The Middle Way: Grow Without Fixing Yourself
I’ve been on the personal growth path for about thirty years now. Long enough to have baskets of journals and at least four former selves who were convinced they had finally “arrived.” There’s one paradox that’s stayed with me through all of it.
Realization One: Nothing Needs Improvement
This one hit me hard in my thirties, after a Dark Night of the Soul and a whole lot of deep-dive truth-seeking. At the level of being, I realized, nothing is missing. Consciousness—or Soul, or simply Reality—is All That Is. Nothing exists outside of it. Which means you and I, messy and amazing as we are, are already included in the whole, no matter what we do or don’t do. That’s right. We are already intact and enough, exactly as we are. Nothing about us needs optimizing.
In other words, the sky doesn’t need to become a better sky. It just is. And at the core of who we are, the same is true.
Realization Two: And Yet… We Are Still Wired for Growth
And yet. At the human level, of course we grow. I’m not the same woman I was twenty years ago—or even twenty minutes ago. For one thing, I no longer own a Sony Discman or do the Macarena late night. (Ha! Remember the Macarena?) Are you the same person you were ten years ago? I’m guessing not. Our bodies change. What we think is cool changes. So does how we deal with life. I can sit with things now that might have flattened me in my thirties; and, conversely, things might annoy me now didn’t bother me then.
So, yes, we integrate trauma and loss. We learn new skills. We have the opportunity to get better at being ourselves if we choose it. Something in us clearly evolves.
How to Balance The Paradox
At the deepest level, nothing about our being needs improvement. And yet… at the human level, we grow. Both are true. So how do we live inside this split? Here’s what it looks like for me. Let’s say something shifts unexpectedly in my life or business—and that old fear and uncertainty creeps in. Maybe my gut tightens. Then the mind starts up with its old narratives: If you don’t take control of this situation, something bad will happen. The work will dry up and you’ll end up living out of your car!
As Michel de Montaigne hilariously put it, “My life has been full of terrible misfortunes, most of which never happened.” It’s that ancient, irrational fear mechanism that says: Grip the wheel, sister! We are not going down like this! And just like that, “growth” turns into anxiety wearing manifestation clothes. But if I swing too far the other way and hide in “everything is perfect as it is,” something else dims. The part of me that loves creating and stretching and experiencing and taking risks.
Losing that inner spark doesn’t feel true either.
The Middle Way: Wu Wei, Flow, and the Inner GPS
Somewhere in the middle might be the sweet spot. Aristotle called it the Golden Mean. Buddha called it the Middle Path. Christianity might call it surrender. In some shamanic traditions, it’s the Hollow Bone. The Taoists call it Wu Wei—effortless effort. I call it flow.
Not the shiny, peak-performance kind. The ordinary kind—where I pause long enough to listen. Where I take the small next step and follow trust more than fear. Where I check my inner GPS instead of white-knuckling the wheel. And where I let the smallest glimmer of excitement point me to what’s next. Sometimes it says: stretch here. Have the hard conversation. Take the risk. Sometimes it says: rest. Stop optimizing, performing, and planning. Just be. Let this time be totally boring, quiet, and ordinary.
Flow is never about doing nothing. It’s doing what’s aligned. What’s true in this moment, now. Just as the sky doesn’t resist the storm or cling to the sunshine—it lets all weather move—so can we. Because we are the sky. And we’re also the changing weather. Nothing to fix.
And still… so much left to explore. 🌤️
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