It takes courage and determination to effect self-growth.
True inner growth, i.e. maturity, needs and depends on self-faith.
Self-faith is the attribute of the soul to believe oneself as being worthy of existence, hence of self-development.
Inner growth is a process of unfoldment of the potentials of the soul.
As such, it is intrinsically a force of chesed/self-kindness.
However, chesed can be limited by its opposite, which is gevurah/restriction. Restriction by itself is a force of stagnation, which the unrectified Ego can use to block inner growth.
Ego wants, so to speak, to remain in its safe and unchanged domain, where it can control and preserve “itself”.
Inner growth signifies a psychological change, a dynamic process that is completely opposite to the force of Ego/self-centeredness.
By nullifying the Ego, that is, making it “small”, one can grow the inner self to be “big”, that is, unfolding and expanding its boundaries, so to speak.
Therefore, without self-faith, the individual also will not trust anyone else seeking to help him, even the one he himself chose to counsel, guide and teach him. Truly, if I do not have faith in myself, how can I have faith in anyone else?
A person resistant to inner growth will tend to strengthen the Ego’s hold, crystallizing the particular traits that characterized one’s unmoved/unrectified psychological state.
Hence, the longer one delays the inner growth, the harder it will become to develop it. For it is the nature of stagnation to become “denser”.
The Ego will not allow the person to view critically its need to grow, and the person will forever be a prisoner of its Ego bound lack of self-faith.
It is imperative to break free from these shackles, for the fulfillment of one’s mission in life depends on the maximum inner growth, for this is the only way the person can come to know his tachlis/mission in life. This is so, because, before inner growth, the measure the person came to be in this world is limited, held by its lacks and deficiencies.
As such, the person cannot possibly be leading its life on a path of his mission, since many of its capacities will remain underdeveloped.
There is much more, however, for now, this should suffice.
BEIT ARIZAL 