Grow Your Own Way
“How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.”
Anne Frank, famed diarist and Holocaust victim, wrote the above words in Anne Frank’s Tales from the Secret Annex. Her words ring true, even if we make one tiny, slightly less ambitious, modification: How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve their situation.
Your situation might be stress, time poverty, a dead-end job, lack of professional development, low pay, or (what you believe to be) a lackluster resume. Take young Anne’s words to heart and you might start seeing cracks, openings, and paths around, through, or even under the situation you previously saw as a brick wall.
Here are some additional quotes to help open your eyes even more:
“Perhaps the earth can teach us as when everything seems dead and later proves to be alive.” — Pablo Neruda, Keeping Quiet
- IRL translation: Take a closer look and find vibrancy and growth potential in opportunities and ideas that may have seemed static or lifeless.
“Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.” — Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky
- IRL translation: Look at your progress with optimism. Perhaps you haven’t “grown,” in the traditional way you expected, but you have likely developed and learned in many other valuable ways.
“Effort within the mind further limits the mind, because effort implies struggle towards a goal and when you have a goal, a purpose, an end in view, you have placed a limit on the mind.” — Bruce Lee, Tao of Jeet Kune Do
- IRL translation: Consider your past experience and future prospects with an open mind and not through the narrow lens of one specific goal or trajectory. You’ll see things you may have overlooked otherwise.
“Sometimes a problem isn’t really a problem but the solution in disguise.” Richelle E. Goodrich, Slaying Dragons: Quotes, Poetry, & a few Short Stories for Every Day of the Year
- IRL translation: Seeing a lack of opportunity in your current situation points out a problem, certainly, but it also suggests the solution. It tells you what you truly want. Once you’re firm on that, everything else is logistical.