5 Proven Outcomes When You Choose to Stop Growing in Life and Faith
How to know if you’ve stopped growing, the impact, and what to do next.
By Audrey Hardin, MS LPC-S Licensed Relationship Therapist and Coach.
When you hear yourself (or someone you know) say,
“I’m happy with who I am!” or “This is just who I am!” or “This is me! Get Used To It!” or “I’m good!” or “I’ve got this figured out.”
BEWARE.
Why “beware’?
Because if we aren’t growing, we’re shrinking. It’s biological.
We have so much research now on brain health. We know that when we don’t challenge and utilize the brain, it leads to cognitive decline, decreased neuroplasticity, and mental health issues to name a few.
Additionally, as a nurse friend of mine reminded me recently about her bed-ridden hospital patients: muscles don’t “maintain” their strength. They’re either being utilized and growing or they experience atrophy. The un-utilized muscles will begin to shrink and weaken leading to decreased strength and mobility.
To sum it up, we cannot “maintain” our current state.
You may be reading this and thinking:
“I know this already! I do crossword puzzles, attend church, and make sure I workout a few times a week, I’m not as bad off as others out there!”
Fellow Christians, hear me out:
There is a difference between Growth (as God designed it) and Self-Improvement.
1) Self-Improvement sees situations and relationships as the problem and YOU as the solution.
2) Growth sees YOU as the problem and God as the solution.
When we live as though #1 is true, we inevitably see a shift away from emotional and spiritual growth and an emphasis on physical or career improvement (if any improvement is happening at all).
5 Outcomes of a decision to stop growing:
1. You shrink your world to a controllable state.
When we’ve been hurt by people and situations throughout our life, our responses determine how big or small our world becomes.
For those of us who do not learn how to reconcile these offenses, hurts, and losses, we shrink our world to exclude those people (and anyone who resembles them) and still even smaller to remove ourselves from any risk of those hurts happening again.
THE OUTCOME: We become more rigid and inflexible to the ebbs and flows of life.
For example: When plans we’ve made suddenly change, people disappoint us, or our peace is disrupted, we have a very hard time maintaining our cool.
The ability to regulate our emotions and reactions now depends on the state of our environment…the more out of control our environment, the more out of control we feel.
As a result, we create a routine and environment that helps us to feel more in control.
Side note: Work/the office can be a somewhat controllable environment for many, especially men. The home, and the relationships it holds, can feel very overwhelming for those who aren’t growing, so they choose to throw themselves into a more predictable setting like their job.
PROBLEM: We choose to live a life of delusion because we are never actually in control and were never meant to live independent lives but lives dependent on our Creator and Savior who holds all things together.
2. You cut people out of your life who call you to a higher standard or simply hold up the mirror to your behaviors.
You do not like to see the hurtful or sinful behavior you’re capable of. So, instead of owning it and committing to changing, you just decide you’d rather not have that person in your life at all because of some reason like, “they make me feel bad about me.”
OUTCOME: Your world becomes pretty shallow and isolating.
PROBLEM: You live life as a fool and opposite of how God designed us to live in vital community. As Proverbs 9:8 says: Rebuke a wise person and they will bless you, rebuke a fool and he will curse you.
3. You stick to what you know and what you’re comfortable with.
As I already mentioned, when we don’t stretch, our brain shrinks and we see mental health issues emerge like anxiety, paranoia, depression, OCD tendencies, narcissistic tendencies, etc.
The brain is pattern seeking, and it looks for patterns to conserve energy through predictability…which can lead to less mental flexibility and more rigidity.
OUTCOME: You are no longer calling the shots of your life, your fears are. Your fears bind you to the things and environments you feel safest in…which usually exclude people.
PROBLEM: We stop living the adventure God invites us into through living a surrendered life. We may be able to cap our pain, but our joy and freedom gets capped too. When our trust is in him, we are free to explore our inner world, take risks, and experience abundant joy.
4. You become a reactor instead of a responder.
When we stop growing, not only do we become more rigid, but we become more reactive when things don’t go as we planned or expected, or people ask things of us that we don’t want to give.
We blame things like traffic, a screaming child, a forgetful spouse, or a negligent waiter for our own internal discomfort.
OUTCOME: No one likes to be around a reactive person.
Because this person refuses to be curious about their reactivity and continues to blame the relationship or environment with their problem, they become more isolated and alone.
PROBLEM: God calls us to live holy lives, slow to speak and quick to listen, to practice self control, and to reflect Him and his love. We can’t do that if we don’t acknowledge the darkness of our hearts and our need for Him to change us. Luke 6:45, Jer. 17:9.
5. You become your own god.
When we stop growing, remember, we don’t stay where we are…we get worse.
We begin to lose all connection with reality and truth –i.e. the reality that we are broken, sinful people in desperate need of saving.
OUTCOME: You orient your life around your personal wants, desires, and things you believe will make you feel good. You are calling the shots, and you are solving your problems.
With a Self-improvement mindset, you become the solution to your problems and lose all curiosity about people’s responses to you.
And whatever YOU produce is as good as it gets.
PROBLEM: According to the Bible, there is only one God and he has made it clear that we are all the problem…and because we are, there’s nothing in us that is able to save us from ourselves (ahem, insert the Gospel).
When we play God, the consequences not only impact our life and relationships here on earth, but have eternal consequences.
What does it look like then, to be a growing person?
Simply put, it’s the ability to see all that God calls us to be and the humility to recognize that there is no way I could get there on my own.
More on that here.
I cannot be the solution to my own problems.
What problems?
Our fear, pride, pain, loss, control, anger, rigidity, resentments, bitterness, defensiveness, reactivity, deceitfulness, people-pleasing, perfectionism, etc. and all the self-protective strategies we develop to manage them all.
It is only through confessing, repenting, and surrendering to Jesus all the ways we have failed and tried to protect ourselves from pain; how we’ve lived in unforgiveness of others; and failed to look at the darker parts of our hearts, that he can truly transform us.
He is a God of redemption and transformation, but he cannot do that without our participation in the work.
We must show up and bring him the hard parts of our story, to step out of shame and blame and be curious about our reactions and choices.
It looks like handing over self and our desires as lumps of clay in the Potter’s hands and trusting that he will produce in us far more than we could’ve ever imagined for ourselves.
So many of us claim to live “godly lives” but so often it looks like just doing “my will in a godly way”.
God, though, calls us to hand over our wills and allow him to shape us to become more like him and free us from ourselves...all our attempts to control and protect ourselves from pain —because He LOVES us.
Will you hand Him more of yourself today?
“So don’t lose a minute in building on what you’ve been given, complementing your basic faith with good character, spiritual understanding, alert discipline, passionate patience, reverent wonder, warm friendliness, and generous love, each dimension fitting into and developing the others.
With these qualities active and growing in your lives, no grass will grow under your feet, no day will pass without its reward as you mature in your experience of our Master Jesus. Without these qualities you can’t see what’s right before you, oblivious that your old sinful life has been wiped off the books.”
2 Peter 1:5-9 The Message
*Identify with some of these outcomes and want to make a change? Schedule a call with Audrey or someone on our team by clicking “make an appointment” tab below.
Audrey Hardin is a Relationship Therapist, Speaker, and Workshop Leader at Hardin Life Resources in Dallas and McKinney, TX.
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