Years ago I hadn’t yet learned that growth comes from my own experiences and actions.
I didn’t know that true growth takes work, awareness, looking at my own patterns, habits, and experiences.
When I initially started opening to new ideas I was mostly just a sponge, watching others, and studying to be more like them.
I thought I only had to soak up information to grow into a better version of myself.
I read, attended classes, workshops, and listened to spiritual leaders and then assumed I’d have awesome mystical experiences that would knock my socks off, and result in a deeper experience of life and myself.
Except I felt the same. And the more nothing shifted the more I persisted in looking anywhere but at myself.
I watched the people who not so much walked but seemed to float into rooms. To me, they spoke as if they were right out of a Kripalu course catalog. Perfection I thought. My focus was on them not me. I assumed these beautiful ethereal individuals must have deeply meaningful lives and feelings of well-being and I wanted that because, back then, I didn’t have that.
As I watched these seemingly awesome people I wondered, what was in their drinking water? Where did they learn to speak the flowery way they did? Their yoga poses were perfection, and their outward appearances exuded the epitome of calm, peace, and hipness. And all of a sudden I was annoyed.
I was ready. It was time to grow from my own experiences. As a trusted supporter pointed out to me, “…the big learning you came here for”.
That was when I tired of it all. The spiritual growth workshops, the best selling books, the advice and philosophy from heart-centered celebrities throughout the world. It was all well-intended advice but no longer attractive to me.
Instead, I started to make different choices. I began a practice of becoming more aware of what my own experiences and feelings were teaching me. I took steps to create new habits, thoughts, and self-beliefs. Those were important steps towards creating beneficial experiences.
Sometimes I still need reminders to stand in my own power.
Just last year I had an awkward meeting that served as a friendly reminder to stand in my own power. It involved a new acquaintance who thought we’d have a lot to talk about.
How was it that after that meeting, I went home to have lunch with my husband and started to cry into my salad? My confused husband gently asking how can you meet someone for an hour and come home crying? That made me laugh and now I was laughing plus crying plus eating.
I realized the more she shared her amazing 
dramatic mystical experiences, the more I started to feel un-terrific, uninteresting, and un-special. The more I felt I should be having experiences like hers. Oops.
Do you ever bring yourself or anyone else up short, based on a lot of nothing?
Perhaps it’s about the size of one’s office or the title they have, or recognition they’ve received, or vacation they’re taking.
I had to remember that what’s really important is how I experience my life, and how I feel. Occasional challenges aside, I feel good, my life excites me and I generally feel pretty joyful. That’s a powerful clue conveying that I’m on the right track. Instead of looking over the fence at someone else’s backyard I can just tend to my own garden.