Sustaining growth over time

I know a German man who grew up in Germany and lived there until he was eighteen. From the age of eighteen to the present day, in his thirties, he’s lived outside of Germany. You know what he told me, once? That he’s forgotten a decent chunk of spoken German. He never thinks in it or dreams in it. When he runs into another German, it takes him a few moments to get going.

Yes, that’s right–you can speak a language every day of your life for eighteen years, even during those crucial formative years where neurological wires are fusing, and still–if you don’t practice regularly? Things un-fuse.

Sustaining growth over time requires regular maintenance. Marriages don’t survive on a bit of effort put in once; they require ongoing nurturance. Pro-athletes who are immensely gifted cannot simply lie back and rest on their natural talent, hoping that that will help them win the race, next time. Anything that you learn requires ongoing maintenance in order to sustain itself.

Setting Yourself Up For Failure

People set themselves up for failure when they buy the book, take the workshop, resolve to stop doing XYZ, and see a few results for awhile—then they stop maintaining the actions behind those results, and decide that the progress wasn’t real because “it doesn’t last.”

The expectations people have that if they read a book, take a workshop, or change a behavior are that if they put in that effort once and saw results, somehow the results should keep coming even after they stop putting in the effort.

Then people don’t take responsibility for their lives and connect the dots between their sustained effort—they decide that the book or workshop or coach or whatever must not truly be effective, because if it was? It would have lasted.

What’s Obvious is Not Obvious

This is one of those strange topics where “everyone knows this, already.”

“Kate, everyone knows this, already–that they have to practice regularly. Duh.”

Everyone “knows this, already,” but it’s impossible for the self-help market to be the gazillion dollar industry that it is, if people “really know that” they can’t expect to see improvements in their lives after they stop making the effort.

Whatever work you do, that work needs regular care. We are living, breathing things, and everything that is living and breathing needs some kind of care.

Tap the Goods You’ve Got

I’d like to invite everyone reading this to stop and think for a moment about the last great non-fiction book they read that was a personal growth or development persuasion. Have you really kept up with the practices introduced to you in that book?

How about workshops? Are you still aligned with the energy that you left that workshop with? (P.S. There’s a reason that the term “workshop high” exists).

What about the last retreat you went on? Were you relaxed coming out of the retreat? Are you still as blissed out and connected, now?

–and if you’re not, why not?

Be honest with yourself about this.

The truth is that that book, workshop, or retreat–it gave you nothing.

You gave you, to yourself.

You gave yourself the openness to take into your heart the ideas in that book.

You gave yourself the permission to live in a high-vibration when you were at that workshop.

You gave yourself the gift of allowing and non-attachment that had you so relaxed at that retreat.

You’ve got to keep on being open, giving yourself permission, and releasing and not getting attached, in order for that flow to continue. That’s how you can keep the excitement and energy.

You’ve also got to keep taking the actions that lead to the results you want.

Even More Good News

If it’s true that that which we want to keep in our lives will need some care, then this is also true:

That which we do not want in our lives can recede, when we stop giving it care.

We want to bring the “good stuff” into our life by giving it care; we can eliminate the “bad stuff” from our lives by no longer giving it care (time, attention, effort, etc).

How do we give the “bad stuff” care? For example, we give our negative criticism “care” when we continue to “practice” negative internal criticism of ourselves, or external criticism of others. For another example, we can practically make feeling stuck into a permanent houseguest, when we keep giving it “care” in the form of doing nothing to change a behavior, spending long periods in front of the television or on social media.

If you want more of something in your life, especially more of whatever you got from that book, workshop, retreat, coach, therapist, friend, etc., then cultivate it by offering it care. Provide the conditions for it to thrive and flourish.

If you want less of something in your life, stop providing such fertile ground for it to flourish.

Seems impossible? But consider this–my German friend has forgotten vast chunks of the language he grew up with. 

Really think about the magnitude of that! You probably cannot imagine forgetting vast chunks of English, but if you weren’t practicing it consistently, of course it would start to break up and become spotty (if you’re truly interested in the science behind this language phenomenon, read the book “Dreaming in Hindi”).

Of course no one’s life works out as simplistically as the idea that efforts always equal results, but more often than people want to take responsibility for? Effort can equal results. The attention, effort, time, care, or resources that we invest into something can either help us with sustaining growth over time, or erode our capacity to grow. The choice is yours.