Growth: That is your right path

As evolutionary creatures, we can’t be stagnant in life and we need to constantly evolve. This is the law. As creative beings, we have to use our creative mental faculties to set the path of this evolution in the right upward direction which is called as growth. At any given instant, every moment of our life either we move in the path of growth or path of disintegration. This change is a law. It is called law of impermanence. Nothing is permanent & everything in this universe undergoes change all the time. Even our body changes every year. So by definition, growth is just a change but set in the right upward direction to realize our higher self.

Unlike other creatures in this universe, we have certain mental faculties like perception, imagination, reasoning, memory, will power and intuition that distinguish us from other species and hence we are called as highly evolved creatures. These faculties aid in growth. We are called creative beings because we can be creative in life using these faculties. The usage of these faculties varies from person to person and hence the level of our evolution and creativeness.

Upward growth path is driven by our Goals and downward ‘disintegration path’ is driven by our Habits.

What are habits? Habit is something which happens automatically without our conscious knowledge. Examples are driving a car, brushing the teethes, doing exercises regularly or not doing exercises regularly, eating more food all the time or eating less food always, getting angry always and getting up from bed at certain time in the morning regularly etc. Habit is an automatic process controlled by the subconscious mind. In fact, 95% of our daily activities are governed by habits and hence we are on an autopilot mode.

How are habits developed? Habits are developed by constant repetition of tasks. By repeatedly practicing again and again, the task gets programmed into out subconscious mind and the task is set in an autopilot mode.

It is all fine as long as our programs work good for us. But, if our habits do not serve us then there is no point holding those habits with us. This is where our creative mental faculties come in picture in guiding us for the desired growth. For most of us, our habits or our programs take us towards the disintegration path. It is our responsibility to change the direction towards growth to give meaning and purpose to our life.

Habits keep us in our comfort zone. We feel comfortable doing the things for which we are programmed. The down side is that as long as one stays in this comfort zone, it is assured that he will not see growth in life. There will not be progress in life when we repeat and do the same things again and again. If one needs to see progress then it is important for us to leave this comfort zone. It is easy to say but difficult to implement. This is where goal comes into picture that acts as a compass to show the direction of growth.

We don’t feel comfortable once we are thrown out of our comfort zone. For example, if you have not developed a habit of public speaking and suddenly you are asked to speak publicly then you don’t feel comfortable doing that. Now you are in your discomfort zone. The transition from comfort to discomfort zone is not sharp. There is a gradient from the comfort to the discomfort zones. We have to use our mental faculties like perception and reasoning to explore this small gradient area. I guarantee you that your life will not be the same once you master the art of exploring this area. You develop something called adaptation. By exploring, we start to get acquainted with this newly defined environment and over a period of time, we will get adapted to this new ambiance. In fact, growth lies in exploiting this adaptation factor. Our nervous system as you know is a network of electrical wiring that operates in milliseconds where as a super computer operates in nanoseconds. But, we are far superior to a super computer because we as have vast number of adaption circuits than a super computer. If you want to see these networks in graphics then I suggest you watch the Avatar movie.

The important point here is to use these mental faculties to understand, feel and experience the new environmental factors that set in when you move away from the comfort zone. This takes certain duration for the circuits to rewire to these new settings. Once the programming is done, the wiring also becomes permanent and now this newly developed skill will become our new habit. The permanent wiring pushes this skill to subconscious mind and hence begins to show as a habit. For example, when we learn swimming, we move away from our comfort zone and hence a new ambiance is set in. Since, we are not used to this new ambiance; we drown and struggle to swim. We don’t feel comfortable but as we get used to the new ambiance, our natural adaptability factor kicks in and with the aid of our creative faculties to reason out& perceive the ambiance combined with desired goal( the driving force ) , the wiring changes and hence the development of the new skill & new habit.

Failure happens mainly when we don’t apply our creative mental faculties and when we don’t give sufficient time to adapt to the new ambiance. Eventually, we will fall back to our comfort zone thereby forcing us to experience a monotonous life pattern. So, growth is just not coming out of our comfort zone but it is an art of exploring the transition area and stretching gradually our comfort zone using the natural adaptability factor, mental faculties and the driving force ,which is our desired goal.

 Now, the month of February is on the way. What happened to your New Year resolution? Are you still on track? YES. Then WELL DONE. If not then read this blog few more times. The growth mechanism explained in this blog should be able to provide an answer. You will be able to get answers for many of the following questions. Why don’t I exercise regularly? Why am I overweight? Why don’t I see growth in my career? Why don’t I keep relationships?

I learned this concept explained in this blog from my static posture (Asana) yoga practices. It is a great mind body practice and offers an absolute experiential knowledge. One can nicely explore the gradient area between the comfort and discomfort zones in each posture. By doing so, we not only develop a great flexible body but we see development in all dimensions of our life like material wealth, health, relationship & skill development.

So, explore the gradient zone NOW. Exploit the naturally built-in adaptation factor.