How to Leverage Personal Plateaus for Rapid Growth – Part 1

The ABCs of Personal Plateaus

Plateaus. We all have them.

personal plateauMaybe your personal plateau is happening in your business. Everything is good and moving along and you’re making more money than a few months ago. And then bam, you hit a plateau and everything just seems to stall out. You don’t get any new clients and your profit line becomes a flat line.

Or maybe you’re a writer and you’re getting close to finishing that novel. You’ve been working on it for months and months and it’s coming along so nicely. And then suddenly, you have no idea where the story is going, in fact, maybe you don’t even like the story any more.

The fact is, until we evolve beyond the need for plateaus they will continue to be part of life. We need plateaus to rest and replenish ourselves physically and spiritually before we can move onto our next higher level of accomplishments.

Truthfully, plateaus are a great signal that you’ve come through something, maybe something great, maybe something awful, and your mind-body-spirit is taking a deep breath before your next higher level phase. Plateaus are a signal to you that you are getting ready to growing beyond where you used to be.

But when paying your bills rests on the growth of your business, or your personal fulfillment is tied into completing a long sought-after goal, these periods of rest, or plateaus, lead to nothing but frustration and usually self-trashing.

The ABCs of a Quick Leap Upward from that Plateau

ABC – Accept. Be Conscious.

Accept.

Accept that plateaus happen so you don’t get down on yourself about it.

Let’s think about this for a moment. In the animal kingdom every season is not mating season. If can’t be or else every critter would exhaust themselves chemically and physically and so die an earlier death (Okay, you might argue that it would be worth it but that’s a topic for a different day : )).

Seasons (Plateaus) are nature’s way of keeping us from destroying ourselves.

So, repeat after me, the plateau you are on is okay and it’s not your fault.

The reason that it’s important to realize that it’s not your fault, is that once you start trashing yourself with thoughts such as…

  • What am I doing wrong in my business?
  • Why can’t I even finish one freaking novel?
  • What is WRONG WITH ME?

garbage pile…then you are now adding a garbage pile of bad energy onto that plateau – pause here to get a good visual of this – a plateau piled high with garbage is going to be infinitely harder to plow through than a pristine plateau which we could just stroll across.

As an example, I confess that I’m an expert at piling self-trashing crap on my plateaus. Not too long ago I came through something awful (the death of someone very close to me). I allowed myself to pause for a few days and then figured I’d just start moving forward once again. When things didn’t really start moving for me, I was very frustrated – my business stalled, I wasn’t a very good parent, and I was generally feeling low. I kept getting mad at myself for ‘wallowing’. And naturally, the more I did this the more things stalled out because now I had piled some pretty good-sized crap piles onto my plateau. The real problem was I kept trying to go back to how things were before that death triggered the plateau instead of remembering that it was about moving forward, not backward.

It wasn’t until I got to BC of the plateau ABCs, that I had my actual aha! and could start moving forward and upward again.

BC – Be Conscious.

Even though personal plateaus are often part of living, you do have the power to evolve beyond any plateau more quickly and easily than you may think.

So, if the first step is not trashing yourself when a plateau does happen…

what’s the second step?

Consciously consider what the plateau is all about. For you.

Plateaus are nature’s way of giving you time to:

  • weather change
  • incorporate growth
  • learn a needed lesson
  • understand something important about yourself – do you need down time? A change direction? Do you need to pause and celebrate an achievement?

clear plateauYou don’t have to over complicate this but you do have to sincerely give yourself the opportunity to be conscious of what’s going on.

It’s more a matter of just allowing yourself to understand what the purpose of your current plateau is rather than “doing” anything.

Often if you just spend a few minutes sitting quietly and asking yourself what purpose the plateau serves an answer will come to you.

When I finally allowed myself to be conscious about what my post-loved-ones-death plateau was all about for me, then everything started moving again. When I accepted that it wasn’t about going back to what came before, but embracing the new direction my life could, and should, now take, only then did the Universe support my actions with movement.

So, when you hit a plateau, whether it was triggered by an internal or external event, celebrate it, rather than banging your head against the wall wondering what you did wrong.

Accept. Be Conscious. The ABCs of Personal Plateaus.

Here’s “How to Leverage Personal Plateaus for Rapid Growth – Part 2”

Are you stuck on a plateau? Let us know so we can help!

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{ 3 comments… add one }
  • Angie April 9, 2015, 3:46 am

    Thank you Karen, that was a good article!

    Reply
    • Karen April 9, 2015, 4:37 pm

      Hi Angie, glad you liked it. Feel free to suggest topics you’ve love to know more about as I’m currently working up my content calendar for the year. Have a great week.

      Reply

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