The Truth about Personal Growth and a Change in Mindset

Personal growth is the ongoing process of understanding and developing oneself in order to achieve one's fullest potential. Personal development is a vital part of a person's growth, maturity, success, and happiness. It is the foundation of emotional, physical, intellectual, and spiritual health, but do these definitions necessarily define one’s mind within their personal lives?

Growing up, my opinion on personal growth was something I'd see as something for perfectionists, in which I wasn't. I didn’t have big dreams, I just wanted any job in order to get by. I didn’t really care about my grades as my only goal was to pass. I was content with who I was and what I had so why go through the process of improving myself when I felt this is good enough already, enough for me to survive. As I grew older, I realized change is inevitable; you’re never going to be the same person you were yesterday and as humans, we are all destined to evolve. I probably wouldn’t have written this article if you were to ask me a few years ago but I realize now that we should always strive to become the best version of ourselves which can be done in our own little ways. The following years proved to be quite challenging for me, I experienced the typical problems teenagers face, and I just felt that life was getting repetitive in general like one big cycle. I watched a lot of films, read a lot of books and talked to a lot of different people with different perceptions of life. All of which helped me to understand that we are destined for great things, you have a difference to make and a purpose to live so we should not be satisfied by a label given by society, as our only limitations are those we set up in our own minds. 

The movie that really changed my grasp and philosophy on life is my favorite movie: “Fight Club”. It is about a middle-aged man who had a pretty boring life, he goes to work, goes home and that’s about it. He also suffers from insomnia and schizophrenia which led him to enter numerous support groups including ones for those with testicular cancer. He was not even at the risk of dying but he was able to connect with the people from the support group because he believes that people only start caring for you when you’re about to die. Our unlikely hero then says one of my favorite lines in the movie “Every evening I died and every evening I was born again. Resurrected”. This was what he felt when he finally found people he connected with. Later, he meets Tyler Durden and they start an underground fight club, it becomes his new support group of sorts; and the fight club eventually turn into Tyler’s own army doing his every need. After fighting organized illegal pubs at night, the Fight Club became an organization fighting for the oppressed. This was one of the first lessons of Philosophy in the movie as Tyler would begin to hold people at gunpoint. He steals their personal ID’s and asks them what their goals are in life, he gives them a specific amount of time to do the necessary things to make their dreams come true or he will come back haunting for them with the address in their ID’s (which was an exaggeration as Tyler doesn’t even have bullets in his gun). This was a very powerful message, in my opinion as us humans including myself all work harder and better when we’re given a deadline or if there are consequences when we don’t do what we’re supposed to do. We all feel content once we’re comfortable and financially stable but how many of us can actually say that we’ve reached our goals and dreams? It requires hard work but it’s what’s needed to fulfill our true potential.

Later on, it is revealed that the narrator and Tyler are the same person and if Tyler is present, it is thanks to the delusions of the narrator who brings into existence through a projection of what he wants to be. Tyler is the narrator for a bridge between the real world that allows it to interact with others, and the delusional world of the sick man which is the narrator. Whether we are suffering from a mental condition or not, we’ve all gone through what the narrator went through, we may not necessarily have a split personality but we all have different ego states. These ego states handle different situations as we encounter them, one state may handle our work lives, while another can handle going out for drinks and having fun with friends. The main logic is we show a different side of ourselves each time in different situations which by that sense already gives us a lot of personalities. We also have different people that we idolize and hope to emulate in the future, whether it be celebrities, athletes, musicians or even people you know in your personal life, we all need sources of inspiration that allow us to work harder and get better. This is also why Halloween or comic conventions are such a big deal and has appealed to a large audience, because for the time being; we get to be someone else, someone different from ourselves and possibly someone we want to be.

Another theme worth discussing was the movie’s portrayal on advertising. In one of the scenes, the narrator and Tyler are on a bus where the narrator points out a Gucci underwear ad and asks “is that what a man should look like?” Tyler responds “self-improvement is masturbation, it will destroy itself”, “I reject all the assumptions of civilization, especially the importance of material possessions.” He then gives a speech in the underground fight club about how advertising and television made us believe that we need nice clothes, a nice car and how we’d all be millionaires or rock stars. The moment we realize that we won’t have those makes us really sad about life that he even compares it to the Great Depression. This theme is so vital in our generation, especially with the rise of social media. Nowadays, we need the latest iPhone or the latest sneakers in order to feel accepted. We need a certain amount of likes in our photos or we need to party all the time just to give ourselves a justification that we belong, and that is the exact moment in which we fail; if we need to prove that we belong in society then we are no longer being ourselves. What good will it do if we gain the whole world but lose our own soul in the process? A very interesting lesson that teenagers need to learn from.

Fight Club is a movie about rebellion in which frustrated, emasculated men are rebelling against what they perceive as an unjust, effeminized society that forces them to live dull and meaningless lives. It tells us we are not free because of the things we think are important like the things we own. It is because we try to complete our life by consuming materials and possessions that surround us, but none of those matters if we are not complete ourselves mentally. It also taught me that we are capable of being anything we want to be if we have a change in mindset, and we can do that if we release our inner Tyler Durden. 

The most important step in personal growth is knowing yourself, what are your likes and dislikes? How do you interact with people? What are you passionate about? These are all vital questions in self-reflection that help us learn more and more about who we are. Knowing yourself includes time for yourself and doing things outside your comfort zone, Blake Mycoskie gives a quote in his book “Start Something that Matters” that states “Being comfortable can hurt your creative spirit” I took this quote to heart and I started doing things that I wasn’t really comfortable in doing, sometimes I’d eat lunch by myself without using my phone, sometimes I’d watch a movie in the cinema alone. Being in an unfamiliar environment teaches you a lot about yourself and makes you believe that you are capable of many other things. The key is to put yourself into situations that will trigger that exploration and development.

Another tip is to surround yourself with the right people, your environment is so crucial for self-actualization as they can also shape you to be who you are. Surround yourself with people who let you see the world in a new way, people who are adventurous and who like doing extraordinary things, people that have qualities you would want for yourself, people you can relate to, those with lessons to teach and a story to tell. Obviously this coincides with letting go of toxic people as well, this can be quite hard as some even deal with a toxic environment in their own household, let go of those who judge you for doing something you love, those who influence you in a negative way in your goal of personal development, you don’t need to distance yourself physically but you can do it emotionally.

My last tip would be is to try and use technology less, stop comparing yourself to others that you see in social media as shown in the book “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck”, a lot of us are victims of the “backward law” which is the idea that the desire for a more positive experience is a negative experience and paradoxically the acceptance of one own’s negative experience is itself a positive experience. I brought this up as for example, there are a lot of teenagers who get anxious when they’d see their friends having fun while they’re at home, this in turn makes them feel sorry about their life. They were content with just staying home but seeing that in their feed made them crave the experience which had a negative effect on them. Instead, we should do the opposite, if we see something like that we should say “so what? so what if I’m home?” It is through acceptance that we can turn this negative experience into a positive one. Instead of having problems such as this, a suggestion would be to do different things such as: write, read, get a new hobby, get in touch with nature; all these things prove to be therapeutic outlets for your thoughts. It also gives you an insight into another world and perspective.

So the next time you’re feeling unhappy with your life or something in it, and the next time you feel tempted to spend money on makeup, clothes, or that latest video game, perhaps you’ll think again and browse a while in the self-improvement section. The former might change your mood for the moment, but the latter may well change your life for good.

Written by: Migo Buenafe