The Self-Growth Community is a fellowship of individuals who have attended a Self-Growth Institute or who are currently working with a Self-Growth Coach. We're dedicated to sharing and enhancing the personal capabilities of self-directed learners, self-assessors, and self-grower across all aspects of life. We're committed to creating a sustainable culture of self-directed learning and growth, where members continually evolve, adapt, and improve their capabilities through meaningful interactions—in short, where they can continue the work they already started.

We meet at least once a month, in 75-minute Zoom meetings focused on specific topics, lessons learned, and best practices, all led by community members with interactive group activities. Meetings will be announced via email.

Our goals are to help members as they…

1. Continue developing the ability to self-assess and reflect.
2. Become self-growers who intentionally design and pursue a life vision that aligns with their values, aspirations, and ideal self.
3. Contribute to each other's development by sharing insights, experiences, and best practices.

It's not too late to join us!

If you're interested in Self-Growth Coaching,

click to schedule a meeting with Auston!

“There is only one way to eat an elephant: A bite at a time.”

—Desmond Tutu

We looked around and realized that all our useful information is sort of like an elephant. Not gray and scary, but just kind of big and overwhelming.

So we've decided to make it easier to take little bites, when you need or want.

Denna and Auston are working to convert selected workshops (Teaching, Assessment, and Activity Design) so that they fit on individual plates. This means they'll be perfect for individuals to work through at their own pace and in their own time. Work on your appetite and we'll keep you posted!

I Need a Hand...and

Your Eyes

I had a professor, years ago, who explained the idea of tao to a class of philosophy students in this way:

“There is the path and there is the ditch.

If you’re not on the path, you’re in the ditch.”

If you’re doing your best to be who you are capable of being and doing the things that realize your potential, then you’re on the path. In terms of growth, if you’re growing and becoming a better version of yourself and a better person to the people in your life, then you’re on the path.

And yet, so often we find ourselves sitting in the ditch!

We get stuck. We lose motivation. We get in our own way and wound around the proverbial axle. Things become same-old, same-old. Our lives become smaller and duller. If we’re the authors of our own life, then this must be what writer’s block looks like.

When we find ourselves stuck in the ditch, the best way to get back on the path is to ask for a hand. In a real-world ditch, that means literally asking someone to extend a hand and to pull us up and back onto the path. In the world of the metaphorical ditch, the best helping hand is a new perspective.

While it is possible to find a new perspective on your own, it is very difficult…sort of like with clapping with one hand. St. Augustine wrote, “The eye that I look for is the eye that I look with.” Or, more clearly though less memorably, it’s hard to find a new perspective (literally, OUTLOOK) when you’re using the same eyes. What to do?

The solution should be obvious: you must use someone else’s eyes!

(Remember, this is a metaphor. One disturbingly full of body parts, but a metaphor nonetheless.)

Using someone else’s eyes means asking for their perspective. What do they see when they look at what you’re dealing with? You’re not asking for advice because this isn’t about should or ought…this is simply a matter of asking what someone else sees.

No matter what they describe, it is a perspective you never could have had on your own because it did not come through your ‘eyes’. If you’ll allow it, their perspective can change your world, making it a different place. It will no longer be the familiar vista of the ditch, but an amazing place you had literally never seen before, until they described it to you.

Take that almost magical gift it is and let it lift you out of the ditch and back onto the path. Be sure to thank the person who lent you a hand…and their eyes. And be ready to offer the same to someone else.

Surrendering

(growth skill: being vulnerable)

Having intellectual humility, knowing and admitting that we might be wrong, can be difficult, especially when we are aware of our own expertise in a given area. But continuing to argue a position rarely has the same value as surrendering to the possibility that just maybe we still have something to learn.

We learn best when we don’t let our ego stand between ourselves and new ideas and experiences. Or, put another way, in order to take a step forward, we have to give up the ground on which we’re currently standing.

Or, as a recent internet meme phrases it:

Jam Today

In Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There, Lewis Carroll shares an interaction between the White Queen and Alice. The White Queen tries to hire Alice, offering “Two pence per week and jam every other day.”

Alice explains that she isn’t looking for a job and doesn’t want jam today anyway. The White Queen responds that Alice couldn’t have jam today, even if she wanted it:

“The rule is, jam tomorrow and jam yesterday, but never jam today.”

Alice is sure that this means that there will be jam the next day, but no, insists the queen. Because, of course, it’s NEVER jam TODAY.

The phrase, “Never jam today” is quite popular in England, where people use it to talk about promises made that are never kept such as, “Within a decade, we will have

inexpensive, nationwide, high-speed trains!” And so on.



Whether we call it the “Protestant Work Ethic” or “work before play” (or any of many other formulations), the idea that no fun stuff (work) should take precedence, with any jam (rewards, playtime, relaxation, enjoyment) coming later, is so much a part of our shared culture that many of us are not even aware of how deeply ingrained it is. It tells us to feel guilty if we eat dessert before our vegetables, both literally and metaphorically, and that we should always be busy. If we’re not doing our best on every task while at work, and continually striving to take care of our health, our home, our neighborhood, our planet, and all our relationships (being the best parent, sibling, friend, adult child, neighbor, citizen possible), why then we must be lazy and don’t deserve jam. At least not yet. Not until the work is done. Unfortunately, like the queen, we often move our own goalposts:

I’ll have some jam after I finish my dissertation…. after I make associate professor…when I’m tenured…after I retire…

I’ll have time for jam when the kids aren’t so little… when they’re in school… when they’ve gone to college … when they don’t need me anymore… when the grandkids are older…

I’m saving jam for when I finish my degree… after I find a good job… when I’ve settled down and started a family… when the credit cards are paid off… when the house is paid for… when I’m not so busy taking care of my aging parents…

But if we want the kind of life that is enjoyable and where we take care of ourselves for the long haul, then we’ve got to find time for jam today. If we refuse to pause and recognize how much we have done and celebrate it with a bit of jam, REGARDLESS of how much we still need to do, then we are little better than a mule pulling a plow on the field of our goals. The point is QUALITY of life…not PRODUCTIVITY of life. Increasing the quality of our lives doesn’t mean giving up on being productive or even NOT being awesomely productive. But it does mean understanding the idea of balance and enjoying the little things.

What’s more, the people who love us and whose happiness is inextricably connected to our own benefit when we make time for jam today. Think about the people you love: Don’t you enjoy a kind of jam-by-association when they have jam? Doesn’t it do your heart good to see them have jam today?

There will always be work to be done. Always.

Having a bit of jam doesn’t change that; but it can change us.