the topic of GROWTH

Let me tell you about a girl I used to know. This girl was mean. She didn't like to listen to anyone but herself. She only did things for herself because she didn't care about how others felt. Whenever people were mean to her she didn't forgive them and she tried her hardest to make them feel bad about themselves. Even when people weren't mean to her she made them feel bad about themselves. She wasn't happy. She wasn't confident. She didn't know what she wanted to do with her life.

Want to know what happened to her? I decided she shouldn't be a part of my life anymore.

I think the most important and overlooked part of humans is our growth. We focus on it physically, but why not mentally? Mental growth is one of my favorite parts of being a human and of other humans. Hearing someone's story of what they've overcome and what they've learned is endless. You can hear about millions of billions of things and you haven't even scratched the surface of what people are capable of. But it all stemmed from their growth. The experiences they share all come from times that showed them who they were, whether they were fun or difficult times.

Growth is our real life character development. It's what leads us to be better, pass on wisdom and write awesome, totally amazing blog posts. What I've learned is that everyone grows differently. You have to take time away from your thoughts and the gossip to understand that people and their brains are weird. Especially at this age, finding out who you are and trying to become a better person is hard. Almost harder than when we were in middle school, because now the weight of our future is on our shoulders and the looming cloud of failure grows nearer.

That girl I mentioned was me when I was younger. I'm not sure if it's natural for everyone to go through that stage, but I think all of our younger mental stages include being unconfident and unhappy. And for some of us we take that out in different ways. I didn't choose to see what I was doing wrong for the longest time. I was bullied and I didn't feel as if I was doing anything great in middle school and high school so I took it out on other people before realizing I needed to change my mindset.

Hormones and puberty are great. And that's sarcasm. School is hard enough so when you pile all of these personal issues on things just get really messy. But it provides times for growth when you move past it and can look back on it. My 13-year old self didn't try to do a lot of personal growing (I didn't try to do any actual growing either, ha, made the joke before you could), but my 19-year old self is much different.

We're constantly growing, so I'm not saying that all of my problems are solved because I got out of southern Indiana, but there's a difference and I'm starting to become more proud of who I am. If there's anything I could tell my younger self about how she was feeling, I would say take a step back and just breathe. It all takes time. Nothing changes overnight and life will never be happy 24/7, no matter how much you're doing what you love.

I like talking about growth, but more importantly I like seeing it. I like looking back on it and realizing how much of it that I've done. It's nice when your family points out how well you're doing, or your social media reflects your strengths, but it's better to work on it by yourself. Spend time with yourself, realize what you need to improve and don't just say it, do it. It's hard, but practice makes perfect.

The girl I know now tries to be more aware of her actions, because different people are affected by different things. She tries to be more empathetic, because things aren't all about her and others go through just as much as she does. She has accepted that not everyone is going to like her and that it's perfectly normal. She's learning how to be better at forgiving, because you don't need that to sit with the good parts of your brain that show you your loves and hopes and dreams. She knows that people will read this and say that she doesn't understand any of this at all. But that's okay, because she's still growing.