This Year, Don’t Let People Shame You For Wanting To Grow

Most people know at some fundamental level that if they are responsible for changing their lives.

What keeps people stuck is not usually laziness or lack of direction as much as it is comfort. The truth is that what we are affirmed for is what our brains begin to register as our comfort zone.

Unfortunately, people don’t like people who change. People like to keep others in neat, unthreatening boxes. There are far more people who are driven by maintaining the status quo than by redefining it.

People will judge you for wanting to be better because it shines a light on the parts of themselves they’re waiting for someone else to fix.

They’ll tell you that you take yourself too seriously, that “you’ve changed” in that familiar tone, as though the alternative – stagnating – is preferable. They’ll tell you the ways they doubt your success, they’ll try to humanize you when you start to succeed. They’ll question your motives and claim you’re lacking in some way – as though you can’t possibly conquer every area of your life in the way you aspire to.

These judgments are projections. They are coming from the spaces in which that person has buried their deepest aggressions and disassociated from their pain.

It’s an ironic fact of life that usually, when you’re incurring other people’s doubts and envies, you’re doing something right.

But the thing about wanting to grow is that it’s not just something that happens on the surface. Wanting to better yourself isn’t just about having more money or looking better. Sometimes, growing is figuring out why you’re anxious. Sometimes, it’s finding ways to enjoy life again. Oftentimes, it’s learning how to be mentally bulletproof.

There’s no amount of success you can ascend to at which point you will no longer have to hear with the opinions of other people. That’s why one of the most important things you can do is make your growth a holistic pursuit.

Make your life about becoming so much of the person that you want to be that you can identify this for what it is – projection from a wound.

Sometimes, caring about other people’s criticisms of us means that on some level, we agree with them. So grow – in every way you aspire to – because you do have someone to prove wrong, and that someone is you.