Insights

What personal development requires

When you grow, some will leave, and it gets lonely for a while.

No-one selling personal development wants to write this down because it makes the sell harder.

But this is what happens. You develop a part of yourself and some people leave you. The relationship you had is no longer a mutual fit, and whatever arrangement the two of you had is no longer required.

Then there are moments of loneliness, because you're not willing to go back to how it was but still in the transition for the new. That's where many people turn around. From the outside, going back looks worse than it feels from the inside. And you're holding a new standard on your own, with no-one near you doing the same.

The other thing few people mention is that a 'wake-up call' doesn't come with instructions in how to best navigate it. The assumption is that the clarity should be automatically installed. And when many discover that is not the case, it feels more like panic or stress. When you now have the awareness but got no idea what to do with it, the experience is worse than not having it at all. "Ignorance is bliss" as the saying goes, right?

I went through both of my own worst times on my own and they took me way longer to find my way out than they needed to. The hardest thing for me wasn't even the loneliness. It was admitting it to myself and then sharing with somebody else. Just saying the words, I'm lonely. That took years.

That's the reason I run groups now.

So you should know this is coming before you're in it. Mostly so that when the loneliness comes, you can interpret it as a stage rather than as proof you've made a mistake.

What's below are the parts I'd prefer not to admit. But it's the truth. Grief and how long it runs, what changes in the people around you, and what to do while you're in the gap.