You only grow and progress where you have balance.
If you get on a bicycle and push down hard on both pedals simultaneously you won’t go anywhere. The bike won’t move and will likely fall over.
It’s only when you balance the push and release of both pedals that you get momentum and start going in the direction you want to go.
Working out at the gym to get stronger is the same principle. If you push heavy weights continually without rest for as long as you can, you will very quickly exhaust yourself and do more harm to your body than good. At the same time, if you go to the gym and only do three sets before leaving, you don’t give yourself the chance to make progress.
But if you calculate the optimal rest time between sets, and have a strategy of where you want to get to, the goal is much, much easier. Growth happens when you find the balance.
In every area of life, the point of most growth is in this middle ground.
The point between burnout and boredom. Between rigid order and chaos, between stagnation and hyperactivity.
How to Know if You’re in the Growth Zone?
When things aren’t balanced, they tend to fall over.
When there’s balance, there’s order, engagement, flexibility and peace. It’s where you find a state of flow or purpose. Where there isn’t balance, the opposite ends of the spectrum start to pull and things fall apart.
Have you ever wanted something so badly, you would do anything in your power to make it happen, you placed all your available time, energy and effort into forcing it to happen, but in the end, it just didn’t seem to get any closer? Maybe it was a relationship, a job promotion, a physical accomplishment, a certain number of friends or followers?
You can see other people around you doing and achieving these things, but you can’t seem to make it budge in your favour. It can be an incredibly frustrating experience.
But if you examine that ‘problem’, it’s likely you are overcompensating on one side of the spectrum by placing too much emphasis on ‘making it happen’.
The reason we do that is the key to unlocking sustainable growth.
How to Enter the Growth Zone?
A spark needs just the right amount of oxygen to turn into a flame, and grow. If it’s not protected from the elements it doesn’t ignite, if it’s too overprotected it gets smothered and can’t grow.
In any area, whether that’s physical, mental, spiritual, business, relationship, financial – we smother our potential or leave it unprotected when outside expectations and ideas of what we ‘should’ be doing are what guides our decisions and actions.
Think about your best moments in those areas; a career breakthrough, a relationship, creative idea, moment of inspiration. You’ll probably notice that those moments came when expectations were removed and you were just enjoying the moment and instinctively doing what you felt you should do, not what others expected.
When the opposite occurs, we put some other expectation or idea we picked up from a friend, someone we love, society, social media, the outside world, it eventually results in imbalance. The bike falls over, the spark goes out.
The greatest growth comes when you love what you do. The point of purpose, engagement, flexibility and flow depends on understanding what that is.
