How to grow

I’ve spent the past six months training to become a master certified coach.

It’s been a long six months. The training was time-consuming, labor intensive, and required me to scale back on my writing. It was easily one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.

But I’ve grown—a lot. And in doing so, I learned something crucial about what distinguishes growth from the dreaded “toxic positivity”:

Growth doesn’t mean fixing yourself.

It’s not at odds with self-love. In fact, it starts with learning to like yourself if you don’t already. It requires trusting your gut, even when that leads you to disagree with those in charge (as I sometimes did with my master coach instructors). Growth means being more of yourself, not less.

And only then asking: Now how can I take all of those amazing things—and get even better?

Or as psychologist Carl R. Rogers, Ph.D., said, “The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.”