What is self growth?

According to Microsoft Bing “Self-growth, sometimes referred to as “personal growth” or “personal development,” is a process of developing new skills, attitudes, actions, or reactions that can have a positive impact on your life and increase your overall well-being.”

To me Self growth is simply trying to understand yourself and how you make decisions and how you can make better decisions.

For me a major portion of my life has been in the backgrounds to be honest. And being in the background I make moves. For example, Writing, reading, not interacting much with people these are my zones. But I also hang out with friends and since I have two kids, I do make it a point to keep them social.

We are still not that social and often times I have this regret of am I doing the right thing. Because I am not deliberately trying to make them recluse. If anything, I push them more to go out and talk if they find it comfortable but never out of their zone.

You see as Millennials we faced the brunt of the thinking of the Boomers and are raising the Generation Alpha while understanding or not understanding some things and some cultures. SO I have also shared my share of such situations and till to this date I genuinely feel no one, and I mean no one understands me.

But we do live in a society and when we had this big fight with my father in law I remember distinctly my father-in-law mentioned you have to live in this society, and i very non-chalantly said you only need society for marriage. I was so naive back then and still could be today but as I understand many of us. A few who know and are experts are sitting at the top but for some reason I felt I was always average.

I don’t believe that anymore. Because the struggle I went thought when I was pregnant with both my kids, taking care of my self, going through mental trauma, being treated with indifference simply because I refused to be manipulated, I do believe I could not have done it if I was not special.

And it is this struggle that slowly made me stand up for myself and my self worth. But because I am married into an Indian household the daughter in law often times ends up being the black sheep of the family on whom everyone dumps their trauma.

To this day I don’t feel accepted into the family I married into. And no matter what nothing will change because these people have a rigid sense of entitlement that I never got to experience.

It’s not that I did not speak for myself. I did but before I did, I was suffering in silence, and they were enjoying. Even today no one cares about the next generation the future but just what they did or didn’t get.

And it makes me realize something that I did a while back too, everyone lives in a bubble, and I probably never had that bubble. See I could create that bubble with my kids but with my husband and the kids together I could never create it.

This is not to say I don’t enjoy the family that we have created but when you are single handedly taking care of the kids it is difficult, And when you are the black sheep of the family that tag stays life long. I have seen that hands on with my Mother.

I just want to be so true to myself in my growth that at any point I can stand up for myself like I did when I was raising kids.

Today I am not working and trying to find ways in which I can build something before I head back to work. And ever so often I feel the girl who worked from the age of 19, who was so fiercely independent and still is but when it comes to my kids, I am not able to do it alone. And I don’t think raising kids is supposed to be done alone.

But I have so much understanding that a lot of people might not be ever able to see. And I don’t know what use that knowledge will ever be to be honest because even to this date when My son talks a lot out of habit, I shrink thinking I hope no one comes to with his complain and would often stop him from speaking until my husband rightfully pointed out to not do it.

So you see I think I know But I always learn.

The other day my son taught me something. I asked him to take care of my daughter for some reason and he said No mom she is your daughter you are supposed to take care of her. And this was like a bolt of wisdom from his mouth. Because it made me realize that the pain that I have of not having support of any grandparents to a bigger extent in raising my kids is not entirely valid and that I should not have maybe expected any help from them. But because they constantly chose to help their daughters ( mother in law) and daughter in law (mother) I felt alone in my child rearing process.

Because it is truly easy to say we need to raise our own kids but there is a proverb that it takes a village to raise a kid and unfortunately, I never had that village to raise.

Nevertheless the point is that I learn pearls of wisdom everyday from every single person I meet.

Currently I am reading How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carneige and to be honest so far there is nothing that I don’t know.

In Part 1 he talks about techniques of handling people with Three principles.

His First Principle is Don’t Criticize, condemn or complain. I have implemented this. Yes I was complaining a lot when I was being misunderstood and not being given the time or the effort that a sons’ wife should be getting in my mind. I was doing all the work and yet was treated like a secondhand person. More so the continuous way of them going to their daughters because she lived next door and did not have her in-laws living with her bothered me but I tried to be as reasonable as I could. Until It was just too much for me and after they had repeatedly made me realize that they are the least interested in staying with us. Yes there is so much pain there. One of the in-laws has already passed away and the other one is living with the sisters despite me asking her to come and stay with us as it would help the kids. She never truly wanted to stay with us but I became the scape goat. So much pain. SO yes you can use the technique, but you don’t know it will be effective.

His Second Principle is Give Honest and Sincere Appreciation

To me when I call my parents or his parents ( my husbands ) i was giving honest appreciation. I was making the effort to communicate. But because I am not the one with the money or the status the effort never counted. Even to this day, I remember the one month I was home on my maternity for my first born I used to cook food for them because they had just come from India but when I went back to work, the first thing that happened was rude talking to me. And because No one had talked to me in that manner It hurt me. And I expressed my hurt. But what happened I expressed the hurt really broke me. Instead of understanding a big issue was made out of it my parents were called and my father had to say sorry and who did the calling, his daughters’ husbands. So, An Honest and Sincere appreciation will work but only for someone who is genuinely listening.

And the Third principle is arouse in the other person an eager want.

Now this is a sales tactic which is okay. Again all these techniques can work in sales because you interaction with them is brief. And even when we talk about long term retention of a client it is always related to just one aspect. In a relationship there are many aspects so this by itself might not work.

There are more Principles that I am reading and will write about them as I go through them but if you are someone who is genuinely interested in Influencing people whether it is for Sales, for your business or any other professional need I recommend this book tremendously.

Let me know what do you think and feel. Honest reactions are appreaciated.