Growth Worldview

Erase and start over. Use your pencil instead of your pen so you can change your rumbling thoughts if necessary. Become a lifelong learner instead of arriving at a mirage called destiny perfect. We won’t have it together till we get to Heaven, so why do we pretend like little girls having fancy tea parties? Dream about the wonders of Heaven and don’t forget the awe you will swell with for eternity, but live in reality.

Recently I had a spiral down day. The kind where you take something personal, and instantly everything you attempt goes awry. It became an impetus for change. Growth mindsets is a idea I latched onto. “Mistakes are a sign you are trying.” All over school, I see this quote and think it applies to everyone else but me... or wait, I can relax with the rest, and just be ok with doing my best, then learn from it when it wasn’t the best swerve in hindsight.

The last three years have been an intense learning curve, but I am becoming agreeable with the constant friction. I can see progress, and gratefully recognize the answered prayers for a difficult relationship that I finally asked God to make into a great learning experience on the sidelines of multiple other battle fronts. God goes above and beyond, to condense epic into a sentence. Hopefully, you won’t need this kind of severe stimulation of facing drama on all fronts for you to get on the growth mindset bandwagon.

I have observed cultural and religious traditional beliefs about trials outside my own Christian faith. I noticed that many have a fatalistic, “This is life” mentality that accepts suffering without much external fuss. Spiritual warfare isn’t in their worldview, and the effects of sin are seen differently as well. Some say suffering even helps earn a better place in Heaven. While I don’t necessarily agree with these fatalistic trains of thought and wrestle with them, I know I have bought the subtle lies of fatalism on different levels when life doesn’t work out like I wished. Examine your own heart and where you shut down your desires. I attempt to control, shove down or suppress a few things, only to find squashing one tiny thing affects a whole bundle of nerves that end up controlling every part of life. We end up shutting down the interstate instead of just one lane. Shutting down stunts our growth.

The other option is to trust God, give Him the hurting shards, and shattered wishes, and let Him take care of them. In the central figure of Christianity, we notice a key theme of hope. Resurrection is just as powerful in our redemption as the cross is in our salvation. When we have hope in our hearts, we don’t need to shut down, whether life is working out or not. We can keep our hearts open because we know that God will work everything out for our good. And therefore, we can have a growth mindset.

I am willing to stay on the curve because my eyes have been opened to how much more I can grow. Instead of focusing on the difficult pieces, we can focus on learning what we can from our mountains. If we have enough faith to trust God with it, we know that regardless of what the outcome is, He had a purpose. Not trusting Him has worse effects if you think eternity then any temporary harm that rejection, failure or whatever fear we have could do to us in this life.


Free falling out of our comfort zone isn’t fun. But sometimes we need to let go of our false selves and walls to really be able to grow. For example, if I have living vivaciously as a goal, then I need to be ME. Emotional and spiritual growth is something we can blaze new trails in.

You dreamers out there could probably concur that visions often mean living outside of the box. If nobody persisted in believing in their product of their dreams, there would be a lot of conveniences that we would not enjoying. Dream development requires a bunch of grit.

I don’t know which is more scary to you: personal growth or dream development... but unless we take on something that scares us, is it worth pursuing? Why do we stiffen our backs and resist doing hard things when we know God is trustworthy? Why do we grow an extra skeleton of walls and false selves if we realize the unnecessary drama of fatalistic thinking because we know that all things work together for those that love Him??

They say not all who wander are lost. And that there are no failures... only learning opportunities. There is truth in those words. So don’t cross out that bad day as just awful. See it as a learning moment. Swerve back into the right lane called truth.

Grow like spring has come. Sprout green. Let winter shake out it’s last cold snap, but don’t let it kill your new growth. Instead let it make you stronger. Then do everything that nurtures growth to maturity.

All the best!