AFGO. Another Fucking Growth Opportunity
When I started working with the military, I learned to have great respect for acronyms. And they have some fairly awesome ones:
FARP: Forward Arming and Refueling Point
WILCO: Received, will comply
FUBAR: Fucked up beyond all recognition.
BOHICA: Bend over, here it comes again
PPPPPPP: Proper Prior Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance
And then I learned this other acronym I really enjoy -
AFGO: Another Fucking Growth Opportunity.
Beyond this just being really funny, it’s a helpful re-frame. For many of us, when we hit those inevitable road blocks in life, we get frustrated, annoyed, we beat ourselves up, we wonder if we’ll ever get back on the path.
But maybe what you wanted, isn’t what you needed.
It might just be an AFGO. It might be the chance to explore something new that you never would have considered previously. It can be an opportunity to grow and change and create something totally new. Maybe you needed to get to this point, in order to be ready for what it waiting for you. Maybe there was something you needed to learn, that could only happen in this particular way.
This is not “everything happens for a reason.” That can feel trite and dismissive. But thinking about ways to create meaning out of the pain, to forge a new path forward for yourself — that can help with the processing.
Road blocks can be a gift. They can stop us from falling into that pothole.
The detour can be more beautiful than we ever imagined.