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The Hidden Ways You Might Have Grown Up This Year

3 questions to close out the year.

Kathleen Smith

Dec 31

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Woolly Hare. Ladakh, India. Source: Shutterstock.

I love thinking about THE NEXT THING. I have a new goal planner, and the idea of setting new goals for 2026 manages a great deal of anxiety in me.

But some kinds of progress are harder to spot. Maturity cannot be measured like blood pressure or income. It comes and goes, emerging when one manages to catch a wave of anxiety and ride above its surface.

Here are three questions for you that might shine a light on those moments. Like most kinds of growth, they emerge when we somehow manage to be interested in ourselves and others, rather than ashamed of our own predictability.

Where did increased anxiety indicate progress?

People tend to label calmer moments as evidence of growth. What were the moments where you felt stirred up, but knew you were moving in the right direction? When did moving towards someone instead of avoiding them, or letting someone do something for themselves, or learning to do something yourself, leave you feeling a little fried, but a little more capable?

Sometimes being stirred up means you did a thing.

Where was I able to see other people’s behaviors with more neutrality?

Before you go and get salty in the comments, neutrality does not mean you agree with or enable someone’s behavior. Neutrality is the capacity to take that top of the stadium view and see how adaptations emerge in relationship systems. Yes, maybe your boss doesn’t do anything, but also everybody knows that and does stuff for him. Yes, you mother and her sister seemed to have stopped talking over a petty issue, but the family has also managed tension through cutoff for many generations.

Neutrality frees you up more to respond to difficult situations and people with your own principles.

Where was I able to see my own behaviors with more neutrality?

Passion may create some behavioral changes, but I think some curiosity about how you’ve adapted to life’s challenges, is essential. So where were you less hard on yourself and more curious, even if you weren’t able to completely change an impulse? Show some respect for your automatic functioning, and you’re more likely to invite a new way of operating to the table.

What would you add to this list? What are measures of growth that have less to do with how many books you read, or how many miles you ran, and more to do with how you engaged challenging situations and relationships?

Happy New Year! Cheers to seeing people a little more as they are, not as we wish or fear them to be. That includes you.

News from Kathleen

Exciting news! The paperback version of True to You is dropping in March. You can preorder it wherever you buy books. If you’d like me to speak to your group about it, you can email me.

Email me if you want me to speak to your group or are interested in doing coaching with me.

Buy my books True to You and Everything Isn’t Terrible for more in-depth stories of people working on their relationships and themselves. If you love them, consider giving them a review on Amazon so other folks can find them. If you haven’t gotten the free digital workbooks for them, email me.