What does progress is not linear mean?
Progress is not linear.
What does progress is not linear mean?
If you are like me, then when you began your journey of healing and personal growth you were naively optimistic about what it was going to look like. I thought you tackle your issues and things would be all good. Smooth sailing for the most part. I was not prepared for the unpredictability that is progress.
Progress is not linear means that it is not a smooth transition forward. It is rife with discomfort, moments that feel like set backs, the feeling that you are stalling, and even completely stopped. Progress means forward movement, but it feels anything but that at times.
I thought the ‘destination’ of the healing journey could be reached pretty quickly and easily. I don’t think I put much thought into what the ‘destination’ was supposed to look like except I kind of hoped it felt like freedom. Freedom from all that troubled me I suppose.
What progress is
Messy and unpredictable.
Slow moving at times.
Not always in your control.
What it isn’t
Comfortable and easy.
Quick.
Always noticed by other people.
Obvious.
It’s messy and unpredictable.
This is embarrassing but I am going to share this anyway. One of my first tools I began to use was the emotional freedom technique or tapping to help me cope with difficult emotions and things from the past. When I first began I was in touch with a woman who I was sort of learning from. She used tapping as her main way of processing or ‘clearing’ past emotional hurts. I can remember she suggested making a list of past hurts and traumas and to go through each and tap on those things. I made a list of 27 things that I could recall, I still remember the number, and began tapping on everything.
When I was done, I emailed her and let her know that I had tapped on these 27 things that I discovered and asked if I was finished. Her response was vague but I can see now that maybe she wasn’t sure how to break it to me that the answer was no. Not even close.
That was over 10 years ago. Since that time, I went back to school to be a counselor, got married and became a mother. All of those big life changes triggered things in me that I could not have ever predicted. I was doing most of my internal work alone in the beginning and what I learned was that you need people to put you in touch with things that you can not see yourself.
The people that enter and leave your life are all there to show you things about yourself. If you are committed to personal growth, healing, and being a better person, you will start to pay attention to what they have to show you.
I started to become aware of things in myself that I still feel quite dumbfounded by, but glad that it was brought to my attention. I started noticing that I was behaving in ways that I did not like, and sometimes I was given feedback directly that I could not dismiss.
It is slow moving at times.
You may have made some real strides then it may feel like you are not doing anything. This can also happen when you hit a particularly tough moment and need some time to recover. There have been some days that I had to process something and it kind of took a lot out of me and I had to spend a couple days laying low and rehydrating. Especially, when you process a lot of emotion, water is important.
It is not always in your control.
Other people can also push buttons you didn’t know you had. They don’t know they are pushing a button in you (well sometimes they do) but you are aware. You can be feeling like you are doing swimmingly and then all of a sudden you are triggered by someone and BAM! you are now having to reflect on what the heck happened and why. These experiences are far from comfortable but very necessary.
That is one funny thing about a healing journey and personal growth, if you say to the universe that you are ready to heal and grow it will begin putting things in your awareness to address.
It isn’t comfortable.
I don’t think I was really aware of the discomfort I would feel during this process. Sometimes the discomfort feels relentless. And sometimes we misinterpret the discomfort as meaning we are not changing or that we are falling back. But that is not not the case. You want the discomfort. It is a true sign that something is shifting. I misinterpreted it at times and I felt discouraged. But after a few days and the dust settled I could see the benefits of the discomfort. It’s like shedding the old to let in the new. It is all part of the bigger picture of the vision of growth you have in mind.
It isn’t quick.
I thought that I could speed up the work of healing and change. I tried and tried only to find myself with just as many things to work on and just as much discomfort then I had when I originally started the journey. It became painfully obvious that there was absolutely no way to speed the process up. Life unfolds how it unfolds and how it unfolds is specific to you. When I used to work with adolescents I would tell them that just like you go to the gym to lift weights to become physically strong, you have to feel your feelings to become unafraid of your feelings and to become emotionally strong. You get stronger the further you go. And you will not be given what you can’t handle. The things I am working on now, I could have never been able to tackle at the beginning of this journey. Trust the process, everything is unfolding for you.
People don’t always notice.
There might be times when you will be putting in a ton of effort to change old patterns and then you may have a slip up, falling back into old patterns. It will seem like the people around you notice the slip up and not all the effort you are putting in. That is totally normal, don't let it stop you from the mission.
Progress is not always obvious.
Progress may not be visible at times and it may feel like nothing is happening or that your moving backward. As long as you commit to keeping going, then this will not be true. What is more true is that it is all progress. If you are willing to endure the messiness, the discomfort, and unpredictability knowing that you may not always be in control and the others won’t notice, that in itself is progress.
Progress is not linear but maybe it is not meant to be. Most of us are experiential learners which means something has to be really painful for us to do something different or change. If progress were easy then we may not achieve the lasting changes we seek. It makes me think of a professional sports player. When a person decides they want to become a professional sports player they commit to the journey knowing it will be tumultuous and tough at times. That is where the saying “no pain no gain” comes from. And over time they progress and progress until they are stronger than ever and their skills become second nature.
In the beginning I thought the destination was freedom from all that troubled me. That is not realistic. I now can see that I will still struggle at times, there will be conflict, uncomfortable moments, unexpected events popping up. If I make it my goal to never have those things happen, it will make for a bumpier ride because struggling is just a part of life. Being ok with that is a more realistic place to be.
Conclusion
Progress is not a smooth path forward; it is filled with unexpected twists and turns, some steady gains, and some moments that feel like losses. It is messy and unpredictable and is anything but quick. You may feel discouraged and frustrated at times. But everything that happens, the setbacks and the gains are part of the bigger picture. It’s all good. If you can stay committed and make room for the struggles and the wins, you will forever reap the benefits of staying on continuing the journey.
