Everyone wants to grow! Everyone is running fast towards something that they think will help them grow – in business, in their jobs, in their personal life. Growth is critical in every sphere of life as without growth, things stagnate and eventually die.

While it’s vital to keep moving and growing, it’s also essential to know what helps us grow and grow in the right way. Simply rushing toward growth without understanding what it will lead to or if the direction is correct can result in growth that doesn’t benefit us and may even cause harm in the long run.

So, if we really want to grow – in any sphere of our life, we need to first slow down and do the following, before we move full steam ahead:

Review & Revise

Slow down and think about the direction that you are planning is the right direction. We need to think about and find answers to the following questions:

  • Does this align with all your long term goals?
  • Does this help me achieve what I eventually want to achieve?
  • Do I even know what I eventually want to achieve?
  • Am I trying to grow just because other people want me to grow in this field or direction or is it due to my own intrinsic motivation and interest?
  • Is this the best way to grow?
  • What’s the fuel that this engine requires to run on?

We live in a world where change around us is always accelerating and keeps changing the environment. This means that rarely does any growth journey goes as originally planned.

This also means that we need to be able to course-correct every time that it is needed. I would even go to the extent to say that we need to expect us to course correct in our journey.

We need to think about these questions before we embark on a growth trajectory or a project that will enable us to grow.

Rethink:

Once we determine this is the right area for growth, we begin the project or program or journey to expand. We must include time in our growth plans to pause and think about the journey and make changes if necessary. The exact timing can differ based on the size and length of your growth project or journey. Still, it should be long enough for you to have made some progress, but not too long that it becomes hard to adjust.

During this time of reflection, we need to attempt to answer the following questions:

  • Is my goal still relevant? If not, we go back to our goal setting process and re-define our growth goals.
  • Is this still the best way to achieve the growth?
  • Is there a better or faster or a simpler way that has become available for me to grow faster?

ReFuel & Re-connect

Every growth engine needs fuel to run on and the fuel gets used up as we move forward in our growth journey. So, we need to constantly keep refueling our growth engines. We need to find time, energy and commitment to continue to refuel the growth engines. One way to do that is to think about your Big why and try to answer the following questions:

  • Why are we on this growth journey?
  • Why is it important?
  • What would happen if we achieve our growth ambitions? What will that enable?
  • What would happen if we don’t achieve what we set out to achieve?
  • Who else can I enroll in my team? Who else could support this growth?

I have seen so many people, embark on their journey and at some point later, they don’t know where they are or how they reached there. They grew and grew fast but either in the wrong direction or for the wrong reasons.