Thriving is to grow vigorously and flourish. To gain wealth or possessions and prosper. To progress towards or realize a goal despite circumstances.
The moment you decided to leave the job you must have had a lifestyle in mind where you will have flexible working hours, a team of your choice, financial stability, and an easier life.
What happened? Are you getting what you desired? Or, are you working even more than before yet worrying about managing your expenses?
If so, stop for a while and ponder, are you thriving or surviving in your enterprise or chosen work?
But first, let me tell you what exactly is thriving and surviving.
Let’s try out a quick activity. Step out of your house, take a walk, and observe your surroundings. We often think of nature as a habitat of survival. However, if you pay attention, you’ll realize that nature is always thriving!
You can view it in the way birds migrate or squirrels store their food — it may look like survival, but they’re thriving in their environments. They’re seeking new ways to adapt to their surroundings and progress ahead in their lives.
To understand this better, let’s break down the key concepts.
Surviving – To continue to live or exist, especially after coming close to dying or being destroyed; or being in a difficult or threatening situation. Living in the default mode.
Thriving – To grow vigorously and flourish. To gain wealth or possessions and prosper. To progress towards or realize a goal despite circumstances.
We often get stuck in a default (survival) mode for no fault of our own. This is usually because we are just reacting to circumstances, and have no time for creative thought or solutions.
To survive, we then focus on what is urgent, like payment collection and the desperate need to fill our order books, and when the orders come in we are struggling to meet deadlines and maintain quality. In this situation, we do not have time for any CREATIVE actions.
For example, if you remember, you were ‘stuck’ at a job that you disliked, but you could not leave it because of your monthly requirements and mortgage payments.
Now, daily urgencies don’t give you time to think of Innovation & Growth. Even if you do, you don’t seem to get the resources to do it. This inevitably leads to stagnancy.
How is growth possible in stagnancy?
To understand this better, we must ask ourselves two essential questions:
Where am I trusting my survival instincts?
Where am I avoiding my thriving potential?
We often adopt an escapist mindset, hiding from the world that overwhelms us to find peace. However, while this may be an effective coping mechanism, it locks us in our stagnancy and prevents us from thriving. Simply put, it’s a matter of perspective, and to achieve growth, we need to direct our attention to possibilities and opportunities to succeed. We must understand what brings us joy, find our purpose in life, and work to achieve it.
Step out of your comfort zone
Another aspect of this is how we view what’s ‘normal’. Normalcy is what we commonly call our comfort zone. In a comfort zone, you experience low levels of anxiety and stress. You feel at ease and in control of your surroundings and perceive the world as familiar. This may never stand out to us because it grows into a habitual process; we seek out what we know. But we can observe this in all our practices and preferences, be it in the company we keep or the food we like to eat.
We chase what we believe is normal to maintain stability within our survival mindset. But we must step out of our comfort zones to build and find opportunities.
Ask yourself: Where do you create your life as normal rather than a source of infinite possibilities?
To create infinite possibilities, we must choose to change our mindset.
A decision is a conclusion or resolution reached after deep consideration. But a choice connects to the position of desirable intention, values, and beliefs. Our choices define who we are.
Do we blame our circumstances?
Or do we choose to take ownership of our own lives and seek possibilities for action?
A popular trend that explains this is adopting an entrepreneurial spirit. Every other person wants to be an entrepreneur nowadays. While your goal may be financial security and prosperity, entrepreneurs can only achieve it by taking charge of the opportunities they find. And if they don’t see any, they build their prospects.
You can have wealth yet be a poor man. A rich man, even if not wealthy, is someone who constantly learns from his mistakes, takes action, and consistently explores his surroundings. He also helps others succeed.
To thrive, you must gradually begin to let go of the chains from your past and seek a more meaningful existence, bringing joy and happiness to yourself and others.
You can only accomplish this by realizing your ‘true self’, developing your potential, and securing the means to do so.
Yes, resolve to start THRIVING from today, not just surviving.
Photo courtesy: joanakompa.com
