“You don't grow the business. The business grows you. Don't mistake depth for delay.”
Reflection:
What if the slowest, quietest, most uncertain season of your life is actually the one doing the most work?
It is an uncomfortable question because we have been taught to think about growth in a very particular way. Growth is supposed to be visible and it is supposed to move upward. Growth equals more money, more clients, more opportunities, maybe a better body, better job, bigger house, a larger audience and we measure growth by looking at what has changed on the surface. When we cannot see much changing we naturally begin to wonder if we are standing still and question what we are doing... but I want you to stop reading for just a moment and think about a tree.
A tree is always growing in two directions at the same time, right? It's moving upward into everything we can see but also downward into everything we can not see. We notice the trunk getting taller and maybe we notice the branches reaching farther. My favorite is noticing the leaves coming back after winter but beneath the surface where nobody is watching the roots are growing too. That part of the tree is easy to forget because we cannot see it and I think there is something deeply human about that.
So much of life asks us to grow outward, we are expected to make decisions, build something, show up, accomplish things and continue to move forward. We are constantly looking for evidence that we are progressing and when the evidence disappears it can feel like nothing is happening but maybe some growth does not move us forward in ways people can see.. maybe it moves us deeper.
Deeper into questions we have avoided. Deeper into parts of ourselves we have never really understood. Deeper into patience, self awareness, resilience, and maybe some sort of acceptance. Maybe some seasons are not about becoming more impressive to the outside world, maybe they are about becoming more honest with ourselves.
I have started to understand this through building my business.
When I first started I had a pretty simple idea of what growth was supposed to look like. I imagined more revenue, more clients, more opportunities just more everything. I imagined the line going up and that equaled growth. I imagined being able to look at the numbers and know that I was succeeding because the numbers would give me something concrete to point to and some of that happened and some of it didn't. There have a few months where the numbers barely moved. I remember one month in particular where nothing dramatic happened but it was simply flat. No new clients, no obvious growth and I found myself refreshing the numbers and trying to force ideas as if looking or just thinking harder till 2am enough times might somehow change the month.
At the time, it was easy to interpret that month as failure but after doing this reflection, I see it differently. That month was doing something. It just wasn't doing something I knew how to measure. It was forcing me to sit with uncertainty and it was teaching me patience. It was making me question decisions I had made and think more carefully about the decisions I would make next. It was forcing me to become comfortable with not knowing exactly what would happen. None of that appeared on an invoice or check none of it showed up in revenue but it was happening and eventually, I realized something that changed the way I thought about the entire year of being a new business owner:
You don't grow the business. The business grows you.
Every hard month, every decision I got wrong and every moment where I had no idea what I was doing was pushing something deeper into me. It was building patience I didn't have before and developing judgment I hadn't earned yet. It is slowly turning me into someone who could actually hold the thing I am building. The business was growing upward where other people could see it but at the same time it was growing me downward.
People talk about the market, they talk about the numbers, the strategy, the hustle, the wins and the highlight reel on social media but nobody really tells you that whatever you decide to build is probably going to rebuild you and your internal state along the way. The patience I have now wasn't there when I started. The judgment I trust now wasn't something I was born with it came from getting things wrong enough times that eventually something underneath me began to take hold. That kind of growth is strange because you rarely recognize it while it is happening you only recognize it later when you reflect and time has passed.
There is actually something interesting about this idea beyond the metaphor. We spend much of our lives unaware of the work happening inside our own minds. Our brains are constantly processing information, making connections and adapting to what we repeatedly think, experience and endure. Sometimes an answer appears when we are no longer consciously trying to find it. Think about it an idea comes while walking or a realization appears in the shower. (this one is common for me haha) but something finally makes sense after we have stopped forcing it to make sense. Something was still happening we just weren't watching it happen and in that way, I feel our minds have their own root system. A difficult season can feel unproductive because we are looking for visible results but beneath that feeling we may be processing experiences, reconsidering beliefs, developing new perspectives and becoming someone slightly different than we were before.
That doesn't mean every difficult experience automatically makes us better because we both know life doesn't work that neatly. Sometimes we struggle and learn nothing from it. Sometimes we make mistakes and repeat them. Sometimes a season is simply painful but I do think we make a mistake when we assume that something has no value simply because its value is not immediately visible. We have become very good at measuring the upward growth and we are not nearly as good at recognizing the downward growth. There is no notification telling you that you became more patient this year. There is no graph showing that you handle uncertainty better than you did twelve months ago and there is no number that can tell you that you finally stopped reacting to something the way you used to. Nobody is necessarily going to applaud you for those things but I want to remind you that they matter and maybe they matter more than we realize because eventually the wind comes and the tree that has grown tall still needs roots strong enough to hold it in place. I believe life works the same way. The visible things we spend so much time chasing require something underneath them if we want them to last. That is why I don't think this is really a business lesson. Business just happened to be where I learned it, this is a life thing wearing a business costume.
We go through these root growing seasons everywhere. In relationships, in our identity, our beliefs, our work, in the way we understand ourselves. Sometimes we lose something and spend a long time rebuilding. Sometimes we feel like we have become disconnected from who we used to be. Sometimes we spend a year wondering what happened to us only to realize later that we were becoming someone new. Becoming is usually quieter than being seen because you don't announce yourself into a new version of who you are. You slowly uncover it. You learn through friction. You learn through mistakes. You learn through uncertainty. You learn through the moments that force you to ask yourself questions you would rather avoid and maybe that is why some of the most important seasons of our lives don't look impressive while we're living them. They don't produce anything we can easily show other people.They simply change just us.
I think the philosophical mistake we make is believing that something only counts once it becomes visible. We think a season mattered if it produced something we can point to. But a tree doesn't apologize for the years it spends growing underground, it doesn't consider those years wasted because nobody could see the roots. So I am here to say that maybe we should give ourselves the same permission. Maybe the year that felt slow wasn't wasted. Maybe the month that felt flat wasn't pointless and maybe the uncertainty wasn't proof that you were failing. Maybe you were growing in a direction you didn't know how to measure.
So if you are in the middle of something right now that feels stuck, I think there is a different question worth asking. Where is the line going up in your life? And more importantly where is the line nobody is tracking? What is growing down into you? What are you learning? What are you becoming? What are you finally willing to sit with? What parts of yourself are developing that don't show up in anything you could screenshot and post?
You don't need to have the whole answer today you may not even be able to see the growth for a while but you just need to recognize that invisible does not mean nonexistent. The roots are doing their work even when the branches aren't getting any taller and maybe that is what we need to remember when life feels quiet and slow. I need to remind myself with this reflection that we don't always need to move faster sometimes we need to go deeper. Sometimes the season that feels like it is holding us back is actually building the foundation for whatever is coming next.
So don't quit on the quiet months and don't mistake depth for delay. Keep going... not louder, not faster but just truer because growth is not always the line moving upward. Sometimes growth is what happens underneath you while you are waiting for the world to notice. The roots are growing too and one day you may look back at the season you thought was doing nothing and realize it was doing some of the most important work of your life.
⚔️ 3 ACTIONABLE STEPS
1. Measure What You Can't See
At the end of each day write down one thing you learned, handled better or became more aware of then ask: “How did I grow beneath the surface today?”
2. Stop Forcing the Outcome
Choose one thing you're trying to control and focus only on the next action you can actually take. Ask: “What is in my control today?”
3. Keep Showing Up
Pick one small action that moves you forward and do it consistently even when you don't see immediate results. Ask: “What is one thing I can do today to keep my roots growing?”
⚔️ Step into the Forge. Listen, reflect and grow.
What if the season of life that feels slow, uncertain or stuck is actually doing some of the most important work beneath the surface?
In Episode 21 I explore the idea of root growth, the invisible work happening within us when the results aren't obvious. We talk about why we often measure growth only by what we can see, how difficult seasons can develop patience, self awareness and resilience and why depth isn't the same thing as delay.
The goal isn’t always to move faster... sometimes it’s to go deeper.
Ready? Step into the Forge. Hit play on YouTube below or listen on Spotify.
MindForge Podcast Episode 21 Link:
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