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The Law of Growth Dictates How Our Lives Unfold
The Law of Growth has been addressed by human civilizations for thousands of years. In short, the Law of Growth describes the philosophies behind how people grow and integrate across time—how people develop into their final versions, in other words.
Thinkers throughout the millennia have tackled this topic, including prophets and those who have received revelation. Today, the law is just as relevant. Whether or not someone develops into a successful version of themselves – that’s governed by the Law of Growth.
The Human Mind is Governed by the Conscious and Subconscious
To understand how the Law of Growth affects us humans, consider one of the mind’s most important dualities – the conscious vs. the unconscious. To some extent, we are all steered by both. What roles do they play and how do they interact?
- The conscious mind – The conscious mind is the thinking mind. It is the part of the mind that we can direct and use to focus our attention. It’s what gathers sensory information provided by the environment and uses it to make decisions. The conscious mind is, perhaps, the central feature of being human.
It also has a limited memory and can determine which behaviors or ideas to consider. To the degree that people are able to apply free will, they do it through the conscious. In this way, the conscious is capable of inductive reasoning – the ability to decide on what information to consider.
As we all know, though, the conscious is limited in its ability to govern our behavior.
- The subconscious mind – The subconscious mind is what exists just beyond the threshold of our conscious mind. When we go to sleep at night, our conscious mind may blink out, but our subconscious is still active to some degree.
Like the conscious mind, the subconscious is also capable of taking in information, and also possesses memory. Unlike the conscious, though, the subconscious cannot apply our will and can only engage in deductive reasoning – the ability to make general, low-resolution observations based on a large body of data. Some consider our intuition to be an extension of the subconscious.
Although it’s not capable of making decisions, the subconscious is certainly capable of influencing them. If you’ve wondered why you can know the right decision (eating healthy), but still make the wrong one (eating junk food), that’s your subconscious at work.
How the Mind Grows – Like a Plant Placed in Soil
The Law of Growth doesn’t just apply to humans. It’s an unchangeable law that’s represented across all forms of life. And a foundational part of the law is that change is always occurring. No living thing on Earth exists in an unchanging state, so humans can’t decide not to change. Change will happen – the question is whether they’re the kind of changes you want.
One way to think about it is to consider our minds like a garden. Like a garden, our minds are capable of growth. With a garden, the hope is that beautiful, nourishing plants will flourish – flowers and crops. With our minds, the hope is that beautiful, productive ideas will develop.
In both instances, we can only get what we want by providing the right nutrients. For gardens, that means healthy soil. For our minds, that means a healthy mindset.
If your internal dialogue is plagued with doubt, indecision, fear or resentment, your subconscious will reflexively latch onto ideas that reinforce those emotions. It can happen beyond your conscious awareness. Harboring such emotions is like polluting a garden – it will only bear bad fruit.
To Get Better Results From Your Life, Consider the Soil Your Mind is Planted In
We are all in a constant state of change. The question is whether those changes constitute positive growth and integration, or disintegration. By observing the Law of Growth in our lives, we can tip the scales in our favor when it comes to integrating the right ideas into our lives and avoiding the wrong ones.
How can we do that? It takes a high-level approach, as healthy growth requires a healthy mindset. In general, people who struggle with addiction, complacency, or other self-destructive behaviors do not have a healthy mindset in place. They are constantly undermined by feelings of doubt, fear, and ignorance, and it is difficult to establish behaviors that lead to success with those weighing you down.
It is worth remembering that we can consciously decide which ideas to model our lives around. It is true that, as babies and young children, we cannot select which ideas to believe in. Our parents, our community and our culture do that for us. But eventually, we do have the agency to pick the ideas and behaviors that align with the Law of Growth. That means letting go of our fear and doubt and embracing a positive mindset.
