This wild sort of thing happens sometimes when you’ve set goals and you’re making strides towards them, eventually, you’ll hit a plateau where that progress you’ve been so proud of comes to a screeching halt. That pause, no matter how brief, can be a trigger for a significant amount of frustration. Sometimes, that level of frustration can even lead to us giving up on whatever we’re doing.
An example I can give that some may be able to relate to fairly easily is physical health. January is a favored time for gym’s, fitness retailers, and various physical health related programs and applications. We all either have, or know of someone, who in January proclaims this will be the year I get in better shape and live a healthier life. Many do, many stick with it, but along the journey, there will always be a plateau. Where either the weight stops coming off, you can’t lift any heavier, or that cardio fitness just leaves you feeling like you’re going to give back everything you’ve eaten the last 24 hours.
The danger is we hit that level and stop seeing that progress we’re after and it makes it a little easier to put things off. We give ourselves excuses, “I can skip today, it’s not like I’m making progress anyway.” The next thing you know, it’s a few days, and then it’s been a week… then you’re left wondering why you committed to such a long membership. Here’s the thing…
So what do we do when we’ve reached that plateau, how do we manage the sudden feeling of stagnation?
One thing I’ve realized is that when I hit those plateau’s, I don’t need to necessarily push harder to over come it. I just need to stay the course and meet whatever my daily objective is. Using the gym analogy, if I committed to X number of days a week doing Y activity for Z amount of time, I’m just going to keep showing up. Never underestimate the value of showing up. A good friend of mine is a writer. He once explained he had a goal of writing X number of words for Y number of days until he reached Z number of words. I asked about writer’s block and following a series of curses thrown in my general direction he said he just shows up and writes. It doesn’t have to be a massive breakthrough, it’s just a matter of sticking with it. That showing up thing, that’s a beautiful concept for me. Showing up is 90% of the struggle. The rest happens because we’ve shown up.
Never underestimate the value of showing up.
Attributed to Glennon Doyle
All right, I’ve shown up. Now what? You’re on a plateau, look around. Look how are you’ve come. Stop and appreciate everything that’s happened to get you here. Reflect on the journey and enjoy the experience. Think about some of the good habits you’ve established in the process. What things did you let go of?
Personally, I’ve been exploring journaling for my own wellness and growth. About a month into it, I plateaued and felt like I was writing essentially the same thing repeatedly. I had a few evenings where I skipped my journaling time… I was just going to regurgitate the same thing I wrote that morning anyway. Then I felt guilty for not at least showing up, so I recommitted. I told myself at the beginning I would give this a fair shot. A REAL fair shot. So I reflected on what I had been doing. On how therapeutic it felt to get things down in writing. Then I had this realization that some of those things I was writing over and over again, those were pretty big themes in my life. Maybe the reason I wrote them so often was because I needed to see it in writing more. I needed the reminders more often. I needed more time to heal and grow. As I’ve heard frequently…
Time takes time.
Unknown person far wiser than I
That realization taught me something. At that point. At that plateau. I needed a break where I could just BE. Be where I was. Appreciate the growth I’d had to that point. Be in a place without the strain that can come with continued progress so I could focus on a particular thing more intently and heal. Then… the journey continues.
In a lot of ways, those plateaus of life are like the natural respiratory pause when we’re breathing. We exhale, everything slows, the body pauses for a time, and then we take that next breath.
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