Avoiding Arrested Development

You can get trapped in your comfort zone. You can stop growing, allowing your development as a human being to be arrested at some level, even if there is growth available to you.

No growth is stagnation. It can also be surrender. Some people live the same year over and over again, never doing anything different, accepting who they are as some final version of themselves. There is no reason to accept where you are, even if you have every right to stop growing and stop improving who you are, what you do, what you create, and what contribution you make. There is more available to you.

As far as we know, there is no end to human development. If there is an endpoint, we haven’t been able to find it. You can continue to grow personally and professionally for as long as you desire. You can become the version of you that comes after the person you are now, like a software upgrade (You 3.1). You can take on new and healthier beliefs, learn new skills, installing what amounts to a new operating system.

You have the right to stop growing whenever you want, but if you want to succeed, you need to grow. If you want to keep your success and build on it, you must keep growing. What you did to get where you are now is not likely to get you where you are capable of going. Growth is more than doing more and doing it faster. Growth is about getting better, becoming the person that can produce those results you can see in your mind’s eyes.

Without goals, your development as a human being can stop. Without a deliberate, intentional focus on your personal growth, you can end up stuck. Worse, you can trade comfort for reaching your full potential (even though, as far as I can tell, no one has been able to reach theirs, and the most successful will tell you the same).

Perfect, with room for improvement. Very good, with limitless runway ahead of you. Pleased, but never satisfied.