If you want to know you’ve improved at something, then you must have compared it against another thing — the timeline, behavior, intensity, lax, and so on.
The measure of progress comes from the metrics of your values and vision.
Improving means doing or being better than what or where you used to be. It could be as little as the way you use the cutlery to feed, or as major as learning to acknowledge your feelings or self more.
It takes a mental shift for growth to occur. I’ve once read, and experienced firsthand, how your thoughts and behaviors can transform at the wake from sleep. When such is the case, you flow with it. Don’t resist the change of questioning what the root is.
Change can be spontaneous as well as gradual. What makes the difference is the willingness to accept it when it comes and being open to improving as the day goes by.
Once you start realizing the changes in your life, the patterns, the trauma-led behaviors, and the subtleties of how you handle things, it is all the sign you need.
It begins with these realizations and transcends to the acknowledgment of the truth. From there it leads to acting on what you’ve gained from that experience and how to use that newfound knowledge to improve yourself.
For instance, if you’d normally disengage when people offend you rather than stand up for yourself, times will come when that pattern repeats itself so much it forces you to confront it. When you do you begin to understand why. Maybe it’s due to the trauma of always being seen as the troublemaker that made you withdraw. The sequence continues by unraveling how you could improve that situation by learning to assert your needs or defend yourself when in another similar situation.
This shows that personal growth is a process. It’s unending. An outcome achieved in one front may open a cascade of other situations or patterns that need addressing. The most important factor is to recognize growth in one area and be grateful for it- while looking out for other ways to continue improving. This makes for an intentional living and a holistic one. A life where you’re the captain and navigating its flow. Thus making a fulfilling life.
