Preface - Growth Guidebook for Well-Living
Intention and Invitation for the Adventure Ahead
Welcome! I am excited to have you along for this adventure. It will be a learning, growing experience that gets you in the driver's seat of your well-living, trusting the innate human capacities within you.
This is not another book of rules, quick-fixes, or answers. It presents a framework and a process for discovering your answers. Lots of well-intended people are sharing an abundance of good information. Not all relevant to you, now. Just as there are patterns across humans, each human is unique. At this moment, you are uniquely you and are functioning the only way you can, given all of the adaptations through your experiences.
The information shared through the Warm Up and Part 1 lays out a framework that emerged through a synthesis – a coming together into a broader whole – of what many researchers and experts have discovered. The framework will continue to expand as we continue to discover more about the most complex creatures on the planet – humans. Growth sparks growth.
In my work as a trauma therapist, I continually seek information to resolve what we haven’t yet resolved. I continue to be fascinated by crucial information that has not been broadly shared or used when resolving inseparable challenges with physical, emotional, mental, energetic, and relational well-living. Being and doing.
By having a framework for you to take into Parts 2 & 3, you can identify what part of the framework is most helpful to you now. You can go deeper into a particular technique or angle that meets your problem. You can come back for another iteration. I’ve done my best to make the bibliography as complete as possible. You will also build your comfort with continually seeking more targeted information to fill in the fuzziness of your edgeless puzzle.
The healthcare and wellness industries currently function by you going to a person for help because of location, title, insurance coverage. That person ‘helps’ by utilizing whatever technique or specialty is in their training. It’s good stuff, yet it may not fit your situation's root contribution or context now. This is an artifact of the education and operation of the systems we’ve created. It is well intended, yet not consistently effective at getting to root causes or seeing you as a complex system rather than a collection of parts. A part may be getting your attention, but it’s likely not the root cause.
My intention with the Growth Guide is for you to be a confident expert of you, ever-expanding what you understand, finding ease with what is not yet understood, and boldly stepping into learning as you go—growing forward.
See yourself as a whole, growing human. Not a broken machine that needs fixing. Not a cog in a wheel that gets its job right. This is an adventure in development, nurturing the growth of the whole you!
Growing is a process, an ongoing experience. I'm most excited about laying out a process for your continuing use. I didn’t make it up – it’s natural within you. The methods of parenting, educating, training, etc have constricted your access to it. I’ll incorporate many tips and techniques I’ve learned from decades of facilitating diverse ‘problem-solving’ initiatives. Yet the process of growth is innately within you. We will intentionally bring you more in alignment with it. Build trust in it.
Simple example – no one taught the sperm and egg how to work together for fertilization to happen. It’s a process that happened to happen with the sperm and egg that became the first cell of you. Similarly, nobody taught you to make your first sound. A natural process connects stimuli and signals and informs cells to do the things to form the sound when it happens. Fascinating, isn’t it?!
Once you can embrace yourself as a fascinating sequence of processes, you can increase comfort with the processes of living.
Take laundry, for example. How often do you hear or say, “I need to get my laundry done.” Unless you are running around naked, it’s never done! Laundry is a circular process. Clothing is somewhere in the process. If you are wearing clothes, there is laundry to do. You, and possibly others, are somewhere in the process of getting clothing through the process. ‘Done’ makes no sense in a circular process.
Like laundry, learning and growing are never done. They are a circular process over time. Dynamic systems must be in change – continual exchange with the environment. There’s no staying the same.
When we attempt to stay the same and maintain, it inhibits growth, which dynamically shifts us to a degradation trajectory. Shifting to degradation can happen naturally. The secret is to recognize it and not to stay there. Get back on the growth trajectory.
The invitations – Step into the process laid out in the book and listen to yourself.
Pick the book up, set it down, throw it across the room – all part of the process. For a minute, for a day, for a year. All part of the process.
Keep blank paper or a journal handy while reading sections. Engage in the exercises. Practice listening to you, opening to exploration without right or wrong answers – just discovery.
Notice, can you stay in the learning and growing process?
Enjoy whatever you learn through the adventure. I look forward to hearing about it.