I really liked this tweet from Tiago Forte: 

I finally have a definition of personal growth that I like: the process and experience of falling in love with yourself.

No, not in a narcissistic way. Not self-obsession, selfishness nor sociopathy. More like self-acceptance, but stronger. 

It is the slow learning about yourself, your inner turmoils, emotional knots, ancestral trauma, relationship baggage, quirky hang-ups. And accepting that anyway. But also the gradual dawning of your strengths, the light that draws others to you, your deepest talents, skills and knowledge. 

It is in the long years journeying together - yourself, and your inner witness - and working together in partnership, figuring out each other’s light and darkness, and choosing to keep going anyway, in patience and compromise. And ultimately, in mindful, calm presence. 

I could have very well described how two people fall in love and sustain their love through decades of marriage or partnership. And it is indeed pretty much the same, isn’t it? The same walls to communication, the same guesswork, the same iterative, lived-in experience.  

Falling in love with yourself, as you fall in love with another.  

I could definitely use this definition of personal growth as my own definition moving forward.