Embracing Unexpected Growth

With the new year on the horizon bringing a sense of renewal, we begin setting goals for 2024. Yet, I want to share a different narrative. Goals are important tools for personal growth, but they hide the fact that growth can be unexpected.

Reflecting on that, a learning curve that took me by surprise this year was shifting my covertly competitive mindset.

It was far from planned. I didn’t even know I had a competitive mindset – hence why it was ‘covert’! Yet, what I learned from the journey has improved my professional life and relationships exponentially. And, even in hindsight, I couldn’t have set a goal for the results I’ve seen.

So, if you’re feeling overwhelmed with resolutions or deciding on a new goal for the new year, I hope you can reflect on your unexpected lessons. Trust in the process that growth happens, even when we don’t plan for it.

Finding My Covert Competitiveness

The trigger was a trady-lady networking event.

In a room with fellow women who were actively or inactively promoting women in trade – and just generally kicking ass – I felt inadequate.

While that might not appear as ‘competitiveness’, the source of my feelings of inadequacy came from comparison. Competition is innately comparative. However, the feeling of inadequacy hid my competitive mindset from me because it didn’t present as the egotistical stereotype I associated with competitiveness.

Returning home from an event that should have empowered me, instead feeling disempowered, I asked myself ‘Why?’.

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Instead of hiding away and never attending another networking event, I looked inward to where these uncomfortable feelings were coming from. It took me a few days of reflection and feeling deflated. But, in searching for the root of my feelings, I finally recognised the underlying mindset.

In the unspoken competition of life, I would never put anyone down to make myself feel better. Instead, I’d avoid being in places that made me feel like I wasn’t winning because in those spaces I felt inadequate.

I found covert competitiveness in the quiet recesses of my mind, holding me back from engaging in a meaningful way in the community I was passionate about.

Challenging my Covert Competitiveness

Often the identification of the root cause is the main catalyst for growth. After identifying what was going on inside myself, it was easy to challenge the logic of my unconscious fear. I didn’t shift my mindset from a competition to a community. Rather, I shifted my mindset from a competitor to a learner.

That simple shift in perspective opened the doorway for me to connect with others in the trady-lady community without feeling inadequate. I no longer had to measure up to the incredible work they were doing. Instead, I recognised that we each had something different to offer to the community and to the work of supporting other women in trades.

Engaging with the community from the place of being a learner meant that I could appreciate other’s successes and strengths without them reducing mine.

The Surprising Reward

In challenging my competitive mindset and no longer feeling inadequate in a room full of inspiring women, I received an unexpected reward.

For the first time, I truly understood what being part of a community felt like.

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There’s something incredibly uplifting and empowering about being a part of a community outside your circle of family and friends. There’s a special comradery that exists in the overlap of similar experiences across different individuals – even if you’re strangers.

Being involved in a community without the self-imposed barrier of competitiveness is vibrant; both challenging and encouraging. With the mindset of a learner, you can gain both opposing and supporting ideas. Without even trying, it encourages creativity, empathy, and positive emotions which all support personal well-being.

Embracing Unexpected Growth

Whether you found community this year, or another personal growth curve, so much of what we learn is unplanned. This can be scary, but it can also be freeing.

So many of our best experiences, lessons, or opportunities, come to us in ways we aren’t preparing for – or expect. I bet you could think of a few now.

So, as we reach the time of year when we’re flooded with strategies to set goals that last or see the milestones our friends or families have achieved, I encourage us all to take a moment to pat ourselves on the back.

Regardless of how ‘big’ or ‘small’ the growth, each of us has grown this year in ways we didn’t plan for. We can trust in that growth, whether we set new goals for the new year or not.

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