Seek peace.
But start small.
Make it easy for yourself.
Start where you are comfortable and undistracted.
Sit.
Breathe.
There is no need to hurry.
Meaningful change is a slow process.
Tag: growth
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Comparing Progress
You may be tempted to compare your progress to the progress of others.
This is a distraction, however.
It does not serve you or the work that you need to do in your own life.
While it is sometimes helpful to know where you stand amongst your peers or even your competitors, you have to understand that your path is uniquely your own.
You have your own unique attributes, values, and purpose, and you will grow and evolve at your own pace.
Life is not a race to be won.
It is an experience to be savored.
Do the best you can with the time and resources that you have without being bothered or influenced by the talent, skill, or good fortune of others.
If someone else’s progress inspires you to do better, that is one thing.
But if it causes you to wallow in remorse or self pity, you are wasting your time and your potential.
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Allowing Growth
Everyone grows at their own speed.
Be careful how hard you push people.
Even with the best intentions, you can push people too far.
People need to struggle through that which is blocking them, but they often need to do so in their own way and in their own time.
They need to learn their own lessons.
You might think you are being helpful, but you may actually be impeding their growth by interfering in their process.
You can give advice and guidance, but you cannot do the necessary work for someone else.
There are no shortcuts.
While it is difficult to watch someone you care about struggle or suffer, it is their struggle to overcome and their suffering to work through.
Be present.
Be a shoulder to lean on, a voice of encouragement, or a companion along the path, but let their path be their path.
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Lessons For Progress
Failure is only failure if there is no lesson in it.
It is up to you to figure out what that lesson is.
It may not be obvious or may be as simple as needing to be better prepared, to try harder, or to pursue a different course of action in the future.
This is not a prescription for delusion or groundless optimism, however.
Some failures are difficult to reconcile.
Simply looking for the bright side is not the same as being honest with yourself, digging into the root cause of your failure, and doing the necessary work to make failure’s lessons worthwhile.
But as long as you can find some way to turn your failure into fodder for growth, you have made progress.
And in the end, progress is all that any of us can really hope for.
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Necessary Compromise
If you have relationships you care about, you will have to make compromises in order to maintain them.
Relationships are not one sided.
Every relationship has a necessary amount of give and take.
You may sometimes find that which you feel most strongly about is exactly that which you must give up for the sake of your relationship.
Relationships will challenge you in this way.
They provide friction in order to force your growth.
They require you to face parts of yourself that you would rather not and make you reconsider your values when you otherwise would not.
Not all compromises are necessary, but the most meaningful relationships will make you compromise more than you expected and in ways you did not expect.
Meditations on God 