The Plateau: What To Do When Growth Stops Feeling Like Growth

Growth is never a straightforward process. We, as humans, are quite complicated, thus having endless reasons, reactions, preferences, struggles, problems and so on, all of which can equally cause as much as they can prevent.

But regardless of how individualistic the journey of growth can be, the stages of our growth are quite consistent across the board.

At the very beginning, you’re going to be working hard, for quite some time, without any form of reward or gratification for your efforts. With the delay of identity, the power of consistency and the laws of momentum, results lag.

However, when everything eventually clicks, the experience is vastly different. When all of the above come together, a person can change quite drastically within a short period of time. 

Confidence goes up. The same problems bother you less. You believe in yourself more. You navigate challenges more efficiently.

Then comes the plateau. You’re doing the same stuff, but start noticing fewer and fewer improvements. In other words, you’re getting less bang for your buck.

But why? Are you not doing enough? Have you reached your limit? Have you unlocked the next level? 

Let’s unpack it.

Reason 1: Standards 

The possible reason for your so-called plateau is that you’ve simply unlocked a new standard. 

Once a level of difficulty becomes the norm, it becomes a level that’s relatively easy to maintain. But once this happens, it’s not going to be a level that’s going to keep pushing you forward.

An old target becomes a new standard, and a standard is just another word for your bare minimum. No bare minimum is going to challenge you enough to continue your improvement.

When you’re trying to build muscle, you have to apply the law of progressive overload. If you fail to increase the difficulty through added weight or increased reps/sets, your muscles become too adapted to the difficulty to have any reason to grow.

Every other form of growth works the same way. And so, the first place to look would be your standards.

Have you consciously increased the difficulty of what used to spark so much improvement? Or has your work rate plateaued alongside your results?

When old goals become new standards, it can be harder than it may seem to realise that you’re no longer as challenged as you used to be, and when this is the case, consciously increasing the difficulty is the only way forward.

But new standards aren’t the only possibility for this plateau.

Reason 2: Different Game

As your standards rise, you’re essentially repeating the same 3 stages on repeat.

Hard work with little reward = plenty of progress = results plateau. 

Then, you increase the difficulty and re-enter stage one and repeat the process.

But there’s a limit to this, there’s only so much “self-improvement” you can do until you’re ready to not only reach a new level, but almost play an entirely different game.

As mentioned previously, a lot of us venture down the rabbit hole of personal development to get out of a rut. In other words, we’re a mess, and are sick of being a mess.

Getting out of that rut requires the basics: exercise, diet, reading, etc. But once we’re free, doing the same stuff that got us out and expecting to continue improving is a waste of time, regardless of how intuitively correct it may seem.

This is when your focus shifts from improving yourself to achieving something much bigger. Maybe it’s your dream job, starting a business or writing a book. And when this happens, it’s like being back at stage one, only in a completely different game.

Being here means not really being on a plateau at all, you’re just once again waiting for the results to catch up. Only this time, they take longer.

Don’t see this as a sign that you’ve stopped growing, it’s actually quite the opposite, as by chasing such big goals, it only proves how far you’ve come.

Navigating this repetitive and boring period is no easy task, it takes grit and a lot of patience, but if there’s one silver lining, it’s that instead of seeing it as a plateau, see it as a sign that you're on the right path.