What if the shitty, confusing mess you’re in right now is actually your biggest personal growth period in disguise?
"Delayed Growth Realization" might be the most important concept I’ve ever come across.
It can mean the difference between despair and optimism.
Here are 3 core truths about growth:
- Growth often follows adversity.
- We often only spot growth in hindsight.
- Our definition of growth changes over time.
No. 1? Kinda obvious.
No. 2? Less obvious.
No. 3? Interesting.
What does this mean for you?
You can go through a phase that feels like total stagnation—maybe after a breakup, a job loss, or losing your sense of direction.
At the time, it’s chaos. Confusion. Pain.
But years later, you see how that chaos helped you grow:
- New interests,
- Forced open doors,
- Dropping old baggage,
- Defining sharper values,
- Getting to know who you really are.
And sometimes you only call it "growth" much later—once you’ve changed how you define it in the first place.
That’s “Delayed Growth Realization.”
If you trust that the way you feel now won’t perfectly match how you’ll see it later, you might stop beating yourself up. You might even grow more optimistic.
Internalizing this has cut my anxiety by 80% around what’s not working—both in business and life. And because of that, I’m at least 3x the leader I used to be.
"One does not discover new countries without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time." — André Gide
Cheers,
Phil
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P.S.: Turning adversity into growth requires a mind that's up for the challenge with the right ideas, tools and resources.
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