it for a while.

For years I've devoted so much time and energy into learning to love and accept myself.  Maybe I'm just tired.  Yet I can't stop.  I have to learn to accept things about my husband that sometimes drive me crazy.  That might require me to consider why something that is relatively unimportant bothers me so much.  Then there are the things that bother my husband about me that I never really saw as a problem before.  Some of these my husband will have to learn to accept; others I will have to work on changing.

So now is really not the time to sit back and enjoy my hard-earned self-esteem.  Maybe I was kidding myself anyway, to think you ever reach a point where it's ok to stop growing, even for a little while.

5 comments:

  1. I relate to so many of your posts. This is so true - I have also done lots of work on examining myself and working towards being happy with myself and felt like I had come so far (which I had). I stayed single intentionally during much of this time so when I recently got into a new relationship, I realized that it was harder than I thought to put into action all I had worked on... I learned that its all great to feel good about myself but the real test is holding on to that when its in relation to others - whether its romantic relationships or otherwise. Its been amazing the things that have become apparent and that I've had to confont in myself when in a relationship! It is a beautiful challenge though if you can be self-aware and confident enough to face yourself and deal with what arises. Thanks for sharing your perspective on this!

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  2. Knowing thyself is an undertaking to last ones lifetime but I’m willing to give it just one shot.

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  3. I never believed in love spells or magic until I met this spell caster once when i went to see my friend in Indian this year on a business summit. I meant a man who's name is Dr ATILA he is really powerful and could help cast spells to bring back one's gone, lost, misbehaving lover and magic money spell or spell for a good job or luck spell .I'm now happy & a living testimony cos the man i had wanted to marry left me 5 weeks before our wedding and my life was upside down cos our relationship has been on for 3years. I really loved him, but his mother was against us and he had no good paying job. So when i met this spell caster, i told him what happened and explained the situation of things to him. At first i was undecided,skeptical and doubtful, but i just gave it a try. And in 7 days when i returned to Canada, my boyfriend (now husband) called me by himself and came to me apologizing that everything had been settled with his mom and family and he got a new job interview so we should get married. I didn't believe it cos the spell caster only asked for my name and my boyfriends name and all i wanted him to do. Well we are happily married now and we are expecting our little kid, and my husband also got the new job and our lives became much better. His email is atilahealinghome@yahoo.com

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  4. This type of message always inspiring and I prefer to read quality content, so happy to find good place to many here in the post, the writing is just great, thanks for the post. self growth books

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