Spiritual development is a lifelong endeavor that requires honestly assessing our strengths and weaknesses, deciding where to deploy our efforts, and doing the work to improve. The process is challenging, but we often short circuit it by setting artificial—often imaginary—limits.
It is time to stop creating glass ceilings that limit your spiritual growth.
It’s understandable. High achievers tend to beat themselves up when they fail to meet unrealistic expectations. But there is a difference between striving toward external milestones and perfecting your character. We should be realistic with the former and anything but with the latter. Yet, we tend to do the opposite.
As an example, imagine every physician like me set a goal of becoming the US Surgeon General. There are over one million physicians in the U.S., but there is only one Surgeon General at any given time. Over a million physicians would cause themselves unnecessary pain for missing their unrealistic mark.
We will not all become CEOs, millionaires, or leaders of organizations. It makes sense to set realistic goals based on our inherent talents, life circumstances, and competing interests, while working everyday to achieve all we can, rather than setting goals based on societal expectations. Yet, all too often, it is an external measure (and a grand one no less) that is our motivation and our indicator of a successful life.
The hard truth is most of our measures of success are unimportant. They are not the reason for being alive. You will not take wealth, status, or most of the other goals you set for yourself to your grave. All that matters is your spiritual development. This is where your efforts should go, and this is where you must aim high.
You will not take wealth, status, or most of the other goals you set for yourself to your grave. All that matters is your spiritual development.
When it comes to spiritual and personal growth, people often set a very low bar or accept that the highest levels of spiritual and personal development are inaccessible. They assume such growth is impossible for no real reason. “I just have anger problems.” “My attention span is too short.” “I’m just not that good a person.” “This is who I am.”
These refrains are all too common. I’ve been guilty of some of them myself. The beauty of personal and spiritual growth is that nobody can stop you but you. Limitations that are imposed externally on things like career progression or status attainment may exist, but the only absolute limits on the person you become are the ones you set.
The only absolute limits on the person you become are the ones you set.
Furthermore, there are no hard milestones to reach in spiritual development. Your goal is simply to grow. When it comes to achieving something like a promotion or buying a house, the outcome is binary. You either reach your goal or you don’t. But when it comes to improving character traits, you can always become just a little bit better. You can be a little bit more generous than you were last week. You can listen just a little more intently when your spouse, child, or friend is talking to you. How liberating to be able to grow without any hard cutoffs for what growth means!
We all see traits in others we’d like to emulate, and it can be daunting to see how someone has mastered a trait with which we struggle. You may be tempted to compare yourself to someone and decide being more compassionate, patient, or charitable is impossible for you. This is not real humility. Humility means knowing you have room to develop the trait in question, being open to working on it, and growing without measuring yourself against any artificial measure. How patient can you become? How much more open can you be? How much of the anger can you purge from your heart to become a more loving, peaceful person? Nobody knows—certainly not you—but setting artificial limitations makes them real as long as you believe them to be.
Life’s work is not easy, but it is simple. Identify the person you want to be and the parts of yourself you’d like to develop. Set no limits and get to the work of growing. And never stop until you die—as every one of us will some day.