Personal Growth Can Feel Painful

This post goes along with a previous post called Self-acceptance Isn’t Glamorous. I wanted to do a deep dive into the experience of personal growth and why it can feel painful and lonely at times. I hope you enjoy it!

During any new shift in your life where you can feel personal growth happening internally and externally, it can also feel painful and taxing. Why is this?

First off, personal growth happens over time whether or not you’re actively working on it. It can be a very active process and there are times when it can be passive. Personal growth can be anything from learning how to let go of other people’s opinions of you, changing your mindset around how you feel about yourself, dealing with past trauma, becoming a more mature and responsible person, etc.

Something I realized about personal growth is that the process can be emotionally and physically exhausting. Progress within your own goals feels great when you’re on your A-game. There are also times when you have off days, you feel unmotivated, and you let your head win and sulk for the day.

I realized that there’s a common thread of feeling lonely when you actually start working on yourself and putting your goals and mental health first.

Focusing on Yourself Can Feel Lonely

What I found the most difficult to handle when I started active personal growth was feeling lonely during the process. Really focusing on what I wanted to change in my life, and actually sticking to a plan to make it happen was liberating but it also shocked me how isolated I would feel during the process.

It feels lonely when you’re changing because you’re no longer the same person. When changes happen you realize new priorities, boundaries, interests, and a heightened sense of self, which can shift the way you interact with people and the environment around you.

As much as it sucks to feel lonely during this time, I feel like it’s a sign that you’re going in the right direction when you feel like you’ve outgrown something in your past if that makes sense. Loneliness forces us to spend time with ourselves and during this time, we learn more about who we are, our insecurities, and our flaws.

But I understand how loneliness can make you question whether or not you’re going in the right direction. I would find myself thinking “If I’m becoming so much more confident and clear about my intentions and goals, why do I get so quickly upset when I address my feelings of isolation?” This is still something I think from time to time and I don’t think that ever goes away until you learn how to be 100% comfortable in your own presence.

I decided to really focus on making time for bettering myself when I was done with college. When the pandemic hit and I was at a low point, I really needed motivation for something. However, when you’re trying to scramble to “figure it out” with no set plan, everything can feel overwhelming. Therefore, our feelings of loneliness, worry, and self-doubt become heightened.

“Believe it or not, loneliness provides a conduit to self-reflection and enlightenment. Through the process of attaining solitude, you are able to contemplate your own beliefs and ideas, rather than being influenced by the opinions of others. This is invaluable in the quest for self-belief and confidence.”

Personal growth doesn’t have to mean you shut out everyone, there can be a balance. Sometimes life gets busy and sometimes we forget to check in with friends and family. I would find myself doing that and then tell myself “Oh my god you’re not being a good friend to others and you can’t expect people to reach out if you’re not even doing it yourself!”

Loneliness can be a good indicator of growth and outgrowing your past, but it’s also a time to check in and lean on loved ones when you need them. As much as you think it’s the world against you, there’s a lot of people out there who care about you and want the best for you. So make sure to understand where the loneliness is coming from but also, don’t ignore and shut out loved ones.

Then Versus Now

Over the past few years, I’ve really developed my confidence and happiness within college, and leaving that space really forced me to figure out who I was and what I wanted to become. I felt a lot of personal growth in college, but it wasn’t as intense as this last year. I’ve heard the first year out of college can be rough and that’s 100% true. It’s rough for many reasons.

• You’re going through a big life change
• You’re figuring out who you are outside of school
• You’re missing your friends
• You’re feeling overwhelmed and pressured to know what you want to do
• You’re experiencing imposter syndrome
• You’re trying to adjust to external changes while internal changes are happening simultaneously

There’s already enough pressure to know what you want to do, become financially literate and stable, settle down, accomplish everything you want, etc. The difference between my personal growth experience right out of college versus now is that I know my goals have changed and that I’m able to identify and examine negative feelings easier.

Sometimes it’s hard to measure your progress or know how far you’ve come until you step back and evaluate how you are mentally in the present versus when you started to focus on your own happiness and health. There’s a lot you can do in a year to help better yourself. To be able to set and maintain your goals you should:

• Set the right goals (personalize them)
• Take small, concrete steps
• Reward yourself along the way
• Consider slip-ups to be part of the process

Setting and measuring your goals isn’t a hard process as long as you know where your starting point is, what your goals are, and track what you’re doing to reach those goals. For instance, at the beginning of my personal growth experience, one of my goals was to get better at not worrying about comparing my life to other people around me. At the time I set that goal, I was comparing my life to other people and would make myself feel bad if I felt like I wasn’t making enough progress.

To achieve my goal of not comparing my life, one thing I had to start doing was to identify and closely pay attention to when I would fall into a spiral of comparison. I’d have to ask myself:

• What were you doing when you started comparing yourself?
• How did it make you feel?
• Did it involve social media?
• Are my basic hierarchy of needs met today?

A lot of the time it would revolve around social media. My correlation of social media and comparison was a negative pattern that didn’t make me feel good about myself. Back then I probably would’ve ignored that feeling and kept scrolling. These days when I catch myself comparing my life when I’m on my phone, I have to put it down and step away. It’s not like I need to give up social media, I just need to know when it’s getting the best of me. I believe this is something a lot of people reading have experienced or understand.

Trust The Slow Process

Within my experience, I found personal growth to be painful because of how slow the process can feel at times. As we grow and develop in a society built off of convenience, our attention spans and patience reduce a lot more. Personal growth is constant which can be frustrating knowing how taxing it can be at times. However, you can’t force the process.

I sometimes get frustrated when I feel like my work isn’t paying off. With regards to personal growth, you really internalize it when you feel like things aren’t moving as fast as they should be. However, slow growth allows you to come to realizations of who you are. We discover more about ourselves when we’re able to slow down and actually process things.

Personal growth is great but there’s also internal pressure that comes with it that you’ll have to navigate. There’s no right way to go about your own personal growth goals and you won’t reach them unless you take it one measurable step at a time. You certainly won’t reach your goals by getting frustrated at how long it’s taking. This is something I’m still working on.

Overall

It’s hard to write these denser posts because sometimes I don’t have a concrete takeaway for you. So much of what we go through is individualized but hopefully, with these posts you at least feel less alone. I mean there is no magic finish line. As we get older, our goals change, and our personalities change depending on the people and environment we’re in. So take it easy and forgive yourself. Especially when you feel frustrated that you’re making no progress.

It’s better to make little measurable goals that you can reach rather than standing still in the process. If you’re currently in the process of working on yourself I’m proud of your progress. Even if it’s small it still counts. The process can feel lonely and at times you’ll get frustrated with yourself but remember you’re doing this for you.

There is no timeline you need to keep up with. Go at your own pace and trust that you’ll end up on your feet at the end of the day. There are 24 hours in a day and if you happen to have an off day, just know you can always wake up and try again.