My Growth journey – how to go about personal and spiritual development and growth
If you’re reading this, I’m sure you are drawn to personal development. You want to be and do better. You and I are alike in that sence. We are constantly trying to grow. But what does growth mean?
For me, there are 2 types of development – personal and spiritual. They are interconnected, similar but not the same. So what’s the difference between them?
I’ll begin by briefly defining personal and spiritual growth, then going in-depth in my own journey with both.
Personal growth is what I see as professional growth – development of skills, a resume, changing how you present yourself (to appear a certain way, i.e ‘professional’), and gaining specific qualities.
Spiritual growth in my opinion is fully expressing yourself after finding who you are, seeing the interconnectedness between everything, becoming at peace with what is, and channeling your oneness with the divine/universal love. This is where I see letting go of things that are not you, or things you don’t want to hold on to (beliefs, trauma) and working with your innate qualities instead of trying to gain new ones.
What do you think about when you hear ‘personal growth’ or ‘spiritual growth’? Let me know in the comments! ^^
Now, my life moves in cycles – lots of action, long breaks, more actions, self-reflection periods that seem to take forever. I noticed that these cycles make up bigger cycles of about 2-3 and 7 years.
Ever since I was a kid, I had goals and aspirations that required me to grow and develop skills – I dreamed of being an actress, a geisha, a polyglot, a yogi, a princess. My personal and spiritiual growth began because of these wishes around the age of 10-11.
First steps in personal and spiritual growth.
I began attending yoga classes and meditating on images, stories, feelings around my 10th year. This set the foundation of me feeling other people’s energies, of feeling how the world moved, and beginning to connect with my body. Alongside this, I began dancing and acting, which is pure personal development and skill acquiring to make my dreams of being an actress and a geisha come true.
Throughout the years, I’ve read multiple books on financial literacy, productivity, business, social connections, goal-setting, and planning, which helped me understand and practice these valuable capabilities. I can now see when one of these things is not practiced efficiently or effectively when I observe others, I can suggest improvements, and I practice most of what I know. However.
All of this knowledge has put a wall around who I am as a being.
All of these ideas, knowledge and skills ultimately lead to getting a high-paying job, buying anything you want, saving up enough to retire early and then begin enjoying your life.
I integrated the ideals these books taught – how busyness is good, constant action and decision-making is good for ‘success’ (at the time I didn’t even had a definition of success, I just copied my parents and the authors of these books), ambitions and trials are good. And they are, if they are aligned with who you are, with how much energy you have, if they are things your body is striving towards rather than your mind.
For me, that was not the case.
Where personal development meets spiritual growth.
Learning new skills is always good, but it’s amazing when you are actually drawn to them and enjoy practicing them – then you know they’ll be in good use. If you develop your capabilities for the sake of it because you enjoy that, good for you, that’s awesome! But if you’re only doing it to increase your employability chances and don’t want to use the new expertise… why do you do this to yourself?
Without the spiritual side of things, I couldn’t feel enough.
As if I had to do more, constantly learn more, prove myself worthy of success (still a word I mostly associated with money) and of people’s interest and connections, as if I was here to exceed foreign expectations instead of feeling satisfied and happy.
I also felt weird and too different from others, which made me either feel superior or inferior to others, couldn’t figure out how to fit in, and I was jealous of the fun they were having, while I was achieving things I don’t really care about now. I just could NOT understand why should I spend so much time working for something such as money, that does not directly bring me happiness and even if I got the money and spent it on experiences I’d like, I’d have to be happy in the time left after working hours and then keep on working so I can go have more fun later.
Through my spiritual development, I realized that money is not something I want as a goal.
It is a tool, yes, but it’s not even an important one to me. Everything I am actually drawn to is either free or cheap. Sure, paying bills, rent, and grocery-shopping, interesting experiences, and travel cost something. But that something is much less than I thought I needed. I believed I need to earn millions in order to get everything I want until my soul screamed that I don’t need that much. Hell, I don’t even know what I want until it’s right in front of me and within EASY reach! And this is success for me – being so in flow that the majority of the time I feel calm, free, satisfied and happy with what is going on in my life and what I am doing.
Your soul is most likely different – you might know what you want and know that it is a deep, inner body desire, you might be drawn to luxury, etc. So let’s talk about how to figure out what is it you are here for. Spirituality comes in many, many forms. Here are some of the forms I’ve tried so far:
- Auras – seeing, feeling, manipulating them.
- Yoga and chakras.
- Reiki.
- Meditation (zen, dao, ecstatic dance, etc).
- Body wisdom.
- Human design and sacral response (as I am a generator).
- Angelic cards.
- Astrology and moon cycles.
- Connecting with the creator/universe/magical beings – belief in something greater than me (God/Allah, for example), prayer.
- Magick and witchcraft.
- Akashic records.
- Parts work.
- Vision boards.
The last one is sort of a bridge between personal and professional development – vision boards make you get real with what you want, visualize it, then believe it will happen and keep your focus on your goals, so you can act on them everyday, regardless of how small the action might be.
All of these activities helped me figure out my own way of connecting to me.
What’s the need for skills that don’t lead me to a satisfied life and don’t help me fulfill what I’m here for? It is part of my life’s purpose to figure myself out, then join in the exchange with others and the cosmic energy with as much of my genuine gifts as I can. I think that part of this exchange is this blog, the HD and angelic cards readings I do, freelancing as a VA and text expert, helping people around me with being fearless and starting businesses, and my big idea Kisane (which I’ll outline soon and link here).
Another however: if I blindly go spiritually growing without following my body and learning/practicing the abilities I’m guided to, then nothing will really happen.
Success in my eyes is the combination between what your soul is guiding you to and you listening to it and taking action. It’s the lack of failure, regardless of what happens.
In short, personal and spiritual growth go hand in hand – if you want to realize your potential, you need to mesh these two together. How?
I strongly encourage you to connect with your body (check out How to read your HD chart? Part 1 here to get suggestions on this), listen to it, and if you feel drawn to any of the spiritual practices I listed above – email me at info@myadventurestosuccess.com! Promise, I don’t charge for sharing my experience on most of those 😉 In the next few weeks I’ll talk about manifesting, the divine feminine, surrendering, and vaginal health – sign up below to keep updated!
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