Series: Nature, Preservation and Exploration. Episode: 12
Growth is happening, even when you stop measuring it.
After learning to listen to the land without interpretation, this week we turn to how nature helps us understand change, not as something to judge, but as something to witness.
1. What Trees Know About Time
When you cut through the trunk of a tree, you see its history.
Ring by ring.
Wide years.
Narrow years.
Seasons of abundance and seasons of survival.
The tree does not label these rings as good or bad.
It simply carries them.
Growth in nature is cumulative.
It does not erase what came before.
It builds upon it.
When we look at trees, we are reminded that change is rarely dramatic in the moment.
It becomes visible only with time.
2. Why We Judge Our Own Growth So Harshly
As humans, we tend to evaluate ourselves in snapshots.
Where am I now.
Am I better than before.
Am I behind.
This constant assessment creates pressure.
It turns growth into a performance rather than a process.
Psychological research on self-compassion, particularly the work of Kristin Neff, shows that people who respond to their struggles with kindness rather than criticism experience greater emotional resilience and more sustainable personal growth. Harsh self judgement does not motivate change. It interrupts it.
Nature offers a different model.
It tracks growth without commentary.
3. Growth Without Comparison
Trees do not compare rings.
They do not rush thin years or cling to wide ones.
Each ring exists because it had to.
Because conditions demanded it.
Self-compassion teaches a similar principle.
Growth happens within context.
When we acknowledge the conditions we were living through, exhaustion, grief, uncertainty, survival, our story becomes more honest. Change stops feeling like failure and starts feeling like adaptation.
You did not grow slowly because you were weak.
You grew the way the season allowed.
4. Learning to Read Your Own Growth Rings
Not all growth is visible from the outside.
Some of it lives in restraint.
In boundaries learned.
In patterns broken quietly.
Reading your own growth rings means asking different questions.
What did this year ask of me.
What did I learn to carry.
What did I stop forcing.
Self-compassion is not about lowering standards.
It is about recognising effort without punishment.
Like a tree, you are allowed to have years that look different from the ones before.
5. Letting Growth Be Enough
Nature never demands proof of progress.
It trusts accumulation.
When we allow ourselves to track growth without judgement, something softens.
We stop rushing forward.
We stop rewriting the past.
Growth becomes something we notice rather than something we chase.
You are not starting over.
You are adding another ring.
🌷 The Weekly Pinky Promise
This week, I promise to notice my growth with kindness rather than criticism.
That might mean recognising effort, not just outcomes.
It might mean acknowledging how far you have come, even if it feels quiet or unfinished.
Let this promise be about noticing, not judging.
🌾 The Wild Action
Spend a few moments with a tree this week.
Notice its size, its texture, and the marks time has left on it.
Let it remind you that growth happens slowly, in layers, and often without being seen.
💗 Additional Resources for Connection
- Research on self-compassion and resilience by Kristin Neff
- Writing on trees, time, and growth in nature literature
- Journal Prompt: If I looked at my last year the way I would look at a tree’s growth rings, what would I notice without judgement?
🌸 Closing Reflection – The Gentle Revolution
Trees do not rush becoming.
They do not apologise for slow years.
They do not measure themselves against others.
They grow.
They carry.
They continue.
Maybe growth does not need to be proven.
Maybe it only needs to be recognised.
Ring by ring.
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