The Roots of Grow Into Life

This week I released a podcast episode. It is the second episode of my second “stab” at hosting a podcast, and for this week I felt led to share about the roots behind the name “Grow Into Life”. There are various events in life that have led to my thinking about the process of living, being something that we grow in to. During the episode I explored a few personal events and challenges, as well as dipping into the broader understanding of how life is something that we all grow into.

As someone who also guides people around applying a Growth Mindset, it has a useful link here too! This is where the crossroads appears for a person who has the awareness that they are growing into life, combined with having the conscious choice to tap into a growth mindset approach to the task.

Firstly, conception, birth, infancy, childhood and beyond, up to adulthood, carry a series of events that require growth if one wanted to face it full on. Interestingly, for me, I registered Grow Into Life LTD in 2020, after I had my first child. This season carried an intimate awareness of the truth that life is growth. Tackling growth scans during covid, watching my bump grow while morphing into a mother, also spoke to me of the growth that Gabriel faced before birth and then after his birth.

Now he is five! And I have become a mother twice.

Secondly, when we interact in society and various community spaces, whether it’s our local pub, online community space, religious centre, allotment, corner shop, event venues, brick and mortar shops, place of work, or an education establishment. Whatever age we are, includes the reality of facing the possibility and opportunity of growth. Obligatory interactions benefit from us having adaptable social skills, and certain tasks require soft skills like a willingness to learn new things, demonstrating teamwork, leadership, diplomacy, innovative thinking, service, confidentiality and more.

Some of us are naturals at certain skills whereas other skills are something that we have to deliberately apply ourselves to. This means we can choose whether we are ready to grow into the moment of life that we are facing, or decide to stick our head in the sand, unless we are unceremoniously forced to face interaction which we awkwardly work through, remaining in the same shape as before or as close as possible to it.

Unfortunately, whether we want to or not, growth happens. Healthy growth can happen if we are willing to learn healthy approaches to situations. Unhealthy growth happens when we avoid learning the new growth experiences that we face and instead just roll through the moment like tumble weed getting buffeted here and there until we are out the other side. This can contribute to a fixed mindset and also condition a sense of learned helplessness or fear of failure, as well as discomfort when facing new challenges.

Remember our family and network watch us. People learn through watching our reactions and observing our actions or lack of. Being conscious of the power of learning through socialisation and family dynamics is a blessing and often a frustration too… life in all its imperfections can cause the learners to pick up the wrong thing more often than not… grrrrrrrr

My five year old is a talented observer.

Thirdly, life throws a series of monumental, exhausting events at us over and over again. We navigate through aching bereavement, unnerving hospitalisations, strained house moves, emotional relationship milestones. We face the exhausting truth of our core family unit changing shape, due to new arrivals or unexpected departures – and adjust. Changes in education or career can also lead to overwhelm, burnout, and big changes. Not to mention the natural or unnatural disasters that can befall our region or nation.

Each of these events push us out of our comfort zone and towards a stretching growth opportunity that happens healthily or not.

I go in to parts of this more deeply during the podcast. For some reason I didn’t heavily touch on my faith in Jesus and how that is a huge journey of growth in itself. I didn’t mention the traumatic season of having my second child, who then had to have open heart surgery as a newborn.

What I did touch on was that learning to build an intentional wellbeing lifestyle can really help strengthen our core so that we can face these hardships and changes with less fear and weakness in our selves.

I also mentioned that through it all, noticing reasons to celebrate elements of our life is key. Celebrating ourselves or our lives can build our inner spirit and enable us to have some cushion to lean into, when life feels exhausting and when we want to drop everything. Celebrating the small things and the big.

Taking the time to notice what we love about our personality or appearance, or our network, or environment at home or at work, or what we contribute in a community, or what we have achieved through education or career path… Celebrate.

If you can’t celebrate, please do get in touch.

I want to help you to see something worthy of celebrating in your life. Honestly I do.

You can book a free 20 minute call and we can find things to celebrate together.

Growing into life is messy and fulfilling. It is hard and rewarding. There are blessings alongside heartache.

My hope through this work is to gradually help more and more people know how to grow into life with a big sprinkling of enjoyment mixed in. I want to help people to enjoy life more, even when it feels impossible.

To learn to spot the glimmers of celebration and gratitude that appear each day that we face.

With love,

Elizabeth