On a research trip to Vietnam, author and journalist Johann Hari became extremely sick after eating an apple.

He’d washed the apple with bottled water, but he didn’t realize that fresh produce in Vietnam is so doused with pesticides that, in order to eat the fruit safely, you’d have to remove the peel completely.

Hari was rushed to the hospital after he became violently ill. He asked the doctor if he could give him some medication to relieve the room-spinning nausea, but the doctor told him no. The doctor said “We need that signal to tell us what’s wrong with you.”

The doctors were able to treat him and save him from what could have been a life-threatening condition.

It’s important to recognize the signals that something’s off in your life, whether that’s anxiety or depression, overworking, overeating, sleep issues, addiction, snapping at your family, listlessness, or a general sense of numbness.

But it’s just as important to recognize the signs that you’re doing well, because these can be really easy to miss.

We can go through the motions, do our work, care for our families, buy groceries, walk the dog, and get so bogged down in the day-to-day that we may not realize how we’re progressing, because progress can be slow and isn’t linear.

You might think, “Duh, when I make progress, I’ll know it, because my life will be perfect and I’ll be happy all the time.”

But progress rarely looks like that. To make things even more confusing, progress doesn’t mean you always feel happy and blissful because, hey, sometimes growth is uncomfortable. In fact, if you’re making progress, you might spend a lot of time in discomfort.

So if you can’t just rely on feeling amazing 24/7, what are the signs you’re making progress in your 3 Circles journey, relationships, work skills, physical and mental health, or in the purpose and mission of Redmond? How do you know you’re becoming a better version of yourself?

How to Tell If You’re Making Progress

So much of growth involves developing our core values. We even chose these values because they help us grow together as teams and individuals.

This is all part of preparing for the future and progressing on your path, so here are some indicators that your efforts are paying off.

You see progress when you reflect

When you look back on where you were a year or a few years ago, you see positive changes and learning. This is why Reflection is so crucial! We can only connect the dots and measure progress looking backward, not forward.

Reflection is key. You won’t see the signs if you’re not paying attention, and reflection with other people is approximately 1000% more effective than reflecting on your own. (Okay, we just made that number up, but we highly recommend connecting the dots with others.)

When you reflect with others or on your own, ask these questions:

What’s working

What’s not?

What’s getting in the way?

What’s the next right answer?

Looking back and noticing progress might be the only sign you need, really. Sometimes you just need the REMINDER to reflect and see how far you’ve come!

But if you want more signs, read on.

You have a better idea of how you’re helpful.

You engage in your 3 Circles Journey, and even if you don’t know exactly what your 3 circles look like (we’re ALL still learning, after all), you’re paying attention.

You’ve started to make some shifts because you’ve talked to others about how you’re helpful, and you’re listening.

You’re spending more time on leveraged tasks where you’re helpful because you’re wired for them and often passionate about them, and you work to learn even more about your unique contribution.

You’re often uncomfortable (the good kind)

Growth can be uncomfortable.

Think about it: if you’re trying to get stronger, you probably aren’t happy and content all the time. You’re probably dragging yourself to the gym when you’d rather not (at least sometimes), pushing yourself on those last few reps until your limbs feel like wet spaghetti noodles, and eating ridiculous amounts of protein to fuel that muscle growth.

Not exactly comfortable, right? But that’s how growth is. You learn, stretch yourself, lean in, and do things that make you feel uncomfortable because you know they’ll help you grow.

If you find yourself doing that in your work, relationships, and personal growth journey, that’s a good thing! If you’re getting uncomfortable in order to grow, you’re almost certainly making progress and growing those metaphorical muscles.

You feel satisfied and fulfilled more often than you used to.

This is NOT the same as feeling happy all the time. A meaningful life still has rough moments we’d rather not experience.

But even when things don’t go your way, you feel connected to a higher cause. You might not know exactly how you fit into it, but you’re exploring.

You feel a sense of purpose, whether that’s at work, in your family, your church, or something else entirely. Even if the day-to-day seems fairly unglamorous, you know you’re contributing to something bigger than yourself. This means your Passion for Contribution is getting stronger!

You trust the process more and more

The more you develop Occhiolism, the more you understand the value of planning, but you also know that the second you make a plan, conditions have changed and you’ve got to pivot. And pivot again. And again. This is because you know you’re always working with incomplete information!

But the time you spent planning and thinking about what could happen prepared you to figure out how to navigate what DID happen.

Thanks to Reflection, you also start to notice what growth looks like for you, and you know where you need to lean in.

You’re less concerned about getting it right and more curious about the next right answer, and working with others to find those answers. You’re less attached to outcomes and more open to possibility. Instead of automatically labeling events as “good” or “bad,” at some point you can take a step back, observe, and ask why it happened that way and what you can learn from it.

This is all part of the journey!

Conflict feels more productive

You might feel more curious and less defensive, more open and less triggered. Instead of allowing conflict to drive a wedge between you and others, you use it to learn, at least part of the time.

You try to use Occhiolism to see the other person’s perspective. You’re working on cultivating high levels of candor and consideration so you can interact more effectively. Your sense of Ubuntu is getting stronger, so you see others as peers to collaborate with rather than obstacles that are just getting in your way.

You can’t tell if you’re making progress unless you’re bumping up against other people and paying attention to what comes up.

If different issues come up, or the same ones surface in a different way, you’re probably making progress. But if you’re running into the exact same issues over and over again, you might want to pivot.

You can see what you need to work on

This might not feel like progress because you’re thinking “Ugh, I really need to get better at xyz.” But if you know what holds you back from collaborating well and doing great work, that’s a good thing! It means you’re developing self-awareness, which is crucial for progress and growth. After all, it’s hard to improve something you can’t even see.

This is one of the benefits of Occhiolism. When you know your perspective is limited, you start to seek other perspectives and notice where you can improve. This is also an important part of the “I see me” portion of Ubuntu. You see yourself more clearly, which will help you develop the “I am because we are” part, both improving yourself to improve the whole, and leaning on others to help you grow.

Others see your growth

Other people can help you with ALL of these.

If others see your evolution and tell you about it, that’s extremely helpful because we can’t always see it in ourselves. After all, we live with ourselves every day and gradual changes are easy to miss.

2:1s are a great place to talk about this. You should be getting one of these every six months, but if it’s been a while or if you just feel like you need a chat, you’re always welcome to ask your team lead and/or your culture lead.

We’re all here to help each other grow and become the best versions of ourselves. When we grow, we grow together. That’s partially why we chose Ubuntu as one of our core values!

The Bottom Line

If you’re genuinely leaning in and engaging with our core values and the 3 Circles, we can pretty much guarantee that you’re growing in some way. If you’re making the effort, you’re evolving, even if you can’t see it yet or if it feels really uncomfortable sometimes.

Check in with others who see you clearly, and reflect on your own to connect the dots in your journey and see how far you’ve come!