When does growth become toxic?
Could real growth start when we stop trying to?
I was in a basement in Neil’s Yard in London, taking one of my first ashtanga yoga classes. A mild-mannered teacher gently held his hand on my back, trying to help me touch my toes.
“Stop trying, relax, breathe… Drop the effort, breathe… Let go, breathe…”
What did he mean, stop trying? The entire point of that asana was to hold your feet with your knees straight, no? If only I could push myself a bit harder, I would reach my toes…
And then it hit me. If I stop making an effort and instead let the body relax on the out-breath, my torso naturally moves forward a few millimetres. And then a few more on the next out-breath. The less I try to get into an asana and the more I relax, the easier it will be.
I later learned the same lesson applies to meditation. I can’t make my mind do anything for longer than a few seconds, and I can’t force it to be quiet or concentrated. But it does become calmer and more focused if I stop trying to make it happen and let it be as it is.
Paradoxically, progress in meditation starts when we stop trying to make progress. In a way, a real sign of progress is to drop the idea of progress. It just is what it is — not from a defeated, resigned perspective, but from a wise and accepting perspective.
Yet, effort still matters, of course. We need to make an effort to start and commit to a yoga or meditation practice and keep showing up on the mat or the cushion year after year, even when it’s difficult. Here, wisdom is knowing when to push and when to let go, and we learn it when we try different approaches and reflect on the results.
Our civilisation is wildly off-balance when it comes to economic growth. We know how to grow the economic pie but don’t know how to let go, even when it’s blindingly obvious that we’re destroying the planet in the process without becoming much happier ourselves. My friend Arunjay just wrote about precisely this:
And on the individual level, we tend to be obsessed with endless personal growth. We often take it for granted that we should aim to get “1% better every day”, constantly learn new things or grow in some way. Shouldn’t everyone get a coach, a therapist and a part-time executive MBA, too?
I remember when I was a kid, I figured out the rules of a programming language1 without a manual, by trial and error and by reading a few samples. I was so overcome with joy that I ran to my Mum to tell her how cool it was that I could now write scripts myself! That was a pure joy of learning something new.
Today, more often than now I find myself feeling like I must learn something new, or else something bad will happen. I “must” keep abreast of the latest developments in AI or I will be left behind. I “must” learn the latest science on supplements or I won’t be as healthy as I could 40 years from now.
I see the same among those I know and work with. It feels like we largely forgot how to let go and when to stop, only remembering how to push and force.
Another friend of mine, Hector, wrote about taking a wonderful lesson out of spending five weeks in Italy: “live a little”:
Well, I certainly won’t go back to drinking- sobriety has been life changing- but, to put it on record, I shall endeavour to live a little more.
To go with flow. To take life completely life as it comes. To surrender.
That’s when I’m at my best.
I think that’s when we’re all at our best. When we know when to make and effort and when to let go. When to push and when to give up. When the strength looks like grit and when strength looks like bowing out.
I’m glad that our civilisation learned how to create wealth. I’m sad that our civilisation doesn’t know to restrain its wealth creation.
I’m happy to see people learning and growing — I’m a coach, after all. I’m disappointed to see growth becoming toxic, when we’re driven by a feeling that we’re somehow not enough if we don’t grow by “1% every day”, whatever that means.
Sometimes, we need to grow. Sometimes, we need to learn that growth means something different or even doesn’t look like growth. Of course, growth matters, but then everything is healthy in moderation, including growth, lest it becomes toxic. Unconstrained, toxic growth is cancer, quite literally and quite deadly.
How do we find where the balance is? We need to find our own way — if I tried to give you an answer you wouldn’t thank me later — but our own way will likely be found when our mind is clear and calm, alert and grounded, when we aren’t being pulled in a myriad directions by voices of fear or craving. Somewhere deep inside, you know where that is.
May this essay help you sense what growth looks like to you today :)
On a separate note, on Wednesday you’ll receive the first episode of my podcast, Startup CEO Succession, where I’ll be talking about building trust between founders and investors with Rory Stirling, partner at Connect Ventures (and a subscriber!):
MS-DOS batch files, if you know what I’m talking about.
Great nuance, Evgeny. I was talking recently with someone about how stress is good for you in moderation, this is well known, it's how exercise works. But too much stress and it's becomes a net negative. In work, a deadline can help focus attention but if we lose the joy of the process and it becomes a chore, fear can disrupt our creative process and the work loses out.
Such a great post Evgeny 👊