There is a particular kind of frustration that comes when you are trying to grow, but you cannot seem to see the growth.
You study and study, yet the goal still feels far away. You work hard, but the results are taking their time. You make an effort to change, but some days you find yourself wondering whether you have really changed at all.
It is easy to conclude that you are going nowhere.
But perhaps you are looking at your journey from too close a distance.
I once came across a graph that perfectly captured something I had struggled to understand about progress. It looked like a wave. It went up, then down. Up again, then down again. But there was something else happening. When you compared the movement with the horizontal axis, the overall direction was upward.
That is life.
When you are inside the wave, all you can see are the ups and downs.
You have a good week, then a difficult one. You feel motivated today and discouraged tomorrow. You make progress, then seem to fall back into an old habit. You receive an opportunity, then face a disappointment. You take two steps forward and sometimes feel as though you have taken one step backwards.
Because you are living inside the wave, the setbacks can feel bigger than the progress.
But step back.
Look at the whole picture.
You may discover that although you have had difficult moments, you are not the same person you were a year ago. You may not be where you want to be yet, but you are further along than where you started.
That is the irony of growth.
We often expect progress to look like a straight line. We imagine that once we decide to improve our lives, every day should be better than the previous one. But real growth is rarely that neat. There are fluctuations. There are pauses. There are days when you question everything.
The downward part of the wave does not necessarily mean you are going backward.
Sometimes it is simply part of moving forward.
Think about learning something difficult. There are days when everything suddenly makes sense. Then comes a day when you struggle with something you thought you understood. It feels like you have lost your progress. But you have not. Your understanding is being stretched and strengthened.
The same can happen with life.
Maybe you are building a career. Maybe you are pursuing an education. Maybe you are trying to become more disciplined, more patient, more confident or simply more comfortable with who you are.
Do not measure your entire journey by today’s feeling.
A bad day is not proof that you are failing.
A difficult season is not proof that you have made no progress.
And a temporary setback does not erase everything you have learned along the way.
Sometimes, we need to step outside the wave and look at the direction of the line.
Look at how far you have come.
Remember the things that once frightened you but no longer do. Remember the challenges you thought you would never survive. Remember the person you were when you started.
You might be surprised.
The wave is still moving.
And so are you.
Keep going. Even when the line dips. Even when the progress feels invisible. Even when all you can see is another rise and another fall.
Because from inside the wave, it may feel like you are simply going up and down.
But from a wider view, you may realise that you have been climbing all along.
