Personal growth requires frequent self-assessment. You need to know where you are, and maybe more important, where you’ve come from, if you harbor hope of arriving at the next point on the horizon.
This week 10 years ago would have knocked me for a loop. High-stress, coupled with multiple, complex priorities—made more difficult from lack of sleep, as well as a huge change in my normal daily routines, would have triggered all manner of negative behaviors.
Arriving at my location late in the day on Wednesday, a place where I’ve spent every evening this week, from 5:00 to midnight, offered me a snapshot of the terrain I’ve crossed in the course of the past eight years. As the late afternoon sun was setting over the Androscoggin River, I caught a reflection of the person I was back in 2004-2005, and the person I am now, in 2012-1013.
Yesterday, a dear friend sent me the following two quotes that meant so much to me, in the context of the vision I had the previous day.
“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built. “ ~ Rumi
“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” ~ Viktor E. Frankl
I could relate to both– the idea of transcending barriers, as well as not reacting, but waiting–before responding. Both were impossible to fathom, let along carry out a mere eight years ago.
That’s one way to measure growth.
The Frankl quotation is the essence of being human. We are the only creatures that can apply mind in between stimulus and response. The more you develop that freedom, the more human you become.
Yep,
I agree with you on Frankl’s quote. What is particularly personal for me in this idea is how I often struggled with this in the past, and while still far from where I want to be, am able to understand this now in a way I couldn’t, before.