Slow Growth Still Counts, Small Growth Still Matters

You can get more money, you can get more clothes, you can get more friends, but you'll never be able to get more time.

Time is the one resource that is truly finite in this life. For that reason, it is truly invaluable, and also truly devastating. And if time is scarce, growth needs to be big and fast to be significant, otherwise accomplishments won't come.

That's what I used to believe, anyway.

I've spent most of my life worrying about how much time I will get to spend on this earth. I always thought my life would end before I really got to live. When I was in middle school, I thought maybe I'd die before I had my first kiss. The older I got and the more milestones I collected, I didn't become more confident in my prospective lifespan. My brain would simply find new life events to worry about being granted enough time to experience. 

Traveling the world, getting married, having kids, buying a house, having a successful career. There was always something I thought I wouldn't live to see. I thought I needed it all to happen fast, that I had to front-load my life with accomplishments because the longer I lived, the greater my chances of dying became.

This belief is part of the reason why I became such a driven person. I was determined to accomplish my goals and experience all the good things in life before my time ran out. I didn't know when that would be, and although that was extremely motivating, it wasn't coming from a good place. 

At the root of my motivations was an intense fear that my life would be over too soon due to circumstances outside of my control. I was so afraid to miss out on anything, so I set out to accomplish everything.

My baseline for operating was a high-functioning state of anxiety that was turning into a dangerous positive feedback loop. I developed highly praised qualities, such as being hardworking, responsible, independent, and willing to go the extra mile. The positive societal feedback I was getting from my behaviors only made me dig my heels in deeper, but internally, my soul was slowly fading from the self-inflicted pressure. I had trapped my intuition in a castle of accomplishment that at a glance looked prestigious but, upon closer look, was covered with suffocating briars of fear and anxiety.

When it came to chasing my dreams, I was constantly overthinking and catastrophizing. I became obsessed with making progress toward my goals within strict time limits thinking that if I didn't scale my progress fast enough, I would never be able to achieve anything.

But my problem wasn't just a problem of having enough time, my problem was also that I didn't believe that slow growth counted. 

I developed a mindset that only valued significant accomplishments. It wasn't enough to grow ten new followers in a day when I didn't already have thousands. It didn't matter if I got a casting because it wasn't a booking.

To try to meet my own high standards, I was constantly pointing out my deficiencies to myself, as if I was some sort of machine that needed optimization. I pushed myself to do more and more, expecting the effort to be met with an equal outcome. When it didn't come, I felt even more pressure to accomplish something bigger, faster. 

It wasn't all negative, though. Having a mind like this made me an extremely proficient problem solver and analyst, but my energy was panicked. No amount of effort could override the internal state I was operating from. My mind was scared. I wasn't acting in alignment. There was no way I could progress until I overcame my fear.

In one of my previous blog posts, "You're Safe to Start Where You Are", I shared my experience of how my life had gotten to a point where I didn't recognize myself in my choices or my actions, and I didn't trust myself. One day, like the burst of a bubble, I woke up to the reality of my life. I saw how much fear controlled me and I started the process of rewiring my brain and learning to reconnect with my intuition. 

It was a long and slow process, but ultimately it gave me the ability to achieve more toward my dreams than any of my previous efforts had.

Learning to live a life aligned with love, authenticity, and joy helped me find calm in my mind and bring peace to my life. I didn't worry as much, I learned to detach, I stopped overthinking, and I trusted myself instead. Like attracts like, and when I learned how to exist with a mindset of abundance, I was rewarded abundantly. 

No more do I get anxious about having enough time to achieve my dreams. I don't fear that my life will end prematurely, I've stopped trying to rush my results, and I no longer discount my small achievements. I have remained very ambitious and driven, but now with a lightness and a passion that promote consistency and sustainability in my efforts.

What is meant for me will find me. Does that fact change based on how fast my growth is, or how quickly I'm accomplishing my goals? No. My speed does not determine my outcome.

Growth does not lose its value just because it takes longer than expected.

This mindset shift, paired with the correct resources, has been a gamechanger for how I view and approach my growth. I needed community, and I found it. I needed integration, and I achieved it. I needed structure, and I created it.

Gradual, short-term growth is truly what drives a dream in the long run. I had to stop waiting to become an overnight success and instead focus on showing up consistently, in a sustainable way, for my dreams and my goals. I adapted a system that helped me accomplish this, and I turned it into a free resource so you can do the same. 

I am very excited to share with you my "Dream Out Loud Short-Term Consistency System". I designed it based on the exact structure I use for achieving my short-term goals. Using this system, you'll be able to organize your pursuit of your dreams in a way that encourages consistent progress through accomplishing small, yet meaningful goals. Just set your term length, write down your goals, break them into phases, select what you're going to focus on for each phase, and list daily actions to take based on what you'd like to accomplish. No more decision fatigue trying to figure out what you're going to work on, no more dismissing little milestones. This system uses predetermination to help you keep moving forward and gives you a plan to stick to.  

I've included a more detailed description of how to use this system in the link here. This link will direct you to a Google Drive folder which includes the system as well as the system guide. Use the guide to learn how to replicate my exact approach to making your dreams come true through slow, steady growth. You can print it out, write on it digitally, or recreate it on a piece of paper. I truly hope it helps you approach your short-term goals with clarity and shows you that even if what you're doing every day seems small and feels slow, it all adds up to create meaningful, long-term progress.