What Growing Up Isn't...and What It Is
If you’re anything like me, no matter how old you get, you never quite feel like a Grown Up.
And as the years and the milestones tick by, there’s still a slightly lost kid in your head asking: When do I start feeling like a Real Adult?
Here are some things I want to tell that little kid—
Growing up isn’t shaping yourself into what you’re supposed to be.
It’s excavating who you’ve always been all along.
Growing up isn’t buffing away your quirks and edges and making yourself acceptable.
It’s leaning hard into your specific weirdness — turning it on like an electromagnet so that everything that works for you is pulled toward you and everything that sucks for you scatters.
Growing up isn’t having a plan and knowing what you’re doing.
It’s following your nose and trusting your instincts, with all the patient persistence of a kid absorbed in making a sand castle.
Growing up isn’t being good at everything.
It’s deciding what’s worth being good at, and wondering who set these all bullshit standards to begin with.
Growing up isn’t learning and gathering more knowledge.
It’s un-learning all the things that never felt right to you.
Growing up isn’t obsessively fixing your weaknesses.
It’s obsessively leaning into your strengths and getting air cover for everything else.
Growing up isn’t being practical, lowering expectations, and giving yourself a reality check.
It’s looking skeptically at the skeptics and saying, “Come on, there MUST be a way.”
Growing up isn’t having the discipline to buckle down and do what you’re supposed to do.
It’s having the courage to take your shackles off and do what you want.
And doing all those things — bravely, consistently, for as long as it takes to get what you want?
It requires brave, consistent rewiring of your instincts.
Because the first thing your brain is going to tell you is: “It’s not safe to act like this. Be practical. Be normal. Keep your head down. You’re probably nuts.”
But I don’t think you’re nuts.
What if we give that voice in your head five minutes to say its piece?
What if we unearthed the nugget of wisdom that’s been glimmering under the surface all this time?
And then — instead of throwing it away OR running with it wholesale — what if you did one small thing this week just to test the hypothesis?
To dip your toe in the water of the life you actually want to be living, and learn a little bit more about what it might take to make it happen?
What if — when you break it down, and apply a process, and give yourself a little bit of structure — it’s all much, much easier than you think?
Come talk to me and let’s find out.
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