Growth As A Choice

When we were children, our growth was outside of our choice. We were sent to school without our consent or opinion. We did pre-school, nursery school, primary school, secondary school and tertiary school because of the huge push we got from our parents and peers. It was the path everyone was following and what was more difficult was to choose not to follow that path of growth. However, now, as an adult growth no longer is a thing that comes naturally or from peers or parents or the society, it is now purely a matter of choice.

It is a lot easier now to remain in the same spot for years. In fact, it is almost the norm to do the same set of activities day in day out for many years. What is now difficult is to ensure that you are growing: not just better at doing the same things but moving on to bigger and more difficult things.

Whether you are growing or not becomes obvious if you consider your teenage years, when each year you were building on the knowledge and skill acquired the previous year. In fact, it was an undesirable thing to repeat the same class: learning the same set of things over again for another year. And now maybe it's now the norm: you haven't learned any new things for years. 

You have to make a conscious decision to grow. You have to follow a life plan that requires you to graduate from one learning phase to enroll in another learning phase at definite timelines. Have a big plan that will force you to grow. Something impossible for the current you to achieve. 

Could you have imagined yourself passing WAEC while in the primary school? But that was the ultimate goal of your schooling till secondary level. It was a goal that required you to grow by force even if the choice was not yours. Now the choice is yours and you have to put in the work + force yourself to grow.

I have recently been reading a lot about how people with same 24 hours a day as me get to achieve a lot more. They create companies that employ thousands other people and add value to the society. And I found out that it's a matter of choice/ambition. You get what you go after. That is why a man will spend millions of Naira and years to build a factory, because when you are going after the big things you have to prepare in a big way. We see the fruits of their past labour and feel it's not commensurate with their current labour. What we refuse to see is the big risks, preparation and sacrifices they had taken in the past to create the life they now have. They chose to grow in ways the rest of us keep avoiding.

Now I am again prayerfully rethinking my life. I think it is filled with too much short-term projects. One year & two years projects. I want to have more long term projects. Something I can daily or weekly or monthly work towards but won't be done in less than 10 years. Something that is impossible for the current me to achieve, so will force me to keep growing. I have chosen to grow.

And you?