One of the biggest obstacles I see to real, lasting, personal, relational and spiritual growth is urgency.
The self-development industry has sold us countless hyped tales of the heroic push into the person we want to become. I have nothing against aiming toward that becoming — quite the opposite. But the narrative is that full investment in a linear method, protocol, prescription, will get us from A to B, guaranteed.
But meanwhile…
All of us have important parts of us that we’ve needed to edit, cut off from, or push into conformity, like the proverbial square pegs in a round hole, to get by in an unbalanced world full of trauma and disconnection. We’re walking around as very partial selves, with our inner light shining barely through the keyhole in our shadow closet. Psychologist Pia Mellody noted that most of us walk around as an “adaptive child” — a child cosplaying as an adult.
Our job then, to fulfill goals in a way that brings lasting thriving is to bring all parts of us into wholeness, to build relationship with them, and so to let our inner soul medicine unfold in its clear, granular expression from the bottom up.
Letting those parts come back into their full expression takes time, but it’s that very process that allows us to feel deep satisfaction in our endeavors, as we then make choices that are much more aligned with all of who we are.