Personal Growth and Success

Personal growth, what is it really? What kind of personal growth do you wish to learn and involve yourself in? How much growth is too much growth and how much is too little? There are so many questions one may ask when thinking about personal growth. We all experience growth as babies, toddlers, kids, teenagers, and then into adults. As kids we learn most of our values and get most of our opinions and points of view of certain topics from our parents or the ones who raise us. As we become teenagers we start to get our own perspective on things. All in all, personal growth really is a never-ending process that you can always learn and improve on. This topic for me has been on my mind a lot recently as I have been aiming to improve myself. Not that I feel less about who I am today, but I feel there is always room for improvement and always ways to elongate your thoughts and mind to push yourself to become stronger and wiser than ever before. One may ask, can you reach a stopping point in personal growth where you know enough? One might feel they have obtained enough knowledge to live a successful and good life, but personally my answer is no. It is important to keep the mind stimulated as we grow older each and every day in order to make new goals and continue to follow our life’s purposes. Now I don’t want to get too scientific on you all, but I want to connect this to success. 

I held a questionnaire on my Instagram the other day. I got several questions asking me if I felt like I had succeeded in modeling and where I feel I stand known wise in the fashion business. Now, this question kind of hit me hard. Not only did I get one question like this, but three or four. So, I want to elaborate on this here. Success is all a matter of viewpoint. You may think that a basketball player has succeeded by joining your favorite team, while someone else might just see that as they got put on a new team. One may see walking for Kate Spade being success when they love that designer, while the model walking it might just feel it is another job. Success is not one thing. Success is just an illusion of what is important to you, what you put your time and focus into, and what you really want in life. One may see success as making millions of dollars, while another might see success as creating a massive charity foundation that does good for the starving children of the world. 

I want to now personally relate this to my career and let you know how tricky success can be. Do I feel I have done some amazing things? Yes! Now do I cut the ties and tell myself that am successful now and that I should stop setting goals? HELL NO! The thing is once you meet a certain goal it is very exciting, but then you get greedy and you want more and more. Such as when someone sets a goal to make a million, but after a million they want five and ten million. When a person gets booked in the show that he/she always dreamed of doing, afterwards you want to do an even bigger and better show. It is good to keep your goals and dreams high, but it is also important to look back and see all that you have done and how far you have come. As you have come a long way! No matter in which aspect you look at, you have for sure grown in one way or another. 

So, all in all, to finish answering this question. I am very proud of how far I have come. A little girl who came from a tiny rural farm area in Tennessee who has now grown into her body, adapted to many cultures, learned how to take care of herself, dress, to do my make-up, on and on. So far in my career I have had the opportunities to meet a lot of amazing and creative people and I have done a lot of jobs that I couldn’t even have dreamed of from shows, to magazine covers, to campaigns. It has all been a whirl wind. It wasn't easy to get here, but I made it and I am excited to continue to see how I grow and what I accomplish. I also want to take a moment to thank you for reading this blog post and supporting me along my career. I really appreciate it, as it isn’t necessary but it is always helpful to have supporters cheering you on rather than an empty sideline. 

xoxo

BB Jean