5 Reasons Why Personal Growth is So Hard

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I think we can all agree with that personal growth is hard. It requires a great deal of self-responsibility and accountability. Not only that, but you have to be consistent in your new attitudes and behavior to achieve your goals.

Starting and committing to your personal growth journey requires a lot of sacrifices.

This includes all of the attitudes, behaviors, and relationships that hold you back by either being toxic or keeping you stagnant.

Also, you may not even be aware of ways that even YOU could be holding yourself back.

The important thing is that you decided to get started.

The Role of Pain in Personal Growth

Pain is meant to teach you a lesson; it is meant to show you your strength and help you grow.

The pain you experience from making these changes in your life is necessary. It means that you’re progressing.

It’s not going to be easy to change.

Growth is painful. Change is painful.

But nothing is as painful as staying stuck somewhere you don’t belong.

Reasons why Personal Growth is so hard

1. You have the wrong attitude

Many people have attitudes that hold them back. Let’s look at the following mini case studies to examine this problem:

You want to accomplish something, but instead of being optimistic about it you convince yourself that it’s too big of a task to even bother. Therefore, nothing gets done. Bonus – you blame other people for being where you want to be in life or not having the things you want.
You have a minor misunderstanding with a someone you resort to petty behavior instead of dealing with the situation maturely. This includes ignoring the situation, blowing things out of proportion, or any way that doesn’t focus on solving the problem at hand.
You’re being mistreated by a loved one or coworker but instead of confronting the issue and voicing your opinion, you either resort to petty behavior, or you internalize it. Granted, this is a difficult situation to be in, but the last thing you should do is internalize someone else’s behavior and play the victim.

Remember: It’s not what happens to you; it’s how you react to it.

Your Solution

You have the power to be the bigger person and persevere despite the difficulties you are facing. Don’t live your life reacting to things that happen to you.

If either one of these scenarios applies to you, you may want to reflect and think of better ways you can approach your problems. My advice is to ask yourself the following:

1. Will this matter 5 years or even 5 days from now?
2. Is my relationship more important than this problem? Is it a recurring problem or just a minor inconvenience?
3. Am I doing more damage to myself by reacting this way? What are the consequences of my actions?
4. Am I resolving the problem with my actions?

2. Your Behaviors are holding you back

Your attitude affects your behavior.

If you have negative attitudes, you will have negative behaviors that will ultimately harm your well-being and push you further away from your goals. Therefore, you need to make sure that you have your attitude in check first.

How Your Behaviors Are Holding You Back

This is what happens when you say you want something but your actions say the opposite:

You say you want to be happy. However, you’re keeping toxic people in your life that guarantee the opposite.

You say you want better relationships, but you don’t hold people to high standards. (BTW: NEVER lower your standards to accommodate others. Make them rise to meet you)

You say you want success, but you haven’t defined what success means to you… so you have no idea how to accomplish it. You set big goals for yourself, but you don’t make them measurable so you can track your progress. You don’t set SMART goals.

When you start your personal growth journey, you have to commit to the person you want to be. You have to define what success means to you, and you have to develop the right attitude and behaviors to achieve it.

It’s not easy to change your attitudes and behaviors, so this makes it hard. But nothing good comes easy. Your future self is counting on you to be consistent. Don’t let yourself down.

3. You’re harboring Toxic Relationships

“Toxic relationships not only make us unhappy; they corrupt our attitudes and dispositions in ways that undermine healthier relationships and prevent us from realizing how much better things can be.”

– Michael Josephson

I’d highly recommend you check out my other posts on how toxic relationships affect your personal growth for more in-depth content.

4. You’re impatient

Becoming the best version of yourself is not going to happen overnight.

You’re going to go through countless highs and lows. Sometimes you’ll feel overwhelmed with it all and may even want to give up. It can seem easy to just go back to your old ways but remember why you wanted to be better, to begin with.

Be patient with yourself like you would with anyone else you cared about. You have to put yourself first for this process and understand that it’s going to take time.

5. You’re not willing to commit to it

You have to invest your time and energy into yourself to ensure your success.

Now that you know that you have to change your attitude, behaviors, relationship dynamics, and be more patient, you have to commit to this process. You can’t decide to work on yourself one day and then forget about it. You have to commit to every aspect of this journey in order to become the best version of yourself.

When things get hard, you have to be willing to accept your struggle and understand that it’s necessary for your growth. You can’t think that it’s the end of the world after every inconvenience. Your true strength is tested when things are tough, not when they’re easy.