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• Growth:  The process of developing physically, mentally, or spiritually.  Oxford Dictionary
• Growth: Progressive development:  Evolution.  Merriam Webster
• Learning,  Transcendence,  Transformation,  Evolution, Potential,  Progress

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As human beings, we are born to grow…

• All the evidence that we have indicates that it is reasonable to assume in practically every human being… that there is an active will toward health, an impulse towards growth. Abraham Maslow
• I want to grow. I want to be better. You Grow. We all grow. We’re made to grow. You either evolve or you disappear. Tupac Shakur
• There was that law of life, so cruel and so just, that one must grow or else pay more for remaining the same. Norman Mailer
• Ever since I was a child I have had this instinctive urge for expansion and growth. To me, the function and duty of a quality human being is the sincere and honest development of one’s potential. Bruce Lee
• What is the most rigorous law of our being? Growth. No smallest atom of our moral, mental, or physical structure can stand still a year. It grows — it must grow; nothing can prevent it. Mark Twain
• All the evidence that we have indicates that it is reasonable to assume in practically every human being, and certainly in almost every newborn baby, that there is an active will toward health, an impulse towards growth, or towards the actualization. Abraham Maslow
• What I know for sure is this: You are built not to shrink down to less, but to blossom into more. To be more splendid. To be more extraordinary. To use every moment to fill yourself up. Oprah Winfrey

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… for growth is the main evidence of life…

• Growth is the only evidence of life. John Henry
• Every moment of one’s existence, one is growing into more or retreating into less. One is always living a little more or dying a little bit. Norman Mailer
• Life is growth. If we stop growing, technically and spiritually, we are as good as dead. Morihei Ueshiba
• If we don’t change, we don’t grow. If we don’t grow, we are not really living. Gail Sheehy
• If you stop searching, you stop living, because then you’re dwelling in the past. If you’re not reaching forward to any growth or future, you might as well be dead. Wynn Bullock
• If it’s not growing, it’s going to die. Michael Eisner
• Are you green and growing or ripe and rotting? Ray Kroc
• When a bonsai stops growing, you know it’s dead. Japanese Proverb

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… and we were born to reach our potential

• What a man can be, he must be. Abraham Maslow
• The human goal: to actualize oneself. Bruce Lee
• To become what we are capable of becoming is the only end in life. Robert Louis Stevenson
• Let each become all that he was created capable of being. Thomas Carlyle
• Man is asked to make of himself what he is supposed to become to fulfill his destiny. Paul Tillich
• The real point of being alive is to evolve into the whole person you were intended to be. Oprah Winfrey
• Man’s main task in life is to give birth to himself, to become what he potentially is. Erich Fromm
• Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you. Ralph Waldo Emerson
• You may be better than the rest, but you are not a success until you have made the effort to become the best you can be. John Wooden
• I am not myself; I am the potential of myself. Anna Deavere Smith
• Make the most of yourself, because that’s all there is of you. Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Arise, transcend Thyself, Thou art man and the whole nature of man Is to become more than himself. Sri Aurobindo
• Potential

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Life is the perfect arena for growth

• Every situation, every moment, provides the opportunity for self- growth and development of your character. David Reynolds
• When you see the value of continued growth, the circumstances around you become stepping stones. Clyde M. Narrimore
• The entire universe is a university. Everything and everybody is a professor to us. We constantly learn from everybody and everything. We learn even more through pain than through pleasure. Whether we want it to or not, the world will give us the experiences we need and make us grow. Sri Swami Satchidananda
• All of life’s experiences are teachers in some sense, challenging us to grow and evolve. David Emerald
• The spiritual being sees the physical world as an arena for growth and learning with the specific purpose of serving and evolving into higher levels of love. Wayne Dyer
• Things do not happen to you, they happen for you. There is an opportunity for you to grow in every situation. Neale Donald Walsch
• Life is a university

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Growth leads to happiness and joy…

• I grow to experience greater happiness, not to improve or because I feel incomplete. Wayne Dyer
• Growth itself contains the germ of happiness. Pearl S. Buck
• Happiness doesn’t come from living a lukewarm life, always wondering what could have been. Happiness comes as a result of being in our natural state of growth and living up to our fullest potential. T. Harv Eker
• Do you want my one-word secret of happiness? It’s growth– mental, financial, you name it. Harold S. Geneen
• Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that but simply growth, We are happy when we are growing. William Butler Yeats
• Comfort kills! If your goal in life is to be comfortable, I guarantee two things. First, you will never be rich. Second, you will never be happy. Happiness doesn’t come from living a lukewarm life, always wondering what could have been. Happiness comes as a result of being in our natural state of growth and living up to our fullest potential. T. Harv Eker
• The joy of life consists in the exercise of one’s energies, continual growth, constant change, the enjoyment of every new experience. To stop means simply to die. The eternal mistake of mankind is to set up an attainable ideal. Aleister Crowley
• Happiness,  Joy

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… and many other good things

• Nothing is lost upon a person who is bent upon growth; nothing is wasted on one who is always preparing for his work and life by keeping eyes, mind, and heart open to nature, men, books, experience. Such a man finds ministries to his education on all sides; everything cooperates with his passion for growth. Hamilton Mabie
• Only in growth, reform, and change, paradoxically enough, is true security to be found. Ann Morrow Lindbergh
• There is no satisfaction that can compare with looking back across the years and finding you’ve grown in self- control, judgment, generosity, and unselfishness. Ella Wheeler Wilcox
• A feeling of continuous growth is a wonderful source of motivation and self-confidence. Brian Tracy
• Without continual growth and progress, such words as improvement, achievement, and success have no meaning. Benjamin Franklin

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We pay a heavy price for not growing

• If we do not rise to the challenge of our unique capacity to shape our lives, to seek the kinds of growth that we find individually fulfilling, then we can have no security: we will live in a world of sham, in which our selves are determined by the will of others, in which we will be constantly buffeted and increasingly isolated by the changes round us. Nena O’Neil
• We were meant to grow. When we don’t grow, we seek diversions- – some harmless (if unproductive), others destructive– to fill the emptiness. Jim Clemmer
• Love dies only when growth stops. Pearl S. Buck
• Rustout is the slow death that follows when we stop making the choices that keep life alive. It’s the feeling of numbness that comes from always taking the safe way, never accepting new challenges, continually surrendering to the day-to-day routine. Rustout means we are no longer growing, but at best, are simply maintaining. It implies that we have traded the sensation of life for the security of a paycheck…Rustout is the opposite of burnout. Burnout is overdoing. Rustout is underbeing. Richard Leider
• The minute a man ceases to grow, no matter what his years, that minute he begins to be old. James William
• There was that law of life, so cruel and so just, that one must grow or else pay more for remaining the same. Norman Mailer

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Be ready to grow throughout life

• Life is about growth. People are not perfect when they’re 21 years old. Bill Walton
• All of us need to grow continuously in our lives. Les Brown
• I think that our fundamental belief is that for us growth is a way of life and we have to grow at all times. Mukesh Ambani

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The best way to grow is step by step…

• The most momentous leaps of growth commonly have as their springboard fairly modest first steps. Nathaniel Branden
• Step by step is the law of growth. God does not expect the acorn to be a mighty oak before it has become a sapling. George E. Carpenter
• Don’t look for the big, quick improvement. Seek the small improvement one day at a time. That’s the only way it happens—and when it happens, it lasts. John Wooden

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… realising that growth is often two steps forward, one step back

• Growth is an erratic forward movement: two steps forward, one step back. Remember that and be very gentle with yourself. Julia Cameron

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Be patient for growth can take time to become evident

• One of the clever adaptive qualities of bamboo is that it grows its leaves in the summer and its roots in the winter. It takes advantage of each season, and while it appears dormant, it is not. The roots grown in winter prepare for rapid branch and leaf development in summer. We, too, go through seasons, all of which afford us opportunities for different kinds of growth. In a prosperous economic season, there is a lot of building and external expansion. When an economic winter comes, with little activity in the outer world, that is the time for inner deepening. Alan Cohen
• The trees that are slow to grow bear the best fruit. Moliere
• Be patient with yourself. Self-growth is tender; it’s holy ground.  Stephen Covey
• I think that one’s art is a growth inside one. I do not think one can explain growth. It is silent and subtle. One does not keep digging up a plant to see how it grows. Emily Carr

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Be committed to your growth

• It takes a deep commitment to change and an even deeper commitment to grow. Ralph Ellison
• Commitment

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Grow by being courageous and prepared to take risks…

• It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are. E. E. Cummings
• If we’re growing, we’re always going to be out of our comfort zone. John C. Maxwell
• One can choose to go back toward safety or forward toward growth. Growth must be chosen again and again; fear must be overcome again and again. Abraham Maslow
• Change and growth take place when a person has risked himself and dares to become involved with experimenting with his own life. Herbert Otto
• If you play it safe in life you’ve decided that you don’t want to grow any more. Shirley Hufstedler
• To grow is sometimes to hurt; but who would return to smallness? Sarah Patton Boyle
• It is confidence in our bodies, minds and spirits that allows us to keep looking for new adventures, new directions to grow in, and new lessons to learn – which is what life is all about. Oprah Winfrey
• Fear, uncertainty and discomfort are your compasses toward growth. Celestine Chua
• All change is not growth; as all movement is not forward. Ellen Glasgow
• The person who risks nothing, does nothing, has nothing, and becomes nothing. He may avoid suffering and sorrow, but he simply cannot learn and feel and change and grow and love and live. Leo Buscaglia
• Growth demands a temporary surrender of security. Gail Sheehy
• Courage,  Risk taking

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… for all growth is a leap into the unknown

• All growth is a leap in the dark, a spontaneous, unpremeditated act without benefit of experience. Henry Miller
• Growth means change and change involves risk, stepping from the known to the unknown. George Shinn
• The unknown

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Grow through difficult times and challenges

• It is heartening to realize that although we may crave comfort and routine, we nourish the soul’s growth primarily through what is hard. Robert K. Cooper
• Life will provide challenges. It’s an intrinsic part of living. See the value in each challenge. It is an opportunity for growth and learning. Love challenges like an athlete loves training. Behram
• Out of difficulties grow miracles. Jean De La Bruyere
• Researchers have studied people’s responses to a variety of traumas. When a challenge or trauma is profound, unsettling a person’s foundations and forcing him to confront his personal priorities, sense of meaning and identity, a small subset of individuals report personal growth, strengthening and even thriving. Sonja Lyubomirsky
• The entire universe is a university. Everything and everybody is a professor to us. We constantly learn from everybody and everything. We learn even more through pain than through pleasure. Whether we want it to or not, the world will give us the experiences we need and make us grow. Sri Swami Satchidananda
• There are infinite possibilities within every challenge. My seeds of potential are watered when I say yes to me. I am growing more powerful with every storm I endure. Darren R. Weissman
• There is no growth without crisis. Richard Rose
• To live is to have problems and to solve problems is to grow intellectually. P. Guilford
• We learn even more through pain than through pleasure. Whether we want it to or not, the world will give us the experiences we need and make us grow. Sri Swami Satchidananda
• When a life is too easy, there are fewer opportunities for genuine growth. Richard Carlson
• When life is sweet, say thank you and celebrate. And when life is bitter, say thank you and grow. Shauna Niequist
• When we long for life without difficulties, remind us that oaks grow strong in contrary winds and diamonds are made under pressure. Peter Marshall
• When you look at life and its many challenges as a test, or series of tests, you begin to see each issue you face as an opportunity to grow, a chance to roll with the punches. Richard Carlson
• You will not grow if you sit in a beautiful flower garden, but you will grow if you are sick, if you are in pain, if you experience losses, and if you do not put your head in the sand, but take the pain and learn to accept it, not as a curse or punishment but as a gift to you with a very, very specific purpose. Elizabeth Kubler- Ross
• If you study the lives of successful people, you will find that often their success was not in spite of their life challenges but because of them. They took what happened to them and used it to help them grow. They stopped telling everyone how much they were wronged and began to look for the blessings in their challenges. Will Bowen
• If you will call your troubles experiences and remember that every experience develops some latent force within you, you will grow vigorous and happy, however adverse your circumstances may seem to be. John Heywood
• In the Buddhist tradition, difficulties are considered to be so important to a life of growth and peace that a Tibetan prayer actually asks for them. It says, “Grant that I may be given appropriate difficulties and sufferings on this journey so that my heart may be truly awakened, and my practice of liberation and universal compassion may be truly fulfilled. Richard Carlson
• Only by contending with challenges that seem to be beyond your strength to handle at the moment you can grow more surely toward the stars. Brian Tracy
• Difficulties are meant to rouse, not discourage. The human spirit is to grow by conflict. William E. Channing
• Don’t wish for an easier life. Wish to be at your finest. Just as the finest, most expensive wine comes from the grape that can stand the greatest resistance, you too will grow in direct proportion to the resistance you can sustain. James Arthur Ray
• Essence loves undesirable experiences as much as it loves desirable ones, sometimes even more because of their potential for growth. Gina Lake
• I love the man that can smile in time of trouble, that can gather strength from distress and grow brave by reflection. Thomas Paine
• If our vocabulary did not contain the words trouble, adversity, calamity and grief, it could not contain the words, bravery, patience and self- sacrifice. Those who know no hardships will know no hardihood. Those who face no calamity will need no courage. Mysterious though it is, the human characteristics we admire most grow in a soil with a strong mixture of trouble. Dale Turner
• If you are going through a time of discouragement, there is a time of great personal growth ahead. Oswald Chambers
• We grow because we struggle, we learn and overcome. C. Allen
• Strength and growth come only through continuous effort and struggle. Napoleon Hill
• Good timber does not grow with ease. The stronger the wind the stronger the trees. Douglas Malloch
• Adversity,  Challenge

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Grow through problems

• Real transformation begins when you embrace your problems as agents for growth. Michael Singer
• If you have a big problem in your life, all that means is that you are being a small person! Grow and your problems will shrink. T. Harv Eker
• Every problem is a gift – without problems we would not grow. Tony Robbins
• I have always grown from my problems and challenges, from the things that don’t work out, that’s when I’ve really learned. Carol Burnett
• God doesn’t want us merely to ‘get through’ our problems. He wants us to ‘grow through them.’ Gary Oliver
• Problem solving

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Grow through failure

• Those who understand that failure is inextricably linked with achievement are the ones who learn, grow, and ultimately do well. Learn to fail, or fail to learn. Tal Ben-Shahar
• Don’t be afraid to fail. Don’t waste energy trying to cover up failure. Learn from your failures and go on to the next challenge. It’s OK to fail. If you’re not failing, you’re not growing. Stanley Judd
• Keep on beginning and failing. Each time you fail, start all over again, and you will grow stronger until you have accomplished a purpose – not the one you began with perhaps, but one you’ll be glad to remember. Anne Sullivan
• We pay a heavy price for our fear of failure. It is a powerful obstacle to growth. It assures the progressive narrowing of the personality and prevents exploration and experimentation. There is no learning without some difficulty and fumbling. If you want to keep on learning, you must keep on risking failure – all your life. John W. Gardner
• Every event has a purpose and every setback a lesson. Failure is essential to personal expansion. It brings inner growth and a whole host of psychic rewards. Never regret your past. Rather embrace it as the teacher it is. Robin S. Sharma
• Failure

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Grow through making mistakes

• Everything we enjoy in society is a direct result of the accumulated learning derived from millions of mistakes. No mistakes, no progress. Yet we still look at making a mistake as embarrassing, wrong, an act bordering on sin. If you’re making mistakes, it means you’re doing new things, taking risks, stretching yourself. You’re growing, learning. And isn’t the journey, the experience, not the destination, what life is all about? Robert White
• Mistakes are the growing pains of wisdom. William Jordan
• Creativity is inventing, experimenting, growing, taking risks, breaking rules, making mistakes, and having fun. Mary Lou Coo
• You get a new cue from your inner Self and simply say, ‘I missed my cue, so let’s do a second take.’ Your willingness to take the risk of making a mistake is actually an expression of courage and a willingness to grow from them. Mistakes are about getting the blessing in the lesson and the lesson in the blessing. Michael Beckwith
• Change and growth take place when a person has risked himself and dares to become involved with experimenting with his own life. Herbert Otto
• Try it out. Play around with a new idea. Do something strange. If you never leave your comfort zone, you won’t grow. Jessica Hagy
• Mistakes

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Grow by embracing change

• Life is change. Growth is optional. Choose wisely. Karen Kaiser Clark
• To be able to look at change as an opportunity to grow–that is the secret to being happy. Joan Lunden
• Change is inevitable, growth is intentional. Glenda Cloud
• The only way that we can live, is if we grow. The only way that we can grow is if we change. The only way that we can change is if we learn. The only way we can learn is if we are exposed. And the only way that we can become exposed is if we throw ourselves out into the open. Do it. Throw yourself. JoyBell
• If we don’t change, we don’t grow. If we don’t grow, we aren’t really living. Gail Sheehy
• We can go confidently into the future and accept the change that growth demands only if we have firm roots in the past, in a living tradition. Leonard Foley
• The only way that we can live, is if we grow. The only way that we can grow is if we change. The only way that we can change is if we learn. JoyBell C.
• Life is change. Growth is optional. Choose wisely.
• Mere change is not growth. Growth is the synthesis of change and continuity, and where there is no continuity there is no growth. S. Lewis
• Everything will change. The only question is growing up or decaying. Nikki Giovanni
• Change

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Grow on the way to achieving your goals

• Goals are a means to an end, not the ultimate purpose of our lives. They are simply a tool to concentrate our focus and move us in a direction. They only reason we really pursue goals is to cause ourselves to expand and grow. Achieving goals by themselves will never make us happy in the long term; it’s who you become, as you overcome the obstacles necessary to achieve your goals, that can give you the deepest and most long-lasting sense of fulfilment. Tony Robbins
• Everyone wants to live on top of the mountain, but all the happiness and growth occurs while you’re climbing it. Andy Rooney
• Goal setting

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Grow by stretching your comfort zone

• Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow. Ralph Waldo Emerson
• If we’re growing, we’re always going to be out of our comfort zone. John Maxwell
• You only ever grow as a human being if you’re outside your comfort zone. Percy Cerutty
• You can only grow if you’re willing to feel awkward and uncomfortable when you try something new. Brian Tracy
• Nobody ever died of discomfort, yet living in the name of comfort has killed more ideas, more opportunities, more actions, and more growth than everything else combined. Comfort kills! Harv Eker
• Move out of your comfort zone. You can only grow if you are willing to feel awkward and uncomfortable when you try something new. Brian Tracy
• I’m continually trying to make choices that put me against my own comfort zone. As long as you’re uncomfortable, it means you’re growing. Ashton Kutcher
• Whenever you feel uncomfortable, instead of retreating back into your old comfort zone, pat yourself on the back and say, “I must be growing,” and continue moving forward. Harv Eker
• Stretch your comfort zone

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Grow by learning

• Develop a passion for learning. If you do, you will never cease to grow. Anthony J. D’Angelo
• The purpose of learning is growth, and our minds, unlike our bodies, can continue growing as we continue to live. Mortimer Adler
• Learning

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Grow by spending time with the right people

• I’ve learned that the easiest way for me to grow as a person is to surround myself with people smarter than I am. Andy Rooney
• No person is your friend who demands silence or denies your right to grow. Alice Walker
• We find comfort among those who agree with us — growth among those who don’t. Frank A. Clark
• I align myself with people who support my growth. If you meet someone whose soul is not aligned with yours, send them love and move along. Wayne Dyer
• Surround yourself with positive people

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Grow by helping others to grow

• We need to give each other the space to grow, to be ourselves, to exercise our diversity. We need to give each other space so that we may both give and receive such beautiful things as ideas, openness, dignity, joy, healing, and inclusion. Max De Pree
• The growth and development of people is the highest calling of leadership. Harvey Firestone
• In my early professional years, I was asking the question: How can I treat, or cure, or change this person? Now I would phrase the question in this way: How can I provide a relationship which this person may use for his own personal growth. Carl Rogers
• If you want to help others with their growth, work on your own. If you want to work on your own growth, help others with theirs. Walter D. Pullen
• Making a difference

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Here are some more ways to grow

• The strongest principle of growth lies in the human choice. George Eliot
• All growth depends upon activity. There is no development physically or intellectually without effort, and effort means work. Calvin Coolidge
• In every area, working with what you habitually reject is one of the best ways to facilitate growth and transformation. Bernard Glassman
• The question for the true student of growth is: What has to happen for the stuff that strengthens you and moves you forward in life to be considered fun? James Arthur Ray
• Growth begins when we begin to accept our own weakness. Jean Vanier
• The spirit of self-help is the root of all genuine growth in the individual. Samuel Smiles
• Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space lies our freedom and power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and happiness. Stephen Covey
• We grow a little every time we do not take advantage of somebody’s weakness. Bern Williams

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We need to grow in all areas of life

• The key to success is to keep growing in all areas of life – mental, emotional, spiritual, as well as physical. Julius Erving
• We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations. Anais Nin

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Grow your mind

• Only ideas keep ideas flowing. When we close our minds to what is new, simply because we decide not to bother with it, we close our minds to our responsibility to ourselves – and to others – to keep on growing. Joan Chittister
• Your mind grows through use. Grenville Kleiser
• When we blindly adopt a religion, a political system, a literary dogma, we become automatons. We cease to grow. Anais Nin
• A mind stretched to a new idea never goes back to its original dimensions. Oliver Wendall Holmes
• Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death. Albert Einstein
• The mind

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Grow your spirit

• The spiritual being sees the physical world as an arena for growth and learning with the specific purpose of serving and evolving into higher levels of love. Wayne Dyer
• If we are the same as we were last year, we are worse, for the spiritual life was meant to grow. Thomas G. Morrow
• The body grows slowly and steadily but the soul grows by leaps and bounds. It may come to its full stature in an hour. M. Montgomery
• The key to growth is the introduction of higher dimensions of consciousness into our awareness. Lao Tzu
• Spiritual growth is like learning to walk. We stand up, fall, stand up, fall, take a step, fall, take a couple of steps, fall, walk a little better, wobble a bit, fall, run, and finally, eventually fly.  Geri Larkin
• Every relationship, every situation is part of a divinely created and highly specific curriculum for your soul growth. Marianne Williamson
• With spiritual growth comes new creative potential, leading to the realization that you are pure potential, able to fill any creative impulse. Deepak Chopra
• The quickest way to change your attitude toward pain is to accept the fact that everything that happens to us has been designed for our spiritual growth. Scott Peck
• Compassion needs space because love needs a place of unimpeded encounter between grace and nature. In a world crowded by information, we need to find space for the soul to grow. Ilia Delio
• On the path to love, impossibilities are resolved by turning non-love into love. With spiritual growth comes new creative potential, leading to the realization that you are pure potential, able to fill any creative impulse. Deepak Chopra
• Life is a chance to grow a soul. Powell Davies
• There comes a time in the evolution of every soul when the chief concern is no longer the survival of the physical body, but the growth of the spirit; no longer the attainment of worldly success, but the realization of Self. Neale Donald Walsch
• Your soul already knows that, what it needs is to use the long journey to be able to grow, stretch along the horizon, touch the sky. Paulo Coelho
• Let your soul be an oasis of transformation that takes your life to the next level and fulfills your dreams. Rejoice in your awakening, the future is now and love is in every breath you take. Micheal Teal
• You have to grow from the inside out. None can teach you, none can make you spiritual. There is no other teacher but your own soul. Swami Vivekananda

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Grow and change within

• The fatal metaphor of progress, which means leaving things behind us, has utterly obscured the real idea of growth, which means leaving things inside us. Gilbert K. Chesterton
• Often we seek to grow or change ourselves by adjusting the external aspects of our lives. … We all too often forget that permanent or real change only comes when the center of our being, our inner drives ad motivations, undergoes transformation. Errol Strider

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Grow your strengths, not your weaknesses

• When we’re able to put most of our energy into developing our natural talents, extraordinary room for growth exists. So, a revision to the “You-can- be-anything-you-want-to-be” maxim might be more accurate: You cannot be anything you want to be—but you can be a lot more of who you already are. Tom Rath
• You grow most in your areas of greatest strength. You will improve the most, be the most creative, be the most inquisitive, and bounce back the fastest in those areas where you have already shown some natural advantage over everyone else—your strengths. This doesn’t mean you should ignore your weaknesses. It just means you’ll grow most where you’re already strong. Marcus Buckingham
• You grow the most, learn the most, develop the most in the areas where you already have some natural advantage. Marcus Buckingham
• Each person’s greatest room for growth is in the areas of his or her greatest strength. Donald O. Clifton
• Grow your strengths, not your weaknesses

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• Problems do not go away. They must be worked through or else they remain, forever a barrier to the growth and development of the spirit. Scott Peck
• We pay a heavy price for our fear of failure. It is a powerful obstacle to growth. It assures the progressive narrowing of the personality and prevents exploration and experimentation. There is no learning without some difficulty and fumbling. If you want to keep on learning, you must keep on risking failure – all your life. John W. Gardner
• Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth. John Fitzgerald Kennedy
• Interestingly, koi, when put in a fish bowl, will only grow up to three inches. When this same fish is placed in a large tank, it will grow to about nine inches long. In a pond koi can reach lengths of eighteen inches. Amazingly, when placed in a lake, koi can grow to three feet long. The metaphor is obvious. You are limited by how you see the world. Vince Poscente

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Do you have a fixed mindset or a growth mindset?

• How are you approaching your potential? From the fixed mindset where any given performance is a sign of ultimate potential? Or from the growth mindset where you know that, with diligent, patient, persistent and playful work we can do amazing things over the long run? Carol S. Dweck, Ph.D.
• People can approach a new task with one of two mindsets; the ‘be good” mindset, in which the focus is on proving that we have ability and know what we’re doing; and the ”get better” mindset, in which the focus is on developing ability. Heidi Grant Halvorson

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A fixed mindset is stressful and negates the need to make an effort…

• Believing that your qualities are carved in stone—the fixed mindset—creates an urgency to prove yourself over and over. If you have only a certain amount of intelligence, a certain personality, and a certain moral character—well, then you’d better prove that you have a healthy dose of them. It simply wouldn’t do to look or feel deficient in these most basic characteristics. Carol Dweck, Ph.D.
• With a fixed mindset, success is about proving you’re smart or talented. Validating yourself. Effort is a bad thing. It, like failure, means you’re not smart or talented. If you were, you wouldn’t need effort. It’s startling to see the degree to which people with the fixed mindset do not believe in effort.  Carol S. Dweck, Ph.D.
• In the fixed mindset it’s not enough just to succeed. It’s not enough just to look smart and talented. You have to be pretty much flawless. And you have to be flawless right away. Carol S. Dweck, Ph.D.
• With a fixed mindset our self-worth is on the line with everything we do and failure is something to avoid at all costs. Carol S. Dweck

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… while a growth mindset is motivating and enriching…

• The growth mindset is based on the belief that your basic qualities are things you can cultivate through your efforts. Although people may differ in every which way—in their initial talents and aptitudes, interests, or temperaments—everyone can change and grow through application and experience. Carol Dweck, Ph.D.
• People with the growth mindset know that it takes time for potential to flower. Carol S. Dweck, Ph.D.
• In the fixed-mindset, everything is about the outcome. If you fail—or if you’re not the best—it’s all been wasted. The growth mindset allows people to value what they’re doing regardless of the outcome. Carol S. Dweck, Ph.D.
• There is something about seeing myself improve that motivates and excites me. Jackie Joyner-Kersee

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…and helps you to embrace challenges and obstacles

• With a growth mindset, we embrace challenging opportunities because we know that we can only reach our highest potential by consistently playing at our edges and that the only failure is not really going for it and learning along the way. Carol S. Dweck
• When we are focused on personal growth and development, on making progress rather than on proving ourselves, we deal with difficulty far more gracefully. We tend to see setbacks as informative, rather than as signs of personal failure. We don’t worry as much about the likelihood of success because we know that even if we never do it perfectly, we will certainly improve. And getting better is, after all, the goal.  Heidi Grant Halvorson

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You can consciously change your mindset

• You have a choice. Mindsets are just beliefs. They’re powerful beliefs, but they’re just something in your mind, and you can change your mind. Carol S. Dweck, Ph.D.

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Grow rather than swell

• When I give a man an office, I watch him carefully to see whether he is swelling or growing. Woodrow Wilson
• Some people grow under responsibility, others merely swell. Hubbell

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• You’ve got to do your own growing, no matter how tall your grandfather was. Irish Proverb

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