When You Grow, You Outgrow Too

This week on the podcast it’s all environments and why they matter so much for our well-being. We talk about how when we begin to heal and change by doing the work, we often start to take a hard look at who and what is around us and frown. We have changed, but perhaps the family, partner, boss or friends haven’t. So now we have a problem because what was comfortable and normal and all we knew no longer feels like it fits. Why is this?

1. You have new awareness about what is healthy and what isn’t in your environments. The people. The places and spaces are no longer giving you what you need. You probably also feel awkwardly disconnected now too, because you just can’t relate to what matters to them anymore, or perhaps you just seen things so differently today because you have changed.
2. You are realizing they cannot meet your needs anymore. This can be for several reasons. For many of you, it was a case of being so disconnected from what you need such as comfort, support, love and respect. Maybe you were manipulated out of believing your needs were valid. Either way today you know your needs are important and valid, and that they simply aren’t in a space to meet them.
3. You are finally guarding your heart and desire safe places around you that encourage and support your healing and growth. This is important and yet we don’t talk about it enough. Your core self knows what feels good and safe and what doesn’t. As you heal you naturally honor and value your new vulnerability. You naturally also want healthy boundaries around you.
4. You are more in touch with your gifts and passions and want to honor them. When we do the work, we soon realize that current environments may not be people or places who can offer growth and expansion that we now need. Maybe your current partner doesn’t want to travel and see the world and you do. You always have deep down. Or perhaps your job limits your ability to learn new things and grow. Or your friends sit around and mope and complain, and you no longer have the stomach for that because you focus on the solution now!
5. Your box you stayed in because it was so safe is now feeling small and uncomfortable. There is usually friction before fire, and this irritability and the urge to be free is normal and healthy because you are starting to value actually living over safety.

As you can see, as we grow the lens through which we now see ourselves and the world has changed. It is more grounded in reality. There is more loving detachment and less control. We have more compassion and understand for others’ pain and struggles and we judge less. Boundaries and personal responsibility are so much more important than thinking about what’s wrong out there and why others can’t get it together and be what we need.

Just as you outgrew clothing, toys and interests growing up, you are changing your needs today as you outgrow emotionally, psychologically and maybe even spiritually. You naturally desire healthier within you and all around you. It’s normal to feel frustrated and sad that this needs to be the case, but you also don’t have to feel awful and take on the unearned guilt that crops up. Because, just as you chose to grow, others can too. If they want to.