What’s Holding You Back? Discover the Secrets to Personal Growth 🌱

Hello, Cadre world. This is Dr. Jessica Green with my first live stream. So I am extremely excited about this. It's happening on what I like to call Wellness Wednesdays, where we can focus on being our true, authentic selves. But then also highlighting the importance of personal growth has joined us this morning. Good morning, Jocelyn. We're going to wait on some others to come into the live stream before we get started, but just to share a little information about myself again, My name is Dr. Jessica Green and I reside along the Grand Strand in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.

I have a private practice here. I was a professional school counselor before I ventured into the world of private practice. Good morning, Jules. We're going to talk about vulnerability. And I tell you what, in that moment, leaving, you know, the school district, going into private practice, that was definitely a leap and it tested my vulnerability where I had to be courageous. But it was something that I wanted to do for me so I can spend more time, you know, with my parents and spend more time with my students.

So with this live stream today, we're going to focus on the importance of personal growth. But the first thing we have to do is be able to define what post personal growth is so we can focus on those secrets, so we can be the best of us and pour into our cup before we pour into others. So when we thinking about. When we think about personal growth, I want to define it. So if we define personal growth, it is a continuous process of improving yourself in three ways. Mentally, emotionally, and physically.

It's about becoming more aware and learning more about ourselves, learning from our past experiences and then pushing through our limitations. And sometimes we limit ourselves and we defeat ourselves before we even get started. For example, we may be at work and there's an opportunity that comes up and they say, hey, Jessica, I think that's something that would work for you. We're hesitant because we're focused on our limitations as opposed to us being brave. So we defeat ourselves before we get started, and we're worried about that sense of rejection.

And when we think about personal growth, it's not about perfection. It's about progress. And as far as perfection, personally, I do not think perfection exists because there is not ever a perfect location, a perfect time. Sometimes it just happens and it just works out. So I want us to determine from the sense of perfection when we talk about personal growth to progress. Also, when we think about personal growth, it's more like a journey rather than a destination. And we can even think about the mindset of it being a marathon and not A sprint, because it wasn't a sprint for us to get to this, this moment through our lived experiences, through our past or present, it questioned our personal growth.

It questioned our ability to be courageous. It questioned our ability to be brave. So again, when we talk about personal growth, it involves developing skills, breaking unhealthy patterns, which is going to take some, you know, consistency on our part, focusing on those healthy habits and creating in and participating them in a daily basis, but setting meaningful goals, whether they're short term or long term goals, but then lastly, stepping outside of our comfort zone. So again, earlier when I talked about vulnerability, our sense of being courageous but being fearful at the same time, and for my parents, when we're sending our students off to college, that tested our sense of vulnerability, because in that moment we had to be brave, but we were nervous at the same time.

Especially if it's for our student who this is their first time out of the home, this is their first time where we're having to participate and actively engage in those life skills that tested our vulnerability. If we were starting a new job, that tests our vulnerability because we feel as if we're going into the sense of the unknown. So maybe it's learning to manage stress, building healthy relationships, or developing confidence in the decisions that we make. And when we say developing confidence in our decisions, it's focusing on the cost and the benefits of them.

Whether you're making a list, okay, if I make this decision, this is what it's going to cost me. But then here are some of the benefits and seeing which one outweighs the other. The key here and the takeaway is being intentional. So I want you to think about intentionality as we discuss personal growth. Because growth does not happen by accident. It happens when you choose to do. Again, three things. When we reflect what has happened, we adapt and we make those changes. But then we challenge ourselves, not allowing vulnerability to take over, but we use positive affirmations, letting ourselves know that we can do this in this moment and we are going to take charge of this moment and not allow this moment to determine who we are or where we are going.

So ask yourself, what are some small steps that you can take today, not tomorrow, but today, in order to grow, to become the best version of ourselves. So my ask of you today is to think about something that you want to start doing that we're currently not doing that will benefit personal growth, something you want to stop doing that's not working out for us, something that we want to continue to do, meaning that, hey, this is going great. So this is something I want to continue to do. It's positive and it's allowing me to be the best version of myself.

And then something we want to change the way we're doing it. We like how it's going, but we need to tweak it a little bit to benefit us. Doing this will allow you to become more aware of your personal growth, acknowledge those things that are holding you back so we can challenge ourselves and stop doing those things. As always, continue to be courageous, continue to have compassion, continue to build connections, but most importantly, continue to be true to yourself. Thank you for listening and look forward to seeing you for our next podcast.