110 - Development isn’t always about going ahead. Sometimes it’s about coming home to yourself
True development isn’t always about moving forward. Sometimes it’s about returning to who we truly are. This episode reframes growth as rootedness and explores identity as a foundation for progress.
The Future Isn’t Always Forward. Sometimes It’s Deeper.
We often treat development as a straight line, an endless push toward an undefined future. But not all growth is linear. Some of it spirals inward, and some of it brings us back.
In this episode of Pattern Cognition, we explore a deeper development model that prioritizes rootedness over restlessness.
Here’s the core idea:
• Becoming isn’t the only goal. Remembering matters too.
Sometimes the wisest move isn’t to become someone new, it’s to recover the truth of who you’ve always been.
• Africa’s journey holds this tension.
Much of African progress has been modeled after external benchmarks for the past century. But in the process, something internal, cultural, spiritual, and ancestral risks being forgotten.
• Return is not regression.
Reconnecting with identity, heritage, and voice isn’t going backward. It’s going deeper.
• Sustainable development is self-aware.
The more aligned we are with our essence, the more resilient, relevant, and real our growth becomes.
• Home isn’t a place. It’s a pattern.
And the development work might just be learning to follow that pattern inward before chasing it outward.
This episode invites you to question how you define growth and whether your current direction matches who you really are.
Listen to this episode of Pattern Cognition to learn how to navigate these challenges and invest wisely.
Highlights:
00:00 Introduction to Development Concepts
00:09 The Importance of Rootedness
00:21 Reflecting on African Identity
00:35 True Development Through Self-Discovery
Links:
Website: https://www.sidmofya.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sidmofya/
Transcript:
There's a lot of talk about development, which looks like a line going forward to some future that is undefined. There's a kind of development that I feel is just as important, and that is more a, a return, a rootedness that is about discovering who we are. And I feel when I'm speaking to Africans here, I feel like there's a lot of time that we've spent in the last a hundred years trying to become something, and in the meantime, we're losing touch with. The more we can get in touch with who we really are, the more we can actually develop.