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Evergreen
I love an analogy. When I think about growth, I picture a tree.
A seed gets dropped into the ground, covered, fed, given water and sunlight. It sprouts, becomes a sapling, and stretches upward year after year. Eventually it produces fruit, drops seeds, and the cycle continues.
It’s simple and clean. But almost too clean. And lately, that model has been fraying for me.
The Nature of Growth
I started with a basic question, when does a tree stop growing?
It turns out, trees don’t exactly stop. They stop growing taller at some point, limited by physics and environment, but they don’t stop growing. They grow differently.
They widen. They add rings. They send out new branches and leaves. They bear fruit. The form of growth shifts based on the tree, its environment, and where it is in its life.
Growth evolves.
That feels a lot closer to my own experience.
Growing Up
There was a time when growth meant getting taller. More title, more recognition, more clients, more output. More, more, more.
That kind of growth is visible. It’s easy to measure, easy to compare, and easy to chase. And for a while, it worked.
But it also has limits.
At some point, I realized that pushing upward all the time wasn’t sustainable. The physics of the situation would only allow so much. I had hit my ceiling, I just didn’t realize it yet, and I was about to find out the hard way.
Sustainability
I used to approach workouts the same way. Every session was about more weight or faster time. Progress meant beating the last number.
It worked, until it didn’t. I burned out, physically and mentally. I had to stop running for six months just to recover. When I came back, I was slower, at least by my old standards, and healthier.
Now, showing up is success. My 100% changes day to day. I work with what I have instead of chasing what I used to be.
That didn’t feel like growth at first. It felt good to be out running again, to be moving, to be doing something, but it also felt like backing off, like I was waiting to reclaim my former glory. Over time, though, it became clear this was growth too, just not taller. I was sustaining my body, sustaining my workouts, and growing my capacity to understand how to approach myself and my well-being.
Growing Wider
I used to think growth meant acquiring new skills. And it does, sometimes.
But there’s another kind of growth that comes from using the same skills repeatedly and intentionally. Refining them. Stress-testing them. Learning their edges and possibilities. There’s a depth that develops through directed repetition.
From the outside, it’s almost invisible. You can see a new certification or a new role. You can’t always see how someone thinks differently, responds differently, or creates impact in a nuanced, more precise way.
It’s like the rings of a tree. The height is obvious, but you have to look inside to see the depth.
Not Shrinking
A tree produces leaves and fruit in cycles. They grow, ripen, and fall away. That doesn’t make the tree taller or wider, but it matters. It feeds the ecosystem and sustains the tree itself.
In my life, this looks like the basics. Eating well, moving my body, staying connected to people I care about. These aren’t dramatic changes, but they are essential. Miss them for a while, and the impact becomes obvious. Not as growth, but as decline. Things start shrinking.
This is maintenance. And maintenance is growth. It keeps things alive. It keeps things possible.
Maturing
Not everything that lasts gets bigger. Some things get richer.
Wine develops complexity over time. So do relationships and craft. But not everything improves with age. Some things spoil. I love the saying “Does it age like wine or like milk?”
Time alone doesn’t create growth. The conditions matter, the care matters, as does the nature of the thing itself. Maturing is a different form of growth, too.
A New Season for Growth
So when I step back, growth isn’t one direction. It’s not just upward.
It’s outward, inward, cyclical, and sometimes simply sustaining what’s already here. Some of it is obvious, some of it is invisible, and all of it counts.
Like the tree, what growth looks like changes over time.
A Small Note
I think of these experiences like refilling a pillbox. Each one is a vitamin I take to stay healthy. And when I fill it, I repeat a small mantra I’ve been saying for years:
Another week.
This week, I’m putting these vitamins into my pillbox:
- Depth: growing wider, not just taller
- Sustainability: choosing what can last
- Care: tending what keeps you going