Yung Pueblo Shares the Golden Key of Personal Growth

Yung Pueblo’s essay originally appeared in the Winter 2022 issue of Tracy Anderson Magazine, available now for digital download and print orders.

Regardless of where you are in your personal growth journey, it’s important to understand a few pillars of truth. First, that your life is shaped by your mind. And second, that your emotional history has a huge impact on your actions.

Letting your old burdens and hurt sit within you without ever being addressed actually gives power to your past. If living a better life is what you desire, then you have no other option but to go on an inward journey. If you really want to reclaim your power, you need to get to know who you are and what behavioral patterns you have accumulated throughout your life. Understanding what has shaped you and how you react to life is the start of healing yourself.

Self-awareness is the nutritious soil that nourishes the seeds of peace and growth. By turning your attention inward, you can start studying your emotional movements. This will help you become familiar with your ups and downs. Instead of noticing your inner turbulence once it is blazing, you will be able to see what actually ignites the fire. Self-awareness slows down the blind reactions that used to take over when times were tough. It also helps create a space within you where you can process what is happening and choose the action that skillfully responds to the situation at hand. Self-awareness will help you see where you need to grow and what positive habits you should spend time cultivating.

Illustration Credit: Riccardo Vecchio

Personal growth is not just the moment where you decide to embrace your evolution. It is when you finally declare within yourself that you are ready to enter into maturity. To do so, you have to have the strength to connect with your past in the hopes of removing the limits it has placed on your present and future. Through the road of acceptance, you can travel your inner forest and intentionally embrace hard parts of your story with self-love. Nothing can change the past, but you can release the tension you are carrying because of it.

“… you don’t need to reinvent the wheel when it comes to your self-discovery.”

A lot of personal growth can emerge from the new relationship you develop between you and yourself. But this process becomes much more efficient when you pick up a new practice that helps you navigate through whatever you are encountering within yourself. Anything from journaling to finding a good therapist to picking up a meditation practice can help streamline the journey of getting to know yourself. Find a practice that is challenging but not overwhelming—it should be hard enough that it helps you grow but not too hard that you don’t want to put in the work. It should be something that connects with your intuition and feels like it is worth your time. The golden key is that you don’t need to reinvent the wheel when it comes to your self-discovery; you simply need to find a method that works for you and gives real results.

Getting serious about your personal growth creates waves of change in your personal life. It will help you build boundaries in places where you used to fall into familiar patterns of people-pleasing. It will help you figure out what your real aspirations are, as opposed to following what society has taught you to want. It will also help you stay aligned with your values and speak up for them whenever necessary. The people you spend time with will change, your preferences will shift, how you perceive the world will become clearer, and how you show up for life will look and feel different. Coming through to the other side of your inner transformation will help you be more intentional about using your energy like a precious resource.

Whenever you are stuck on the path to self-discovery, use Yung Pueblo’s 11 reminders to help ground you as move forward:

1. Accept your imperfections
2. Small steps make a difference
3. Forcing it doesn’t work, let it go
4. Making time for rest is a top priority
5. Embracing change builds your peace
6. Be kind but don’t be a people pleaser
7. Build with emotionally mature people
8. Let go of the past and be in the present
9. Build habits that support your happiness
10. Let go of competition and just be yourself
11. Your healing will improve your relationships

For more articles like this, pick up the latest issue of Tracy Anderson Magazine, available on tracyanderson.com.