We are built to grow.  There is a hunger within us that calls us toward the light of our biggest self.  Given the right experiences and held in the right environment and relationship, we cannot help but grow.

Yet we do not have to grow.  Growth is optional.  We need to make certain choices in order to grow.

Growth feels vulnerable.  It evokes a sense of threat.  We are being asked to stretch into something new.  There is uncertainty. 

But while that feeling of threat is uncomfortable, it is not dangerous.  When growth calls we need to choose to answer the call, despite the discomfort in our bodies.

If we ignore the call, if we try to escape from the discomfort of its vulnerable feeling, we will find ourselves trapped in patterns that cripple our freedom, limit our joy, stifle our expression, and exhaust our energy. 

We end up feeling anxious, distracted, depressed, disconnected from our truth, isolated from others.

We end up living a life that is defended – cut off from the information and energy that resides in the flow of core emotion beneath the signal of anxiety.

Defenses are many and varied and they all work to remove us from the felt sense of vulnerability. 

Defenses against the experience of vulnerability take us away from the body, the moment, from the information in our emotions.  People walk away from themselves in the felt sense of anxiety all the time.  But relief from the unpleasantness of anxiety comes at a high cost: the loss of who we really are, and the loss of the opportunity to grow into all that we can be.

You matter.  The time for neglect is over.  Make the choice to pay attention to yourself.  Listen to your anxiety, your call to growth.  And grow.