As individuals who are inspired by our personal growth, it can be frustrating to get stuck in a plateau. If you’re not familiar with the term, a plateau is when things start to level off after a steep incline. Our health plateaus when we stop losing weight even though we’re still working out. Sales plateau when the same tactics and strategies no longer produce the same growth. Our happiness plateaus when even though we go on new trips, meet new people, and try new things, we still feel the same level of fulfillment.

Ultimately a plateau is a sustained period where the things that used to be improving or increasing are no longer changing. It’s a horizontal flat line on a graph that comes after a steep growth curve up and to the right.

Our response to hitting a plateau is often devastating. Since we’re no longer being rewarded by the actions and effort put in to achieve a result we’re no longer getting, we often lose motivation. We stop doing the things that have been proven to be helpful because the current results suggest that what we were doing is no longer effective. But just because the external elements of things aren’t changing does not mean that the tactics and actions aren’t working.

Let me use science to explain this perspective, specifically, the concept of water boiling.

Water boils at 100°C or 212°F. But when the water hits that temperature, it doesn’t immediately turn into water vapor. When water is boiling in a pot on a stove, there’s a time when you add more heat and energy from the stove into the water and nothing changes - it doesn’t get warmer or turn into water vapor. So what’s happening?

Not to get too complex, but the reason water is resistant to heat at its boiling temperature is because the heat is being used to break bonds between water molecules. All this to say, from our perception it appears as though nothing is happening, but beyond our perception the process is continuing on just as it was before. That is until eventually, it overcomes these molecular bonds and begins vaporizing as we’d expect it to.

Is it possible that this is the same concept that is happening when we hit personal plateaus? That even though we’re not losing more weight or making more sales we’re still making invisible progress?

So this is what you need to know about a plateau. There are two reasons why you might hit a plateau. The first is that you’ve saturated your efforts and maximized the impact of your efforts. Second is that you’ve hit a temporary roadblock that you need to work through to get back to growth. It’s not an immediate signal to change course but rather a reminder to stay consistent.

It’s hard to know which is the reason for the plateaus you experience, but at the very least now you’re better prepared to handle them more effectively.

This positivity quote is born from a deeply personal thought. Last week I was being coached by my friend Greg Benedikt and he helped me understand something about myself that I’d never seen before. Deep in my bones, I know the north star for how I want to live my life, which is “with intentionality”. Greg asked me what it would mean for me to live even more intentionally, and after a long pause my response was that it means I would care deeply about everything that I do.

I’d never connected the idea of being intentional with being caring, but it clicked for me.

To have intentionality with your diet is to really care about what you eat, making the healthy decision that fuels your body. To have intentionality with your work is to really care about spending your time doing only the most meaningful things. To have intentionality with your relationships is to listen carefully, being deeply present to understand what they need from you and how you can contribute to the conversation, and their life.

With that in mind, I wanted to share today’s positivity quote - “Caring is a powerful force.”

Now what does it mean to care? It means to be sincere and treat things with the importance they deserve. It means that you have good intentions and you genuinely want what’s best for someone. It means that you put your heart into something because you believe in it. To care is to love, and we know how powerful love is.

I feel like I’m already a very caring person, but if I can be vulnerable for a second, one of my biggest insecurities is that I don’t actually care. That I just make it look like I care but deep down I’m really selfish and don’t care about anything other than myself, and therefore don’t love anything other than myself. There’s only a small part of me that thinks that, but I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t there.

And I think that’s why I have gone all-in on being intentional. Because being intentional is caring, then the more intention I put into things the more I prove to myself that I do care. And it makes me feel really good to believe it.

It’s certainly true for me but I think it’s true for everyone - “Caring is a powerful force.”

One of the most important ingredients to a fulfilling life is clarity. Tom Bilyeu has been quoted saying that “success is being presented with 1000 open doors and our job is to know which 999 of them to close.” If we don’t have a clear idea of what we want or need, we’re going to have a hard time confidently deciding which door to go through.

When most people talk about clarity they talk about it facing the future, meaning that we seek clarity of where we’re heading. It’s having clarity on the type of lifestyle you want to have so that you can make adjustments or set boundaries to create it. It’s clarity on the direction of a company so that everyone can rally around a shared vision. It’s being clear on what role different people play in your life, and even who you want to spend more or less time with.

All of that is very important but it’s also incomplete - A version of clarity that I think is equally important that most people overlook is clarity in the present.

It’s not enough to know where we want things to be, we need to be clear on how things are. The path to achieving a better future passes through many moments, and if we don’t have a clear understanding of our current performance within these moments then we certainly can’t expect to get to where we want to go.

This is why getting feedback is so important. Data and feedback help to tell the story of how things are going. It provides insight into your efforts and if they’re producing the results that you want. Want to have a fully vegan diet in 5 years? How many non-vegan meals did you have last week? Want to hit a certain revenue goal in your business? How are your current strategies performing to achieve that goal?

Success is a process of optimization. Our first pass at achieving anything will not be 100% correct. So even if we have a fully built out plan that leads us to our clear desired future, it’s guaranteed that we need to make adjustments along the way. And the only way you can know what adjustments to make is to have a clear picture of your performance in the moment through data and feedback.

The cornerstone to my personal philosophy is all about the power of behavior. I believe that in order to get a new result in your life, you need to take a new action. I believe that the best way to upgrade our mindset is through consistent behavior. There’s even a framework I’ve created called ‘The Identity Behavior Feedback Loop’ that explains how our identities and belief systems update based on the actions we take.

However, today I want to go a layer deeper into areas of this that I’m just beginning to explore.

I think there’s more to it than just the action. The thing that actually leaves the imprint and drives our transformation forward is the intention of our actions.

Let’s say for example, you send an email at the end of every day recapping your work. And even though this wasn’t requested of you, you have the systems set up to support you in doing it consistently.

What’s the intention of the email? Is it to genuinely keep your boss in the loop in an attempt to maximize your contribution to the company? Or is it to suck up and position yourself for a raise or promotion? The first intention is selfless, the second is selfish, and the action is the same.

James Clear says “Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become.” But the meaning of the action, and therefore the person you’re becoming, is based on the intention.

With the first intention to add value to the company, every time you send that email it strengthens the belief system that you’re a good worker, you care about what you do, and you hold yourself to a high standard.

With the second intention to position yourself for a promotion, every time you send that email it strengthens the belief system that you’re in it for yourself and you’re transactional. It’s the energy behind the action that leaves the psychological imprint.

This might sound harsh, but that’s the way your subconscious mind assimilates the suggestions your behavior makes about who you are.

Now here’s the raw, loaded addition to this thought that I don’t know the answer to, but I want to share with you. I also think, somehow, we can trick ourselves into genuinely shifting our intentions. 

If we bring to mind how we want to feel, and what intention we want to have while taking the action, I believe that has the power to control the imprint being left by the behavior. The more times we can do that, the more evidence it provides to our subconscious mind to actually change our belief system so that we naturally express a more desirable intention.

I was on a call with a wonderful person named Rajiv Mehrotra, who is the right hand made of His Holiness the Dalai Lama. It was a discussion about Buddhism, and as I learned from Rajiv, Buddhism is based on the 4 principles of interdependence, causality, impermanence, and selflessness. I want to quickly touch on each.

The idea of ‘interdependence’ was popularized in Steven Covey’s book “The 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People”, representing the concept of connectedness. It’s a perspective that all things are impacted by all things.

This then naturally leads into the idea of causality, where due to interdependence, any shift made anywhere ripples to impact everything. Causality suggests that everything has a cause and effect, and when connected with interdependence that effect is felt by everything. 

The idea then advances once more into 'impermanence'. Given how dynamic everything is due to the impacts of causality, reality is constantly evolving. This means that one thing in one moment will certainly not be the same the next. From a feeling or thought you have, to the makeup of a brain cell, to the positions electrons take in a metal. This is impermanence, and understanding not only that things never last forever, but that they’re constantly changing, is a tenet to buddhism. 

And last, arriving at the most dense of these topics, is selflessness. It’s almost an acknowledgement that we as beings are all interdependent, influencing, and impermanent ourselves. This awareness makes the difficult suggestion to reject the idea of thinking about yourself because it is too narrow-minded to the network of things that are actually happening. This is such a fundamental practice that buddhism relates the idea of suffering as “having thoughts about yourself”, and that the only way to not suffer is to think of others.

Interestingly, Rajiv brought all of this together in a way that connects this more directly to what we practice within our self-improvement. He says that we must “learn the way it is and accept it for the way it is.” 

I have no idea what I’m talking about compared to Rajiv... But in my own way I’ve arrived at a similar focus. I define self-improvement as the pursuit of self-awareness and self-acceptance. Becoming more self-aware allows us to gain insight into what we genuinely want and see ourselves for the way we are. Self-acceptance is about allowing ourselves to live in a way that is true to that awareness and honors it. 

The encouragement I’ll leave you with, and that Rajiv would want you to leave with, is to try to be less attached to how things are and to see them for simply who they are.

There’s a book that I haven’t read yet, but have heard it mentioned enough times where I feel I can share the general concept. It’s called “The Second Mountain” by David Brooks.

The Second Mountain tells us about the two phases of life. The first phase, and the first mountain, is to build our careers and families. We identify with success as having a stable career that we enjoy and a nice house with the people we love in it. It’s a life that makes us happy.

It’s not a bad life by any means, but Brooks finds that there’s a Second Mountain that you can only see from the peak of the first that is truly our life’s work. It’s a mountain where we’re dedicated to being of service to others, making a meaningful contribution to the community, and tapping into the ultimate pay off of “moral joy”. 

It takes courage to climb the second mountain because it means you need to descend the mountain you just climbed. You need to separate yourself from the achievements, accolades, and success that you thought you wanted, and that society told you to pursue. You also need to accept the sunk costs of moving on after all of the time and energy you put into climbing the first mountain, which is hard to do especially when it comes as a personal sacrifice.

Personally, I’m extremely drawn to living a life of purpose, so I was interested to learn more about how I can go about living a life of service while still establishing myself. Brooks’ has two recommendations. First is to prioritize relationships and connections. While the First Mountain’s effort is very individualistic, you can choose to pursue personal achievement alongside others. It’s a simple shift in approach. 

Second, as you’re developing skills and building strengths, keep in mind how those skills and strengths could be applied in service of the community in the future. It’ll make the transition that much smoother.

Let me offer a fact that doubles as a huge perspective shift - Darkness is simply the absence of light. Darkness itself isn’t a thing. There’s nothing that creates darkness. Even a black hole in space - it has such a strong gravitational pull that it prevents reflected light from being visible to us.  

What this does is it helps us really grasp what’s in our control about creating a less dark, brighter life. And that’s to allow more light into our lives.

With that in mind, I want to share a powerful Victor Frankl quote that really contextualizes what it means to produce more light. Rather than being at the mercy of the scary, sullen, despairing, hopelessness of darkness, we can understand what’s required of us to produce more light in the world. And that lesson from Frankl is “What is to give light must endure burning.”

Dropping some more physics into this, it is physically impossible for something to produce light without producing heat. This means that heat is a requirement for light, which means there will always be a burn associated with bringing light to the world. 

This is literal of course, but the same rings true for how we abstractly create positivity. We must be willing to endure the criticism of others. We must accept that there is pain on the journey as we experience the setbacks and challenges that make us most prepared to give light.

Ed Mylett often says that our hardships, insecurities, mistakes, and shortcomings are what most qualify us to be of service to others, to be the light others need. But that light doesn't brighten the darkness without experiencing the burn that comes with it.

So instead of taking any kind of burning as a sign that we’re doing things wrong, we can change our perspective and see it as a necessary ingredient for what’s to come next. And as long as we stay deeply immersed in the process and persevere through the discomfort of the burn, the more we create the potential for light.

And why is that? “What is to give light must endure burning.”

This is a mindset I’ve been working on a lot for the last year or two, and I wanted to add perspective to it. You’ve probably heard this idea a bunch of times and in a bunch of different ways: “Failure is feedback”, “You either win or you learn”, or when you lose, “You either get bitter or you get better.”

As with just about everything in our personal development, knowing it is one thing and actually believing it is another. It’s easy to rehearse good sound-bite quotes but it’s another thing to actually live them out. Especially when it’s something as vulnerable as losing, making a mistake, not being good enough, or failing... It’s even harder to be accountable to having a strong mindset.

Another way it was phrased recently by Dr. Benjamin Hardy, that really clicked for me, was that “Mistakes are gains”.

But it was within a different context. Dr. Hardy also said that “Who you are right now is as fleeting as the present moment.” The present moment is here and it’s gone, which is exactly the same as the version of you that heard the beginning of this sentence and the version of you that is finishing this sentence. There’s new information that has been incorporated to create a new you.

As humans are evolving on a moment by moment basis. This means that when we experience success or failure, it permanently changes us. But failure is an information-rich data source, so when we fail we actually advance more than we do when we succeed. Our evolution accelerates when we lose, don’t meet expectations, and fail.

That’s why it creates a binary result. Either you succeed, which is a win, or you have the opportunity to evolve more than you would have if you succeeded, which is also a win. But notice the caveat. It’s the opportunity to evolve…

The extent of growth that you experience is dependent on how receptive you are to it. So if you choose to feel bad for yourself, be avoidant of the fact that you fell short, or otherwise turn your back on really experiencing the failure out of self-preservation, you’re suffocating your ability to actually extract the full lesson that’s available to you.

As a personal example, I had a collaboration with Uber that I worked really hard to get live, but unfortunately it didn’t pan out how I wanted to. Rather than being self-critical about it or upset with myself that I blew this chance,I have dissected the reasons why it didn’t go as well as it could have so that I can be more prepared to make my next partnership successful.

But if I didn’t allow myself to see the lesson because I got caught up in being disappointed, I’m way more likely to make the same mistakes again.