Change vs. Growth

There’s a powerful difference between change and growth—and once you understand it, it can transform the way you approach your life and your relationships.

Now, both involve something becoming different—but not all change is growth.

Change occurs from circumstance. We make a shift because what was working no longer is, due to things outside of ourselves.

Many people begin therapy or addiction recovery this way. They hit rock bottom or are about to lose something of greater importance to them—so they agree to go.

That doesn’t discount the effort. Yet, if it’s not internalized, then once circumstances become more favorable again, that’s when people relapse. Because their shift in behavior was dependent on something—or someone—else.

I like to say, traffic lights and seasons change—and then they change back again.

But growth is different.

Think about a tree. Even though seasons change, a tree grows within those seasons. And once it grows, it’s transformed. It’s a new version of itself and doesn’t return to what it once was. It can’t become a sapling again.

Many people struggling in relationships will wait for someone else to change their behavior before committing to their own efforts. It becomes a kind of unspoken contract: “You do your part, and then I’ll do mine.”

And when both people have that mindset, the relationship gets stuck!

But real growth doesn’t work that way.

You can change your job or switch out your spouse and still carry the same patterns with you. That’s change without growth.

Years ago, I began to notice a dysfunctional pattern in my own life. People from different areas of my life who were disconnected from one other, were giving me the same message.

I had an emotional sensitivity to feedback—even constructive feedback that would have helped me. I didn’t receive it as information. I perceived it as criticism and reacted defensively by justifying my behavior and often hurling criticism back.

But all that did was keep me stagnant and repeating the pattern.

There’s a powerful quote from Viktor Frankl, an Austrian neurologist and Holocaust survivor, who, after experiencing the helplessness of being unable to change his circumstances in the camp, wrote: “When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”

We can spend our lives trying to change everyone else… or we can begin the work of growth. And only one of those is truly within our control.

Relational growth begins when you become more dissatisfied with your own reactive patterns than you are with the other person.

When you stop insisting that others change first—and instead decide to grow regardless of what they do—transformation occurs.