Growth Stages And Our Off-Seasons With Nick McGowan

Nick McGowan Nick McGowan (00:01.602)
Sometimes having grace with ourselves is really difficult. Sometimes even just understanding that we’re going through shit and not that just we’ve been perpetually off for weeks or months or even years. But having grace with ourself is where things actually help us to be able to grow.

Nick McGowan (00:26.55)
and not just bypass things or deflect things, but to actually grow. But we need to start from a state of contentment at least to be able to understand like, all right, well, here’s where I’m at. Here’s what’s going on. And over the course of my life, I’ve had a lot of different times where I’ve interpreted a lot of different shit, just a ton of stuff. And when I was.

Nick McGowan (00:51.974)
18, 19 years old, I started to get into personal development and reading different books, going to seminars, meeting with different people. And I remember there was a huge difference between how I was when I was younger and who I was becoming when I was in my late teens, early twenties.

Nick McGowan (01:11.99)
But I remember feeling like I need to be graceful with myself. I need to show grace to myself. I’m not gonna be graceful in all the things that I do. I’m gonna be a fucking shit show in most of the situations and just kind of figuring life out. But having grace with myself as I move through things was crucial. It was also extremely difficult. It didn’t always work out the way that it needed to, but sometimes that’s what life looks like.

Hello and welcome to the Mindset and Self Mastery Show. I’m your host, Nick McGowan. And today on the show, I wanna talk about giving ourselves and showing ourselves grace as we move through our journey, not just in life, but our growth journey. The journey that we go through in personal development, spiritual growth, physical growth, mental.

Nick McGowan (02:22.798)
all of it. And it’s not going to look, it’s not going to look good. It’s not going to look graceful, let’s say, in most of the situations. I know for me it hasn’t. There have been times where even looking back and thinking in those moments I was doing what I could, but what the fuck was wrong with me? What was I doing? What was going on? I still needed to show myself grace in that exact moment and not judge myself.

Nick McGowan (02:50.454)
But if I step back to that moment, I really needed to be able to show myself grace as I went through things. So growing up, let’s just say from birth till about 18, almost 19 years old, I went through a lot of different stages of life. I had a lot of different traumas and childhood experiences that some were.

Nick McGowan (03:14.622)
Absolutely traumatizing somewhere not so great and somewhere extremely beautiful and fantastic experiences as emotional as I am and Hyper aware as I have become over the course of life It’s been really difficult for me to not show myself grace as I go through growth Sometimes there are seasons where it is really difficult and other times where there are seasons where I just kind of move through things really gracefully

Nick McGowan (03:44.374)
Just like there are seasons that when we go through growth periods, you’re going to change, you’re going to adapt and understanding how and why you do that is crucially important, but not always something that you get right off the bat in the moment. You don’t really understand all of it. Just like when people say hindsight is 2020.

Nick McGowan (04:06.126)
I remember thinking before when people would say that and I really started to register it. I was like, well fuck, why can’t hindsight be with me right now while I walk through this? So that I don’t have to get to that thing later. But that’s part of the journey of it and it’s okay if you go through different seasons where you just don’t want to grow. It’s okay. A lot of people go through that and by a lot of people, I’m gonna step out on a limb here and say, everybody.

Nick McGowan (04:34.99)
Probably everybody has gone through something like that. There are just moments and periods of time where you’re like, you know, I don’t really want to work through this stuff right now. It’s really difficult. And sometimes that’s when you need to actually show yourself grace to be able to work through those moments and not abandon or deflect.

Nick McGowan (04:57.13)
or to repress those things, but to work through them in the way that you need to work through them in how you are. So when I was 19 years old, I got into a company that was really personal development driven, and it basically seemed like they were just trying to create different leaders and tons of people and just grow them up. But things that really stood out to me were how some of these people led their lives and how some of the people really just wore a mask.

Nick McGowan (05:27.366)
in their life, in the business but also in their own personal life, but there was a common thread through all of them.

Nick McGowan (05:34.474)
There’s personal growth and personal development. People were reading tons of books. They were going to seminars and classes, and it seemed like everybody was really working on themselves. As a 19-year-old kid who had basically recently overdosed on heroin, broke up with his girlfriend, the high school girlfriend, and had a band dissolve that should have been something big, and lots of life change was happening, I knew that I needed to actually step into that

Nick McGowan (06:04.628)
and that’s where I felt like I was being called to be. And I remember reading some books that people gave me, some John C. Maxwell books, Zig Ziggler books, listening to different…

Nick McGowan (06:17.994)
cassettes at that point and some CDs of different seminars and just talks that a lot of different people gave, Tony Robbins even, some of those old like Awaken the Giant Within and stuff like that. And I remember really latching onto those things because I wanted to grow. I wanted to learn. And I didn’t want to be how I was before. So my motivation was not just to grow and learn, but I had motivation to get away from

Nick McGowan (06:48.868)
even if that past was just a few weeks before that. And I really didn’t want to be where I was before, and there was a lot of pain and negativity tied to that. I also had a really difficult time showing myself grace within that time period, because I wanted to grow so badly. And I wanted to be so different than what I had been before, where I had been before, who I had been with.

Nick McGowan (07:12.146)
And I remember stepping into that personal development growth bubble, let’s say, and being just clumsy and not knowing what to do or how to do or what to say or how to say things.

Nick McGowan (07:29.762)
But I remember going through it and showing myself that I could do these things. So if you think back for yourself when you first read a personal development book, where you started to really understand that there was a lot more growth ahead of you, you can probably look back and say, well, the weeks, months, maybe even years that followed that were weird. There was a lot of change, but there was a lot of clumsiness that happened with it.

Nick McGowan (07:59.146)
And that’s why I’m talking about showing yourself grace through those moments. It can be really easy to beat yourself up. Maybe it’s just really easy for me. It might be similar for you.

Nick McGowan (08:11.706)
And if it’s easy for you to beat yourself up about those things, you can also find those, that little space in between the beating yourself up and understanding that you need to do something and holding yourself accountable. There’s a space for grace right in the middle there. And grace isn’t one of those things where you say, you know, I’ll get to it and I’ll figure it all out. It’s all gonna be okay. That can be bypassy and like deflecting the actual thing that’s happening. But.

Nick McGowan (08:38.669)
Having the moments where you just say, okay, this is where I’m at right now. This is what I’m working through and it’s going to be how it’s going to be. That’s what I believe is showing yourself that grace in those moments to be able to understand actually what’s going on without flavoring things, without just getting stuck in the moment or beating the hell out of yourself because you’re not where you should be. And sometimes…

Nick McGowan (09:06.754)
that needs to just be how it is. Where you show yourself some grace to be able to move through a space without actually repressing or deflecting or bypassing anything. But you show yourself grace to be able to move through it. And sometimes that will really help you be able to actually move through it quicker. Or at least a little more smoothly.

Nick McGowan (09:32.61)
Because if you think about removing the emotions or the negative feelings that you have just around yourself or a situation, when you can think or feel clearly because you’re showing yourself grace, then things will start to pop up for you. It’s not always the case. Sometimes you’re just showing yourself grace so you’re not going fucking bat shit crazy. Sometimes you’re able to show yourself grace and go, you know what? This is right.

Nick McGowan (10:02.934)
This is what I should be doing.

Nick McGowan (10:05.338)
Or, no, this is wrong and I shouldn’t be doing these things. And being able to see those answers pop up and feel those answers pop up. So throughout the course of my journey, stepping back to when I was 18, 19 years old and started to understand that I needed to do something different. I needed to look at different things differently and needed to become different myself, I had often looked back at those times and judged myself, not shown myself

Nick McGowan (10:35.392)
I remember wanting to be so different than how I was in the past that I just completely flip-flopped and I went into this almost the evangelical sort of approach of just everything is growth everything is personal development but that made me put a mask on because I was hiding my feelings I was hiding the emotions that I had

Nick McGowan (11:01.326)
I was hiding what was actually going on and how there were times where I was confused. But that future version of me, even a few years or 10 years later, I would judge myself at times and think, well, he wasn’t showing himself grace. And I wasn’t showing myself grace in those moments. I wasn’t being graceful with myself or at least understanding where I was in those moments.

Nick McGowan (11:26.346)
And we can look back, we can understand that there are times where, yeah, Nick, I get it. I’ve done that to myself too.

Nick McGowan (11:36.482)
But when we continue to do it, that’s a pattern that we can actually stop if we’re aware of it. So I want you to become aware of that, just like I’ve become aware of that. Sometimes it takes somebody else outside of you to become aware of that for you or alert you to it. And there are other times where it’s literally just on you. That’s most of the times where it’s just on you to be able to figure that out and kind of go through your experiment of it. Of what’s happening? What have I done? What am I learning? What’s going on?

Nick McGowan (12:05.378)
but showing yourself grace as you move through it. So when I think back to the path that I started to walk down when I was starting on my personal development journey.

Nick McGowan (12:19.11)
and thinking back at that moment to where I didn’t want to be and who I was in the past and really doing everything I could to run that race of becoming somebody different, I started to really create or at least strengthen what my winning strategy was and how I could win in life that would set me into a groove that was going to fuck me up. I didn’t know it at the time, but I know it now.

Nick McGowan (12:48.964)
that I was starting the personal development journey, my legs were cut out from underneath me. I ended up meeting some people that were in the personal development and personal growth circles, some people that were basically on tour, speaking and teaching and learning that there was a lot of hypocrisy and a lot of bullshit that was being fed to us.

Nick McGowan (13:13.054)
And the amount of hypocrisy that I was seeing where people were saying things, but they were acting a different way behind closed doors or in a green room before or after they were up on stage was mind bending to me. And it also, like I said, a few minutes ago, it cut my legs out from me. And I remember thinking, fuck this. These people are just as fake as all the other people were. I didn’t show grace to those people.

Nick McGowan (13:41.746)
And you know, granted, I probably didn’t need to because the people that were being very hypocritical, yes, maybe I saw them in a moment of weakness or whatever, but there were people that consistently showed the patterns of that. But I needed to show grace with myself. So if you’ve seen or been a part of anything like that before, or you have gone like, you know what? Fuck that. I knew this was all trash.

Nick McGowan (14:05.098)
and you start to step away from something, pause and figure out if this is something that you’re stepping away from because you wanna step away from, that you need to step away from for your safety, or if it’s something that you’re kind of just bypassing and you’re trying to get away from something because the rest of it’s really difficult. I can look back now and I can see that I stepped away from personal growth and personal development for a season.

Nick McGowan (14:30.966)
Because I didn’t know what else to do. I had no idea. I thought I’d gotten to a point I thought things were great where they were and then when they started to crumble I thought that it was part of this growth that I was on and I started to beat myself up members right around the same time with Realizing that there was a lot of hypocrisy and just bullshit that was being spewed out

Nick McGowan (14:55.218)
I also lost the company that I had. We just completely went down. Everything was a mess. And it was also right around when the economy started collapsing. And I remember lying on the couch at my mom’s house after thinking for the past few years, I’ve been working on myself. I’ve been working on my personal development.

Nick McGowan (15:19.534)
I’ve been trying to grow, I just had this company and I’ve traveled all over the place and made a bunch of money and now what the fuck? I’m lying here on this couch trying to figure out what do I do from here? And there was a moment of just showing myself grace that I really appreciate that I had that moment. I can picture that, lying on the couch in the mudroom or the porch area of my mom’s house. And…

Nick McGowan (15:47.694)
crying and just not being sure of what had all happened and what’s going to happen next. And then being able to feel that grace moment of everything’s going to work. It’s going to be okay because I know that I’m not going to give up. I know that there’s more in me. Right now in this moment, this sucks and I need to work through it and I’m going to be okay.

Nick McGowan (16:14.034)
And being able to show yourself grace in those moments is crucial to be able to move forward. Sometimes it’s really difficult to do it. I get that. And it’s not like one of those things where you go, oh, right here, this is that moment where I have to show myself grace and then everything’s gonna be fixed. It’s not a fucking magical pill. That’s not how this works. But being able to show yourself grace in those seasons and in those dark times can help you to gracefully move through the rest of what’s gonna happen from there.

Nick McGowan (16:42.974)
So after all that had happened, I remember taking a bit of a step back and I was like, I’m not going to do any personal development stuff, any growth. I don’t want to read any books. I don’t want to listen to any books. I just want to go have fun. Uh, I even went, worked at a music store for a little while. And part of that was fun. Part of that was also soul sucking. Like there were times where it just felt like I wasn’t actually doing what I was called to do.

Nick McGowan (17:07.554)
but I needed to take some of that time to be able to do that. Because maybe 10 ish years or so later, I’d thought back to that time. And it hit me that I needed to have that season where I was off, sort of the off season in a sense. I’m a big sports fan, mainly basketball and football.

Nick McGowan (17:29.122)
And I always think about what people do in the off season and how do they work on themselves in the off season? I’m sure people go on, you know vacations and stuff like that And there are some people that i’ve seen in different interviews It’s primarily I think basketball players that i’ve seen where they’re like I just keep playing all throughout the entire off season and then

Nick McGowan (17:55.73)
My conditioning is up, my skills are better, and they just keep going. They just keep working on themselves. But they always have a little bit of time where they’re off and they’re just not constantly on. There are some people where they take a little bit of time or even a few weeks or a month or whatever it looks like for them.

Nick McGowan (18:15.478)
to have their off season and that’s okay. I’ve seen some people shame people about that. Specifically superstar athletes where they’re like, you can’t have off seasons. You have to keep going. You have to keep playing. You have to keep doing these things. You have to be better than pick a name. MJ, Kobe, whatever you want. Just pick one.

Nick McGowan (18:37.342)
And that’s where these people are being told that they have to do all these things. Sometimes we do need to have that off season. And again, it’s okay to have that time where you’re just not constantly on. So right now, think about those moments where you were just gung ho about life. You were all excited about personal development or just the growth that you were on, whatever business you’re in or relationship you were in and how you were working through things. And then how that started to fizzle a bit.

Nick McGowan (19:07.396)
to become burnout. Think about that.

Nick McGowan (19:12.746)
And think about those times where you started to pull yourself out of that. It was like a little bit of a lull, right? Where you were all excited about these things, something happened, maybe knocked you off course a little bit. You took a little bit and maybe, maybe you just completely dropped the ball and you stopped for six months, a year, two years, five years, whatever. But then when you’re able to start to climb back up in those moments, when you start to climb back up.

Nick McGowan (19:43.134)
It’s been there the entire time. It’s just, you’ve needed to actually work through those things. And if you hadn’t, that length of time will get further and further and further. So if it took you a few months or took you a few years or a decade or whatever, you needed to work through that. Even in those times when you didn’t work through that. And that’s okay. But it’s the fact that you’ve worked through it and you’ve gotten through it.

Nick McGowan (20:11.016)
Just like listening to this podcast episode right now.

Nick McGowan (20:14.638)
If you can think, yeah, I’ve had some of those times, but I got through those times and here’s where I’m at. Or if you’re like, look, I’m in one of those times right now, but I’m still listening to this podcast, or I still read different things every now and again, and I try different things, the great keep at it. That’s the grace I’m talking about, where you’re able to actually show yourself grace within those moments, even in the off season, even in the lulls, even when you don’t want to fucking do it at all. It’s okay.

Nick McGowan (20:44.51)
What’s not okay is completely bypassing or deflecting or repressing what you’ve gone through and just shutting it all down so on that note Maybe four or five years ago at this point. I remember basically choosing to abandon myself within my marriage that I had

Nick McGowan (21:08.534)
thinking I don’t want to go through this stuff right now. I don’t want to talk about these things I’m just going to deflect them or I’ll bypass them or I’ll just push them deeper down and hope that at some point that’ll fix they’ll fix themselves and I legitimately remember sitting on a chair and Thinking yeah now’s not the time don’t talk about those things. I’ll just do them later Basically, let future Nick deal with those later and future Nick would be like what the fuck

Nick McGowan (21:36.266)
When it was future next time, you turn around and look and be like, you fucking kidding me? There’s nothing that I can do with that now, but I could only do something in those moments. And I remember starting to make that climb back up and being like, okay, I’m going to get out of this. I’m going to figure this stuff out. And having grace with myself in those moments to understand where I was when I said I was going to abandon myself.

Nick McGowan (22:02.326)
And just like you, having grace with yourself in those moments where you go, well, look, I just completely shut things out for a while because it’s okay to go through seasons where you’re not constantly growing. It’s also okay to have those seasons where that’s all you’re doing is just constantly growing, but there’s a balance to it. Not like a 50 50 balance or anything, but you’ve got to be aware of what you’re doing and what’s actually happening.

Nick McGowan (22:27.934)
If you’re going completely down some crazy path of personal development or just growth and whatever, it could almost become an addiction, just like it had become with me. I went from heroin as an addiction and some other addictions to personal development and growth being an addiction because I had such a negativity or such negativity that I tied to who I was before that. That I was like, I will never, ever do that again. So this must be the answer.

Nick McGowan (22:57.91)
And you’ve just got to become aware of that. So understanding that you can have different seasons and different times where you’re growing and different times where you’re just allowing yourself to work through things is really important, but understand where that comes from.

Nick McGowan (23:16.03)
I think for myself, when I was a young kid, it was really difficult for me to be able to express myself emotionally. And sometimes it was even difficult for myself to communicate internally of what is actually happening outside of interpretation of what I believe was happening or what could have been happening because there was a lot of inconsistencies around me. People would say one thing and do something different or…

Nick McGowan (23:42.622)
I would just see things that just didn’t compute to how I thought things should be. And the older I’ve gotten, the more that I’ve understood that life’s just going to be how it’s going to be. And there’s no should or there’s no shouldn’t. It’s a matter of what we do with those things in those moments. But from being a child, it shapes who we are and shapes what we’re doing and what we’re about. And it’s really taking a step back to be able to understand how does that affect you right now for me.

Nick McGowan (24:12.816)
I felt very unsafe and I felt like the older I got the more that I would express and say things to people and I would have that unsafe feeling just compounded because some people would tell me like oh this is too much or you’re ruining my day or I just can’t be around you right now or whatever and I would I learned in some ways to just keep it to myself Recently had an experience where

Nick McGowan (24:39.826)
I was a bit off, just having a weird morning. And my girlfriend can call that out. She can feel that, she can sense that. And I told her, there’s a little bit of this or that, but for the most part, everything’s okay. And I’m okay. And I wasn’t.

Nick McGowan (25:02.11)
And I didn’t really know how to communicate that internally because I didn’t know exactly what the thing was. And I wanted to be able to go, Ooh, it’s this thing right here. This exact thing. This is it. Just like going out. Well, this is the problem. Oh, well, if I fix that, everything’s going to go great from there. And it made me understand that not being able to communicate that internally.

Nick McGowan (25:25.13)
I needed to show grace in myself and allow that to take its time. Because when I was younger, if I said to somebody, I’m not good right now, or I’m not feeling well or I’m upset or whatever, immediately there’d be a question of, well, what is it then? And if I didn’t have an answer, then I would basically be gaslit, being told like, no, no, you’re just crazy. There’s nothing wrong.

Nick McGowan (25:50.542)
Or I’d be questioned for feeling any sort of way that I was feeling because I didn’t have an answer to what was actually happening. So I’ve learned over the course of time, well, I guess it’s better for me to just hold onto that shit until I know exactly what’s going on and that isn’t healthy. So in that experience recently with my girlfriend working through that.

Nick McGowan (26:12.962)
that put a little bit of a tiff between us because she could sense that. And I knew that there was something there, but I didn’t know exactly what was happening enough to say anything or go, well, it’s this. However, I took this, the step to be able to say earlier in the day, these are the two things that I think are happening. And I think I’m good with that. Remember thinking to my head like that’s okay for now because.

Nick McGowan (26:42.798)
That’s all I got. That’s all I understood. And later in the day, having grace with myself, understanding that, yeah, that may have been all that you had at the moment, but in a safe space, you are safe and you are able to actually be able to talk about things. So if you don’t have a safe space, if you don’t feel like you have a safe space, then I encourage you to find one. Whether that’s talking with somebody who could be a safe space, a c, or a c, or a c***,

Nick McGowan (27:10.926)
therapist, a counselor, a really close friend, somebody that could be a safe space for you or coaching with me and I’ll be that safe space for you. Being able to find that safe space is important for you to actually be able to talk through those things. Even if you’re like, I don’t really know what to say. There’s been something I’ve said over the course of maybe the past five or six months.

Nick McGowan (27:36.67)
If I don’t know what to talk about or what’s actually going on in my head, or there’s something that has to come out, I’ll say, I don’t exactly know what to say, but these are the words that are in my head right now. And being able to get that out. And understanding that even if I’m not in a fully safe space within that moment, that I’m in a safe space here. And that takes time and growth and energy and a lot of work to be able to get to that point.

Nick McGowan (28:01.466)
I’m not saying I’m any fucking guru or somebody that knows how to do this stuff on command all the time Because being in those moments can be really tough at times But it is making sure that We allow ourselves the space To have grace with ourself and to find that safe space to be able to do that So again, if you don’t feel like you have a safe space Find it However, you can find it

Nick McGowan (28:28.258)
There are resources that we offer. I can help with that. And there are other people that can help with that too. But find the safe space that you can be within. But I also encourage you to find that within yourself. Show yourself the grace for those times when you didn’t have grace for yourself.

Nick McGowan (28:46.434)
those times where you took a little bit of time off to just relax or to maybe get away from something and show yourself grace even if in those moments you deflect it or bypass things because then you’re aware of it and you can do something different next time but show yourself grace within those times of your growth and within the off season and just keep working through it however that needs to happen. Sometimes that

Nick McGowan (29:16.248)
like taking a nap or going to sleep. Like your body just needs that bit of rest and you can take that rest. But finding that safe space within yourself, within a partner, within a coach, within anywhere that’s going to help you be able to actually understand what do you need to do from this point on. But it starts at least a piece of it is with that grace that you show yourself to be able to understand that I can move forward with these things.

Nick McGowan (29:46.642)
and not kind of cloud yourself. Don’t throw extra bullshit into the way to just be able to mess with yourself. That’s not going to help you at all. So again, show yourself grace as you move through this, allow yourself the space and the time to be able to have those concentrated.

Nick McGowan (30:06.674)
segments of life where you work through things and then those concentrated segments of life where you have a bit of an off season And you’re able to recharge and relax or you just get away from something But if you’re getting away just to get away from it because it’s too hard to work on Then that’s where that safe space comes into play And again, if you have any questions as you work through this as you ponder it or pray about it or think about it even deeper Reach out

Nick McGowan (30:33.954)
There are resources that we have that can help you. There’s coaching that we have on our team that can help you. It’s just a matter of being able to understand that you don’t have to do this alone. Even most times when you are doing it alone, you can still show yourself grace and you can be able to get through things.

Nick McGowan (30:53.238)
So thank you for checking this episode out. Again, if you have any questions or just comments that you’d like to talk about from today’s episode, please send me a message. And I really appreciate you listening and hope that this helps.