5 Tips to Get Unstuck When You Hit a Plateau

Regardless of level of personal and professional success, track record of accomplishments, drive to achieve or positive outlook on life and career, everyone will find themselves at a performance plateau from time to time. For the ambitious individual with big goals, dreams and desires hitting a plateau can be a daunting and draining experience as hard work and engagement fails to yield the additional results or traction desired and a frustrating feeling of being stuck.

Recognizing and acknowledging a plateau phase in life and career is an important step to adjusting actions and freeing the creative freshness and thought that often is the catalyst for the energizing (and often highly productive) breakthrough phase that follows the plateau period.

Signs, symptoms or feelings that may indicate a plateau phase:

• You are trying as hard (or harder) as your normal output to achieve increased results, yet the increased results are not happening, despite an increase in effort

• The focus and activities of your work feel monotonous…one meeting rolls into the next and one day into another without any real clear purpose or sense of measurable progress occurring

• You feel a sense of annoyance or resentment to the level of work you are putting in vs. the results you are getting

• Things feel stagnant and boring vs. fresh and energizing

Here are a few tips to consider implementing when the feeling of stagnation and reduced traction of the plateau phase strikes:

1. Take a mini-vacation and tailor it to provide the opposite of what you are feeling
   • If you are bored by the monotony and routine of your work and life, then choose something spontaneous, adventuresome and active. Perhaps a quick getaway to an all inclusive resort with lots of activities, music, dancing and “fun” of a festive crowd is just the ticket to recharge your spirit.
   • If however, your source of stagnation derives from feeling burned out or stressed because of working in a pressure cooker environment or you are fatigued mentally and physically from the daily grind, then consider a quiet escape to allow the noise in your head to recede and your body and spirit to recharge from all of the hustle and bustle. Maybe a camping trip over a long weekend, renting a cabin in the woods without phone, TV or internet (and please, leave the blackberry at home!) will provide the calming environment that will open your mind to the creative breakthrough idea and clarity that has been sorely missing.
2. Change your routine
   • Drive a different route to work than normal
   • If you typically work out after work, wake up an hour early and go the gym in the morning instead for the next month
   • Rearrange your office
3. Set a Short Term Personal Goal, Then Take Action and Achieve It
   • Lose 5 pounds in the next two weeks
   • Sign up for the guitar lessons you’ve always wanted to take and learn how to actually play “Stairway to Heaven,” or whatever song that would be your idea of fun
4. Read a Personal Development Book. The insight and creative energy boost that often comes from reading and reflecting on a specific area of personal growth may provide one or two pearls for you to try and apply that will get you to the next level
5. Take a Class or Attend a Seminar that will Stretch Your Professional Growth. Building news skills and expanding capabilities is an empowering process that will free you up to implement new skills or approaches to your role.

A fresh approach is critical to breaking through during a plateau phase. So whether you try one or all of the tips above or create a tactic of your own, be sure to step out and break the routine of normal. Shake things up a bit of you want to achieve better outcomes and simply trying harder is not working. Remember, hitting the occasional plateau is something everyone experiences periodically, but how long you choose to be stuck in that phase of your profession or life is up to you.

Author: Joel Goode; Career Development & Life Coach

www.bestlifeandcareer.com

Popularity: 35%

Jesus Paid It All, All To Him I Owe?

When I’ve sung this song, it often produced feelings of guilt and stirred feelings of “I gotta pay you back, Jesus.  Thanks for covering me. My turn.”

I’ve heard people say many times, “You’ve got to count the cost of following Jesus. It’s going to cost you everything.”

What does that mean?  Isn’t grace free?

We live in a culture where we demand equality.  Especially in financial matters.  We will not allow someone to give us anything without feeling obligated to send something in return.

When we get a great gift, we feel obligated to give a great gift back.

We get increasingly competitive at Christmas, and constantly try to out-do each other.

We never want to be in a position of “owing” anybody anything.  We try to make good with anyone that we’ve been given something from, because we’re totally uncomfortable until we even up.

We do this with the crucifixion.  We try and put ourselves into a state where we grieve over and over for Jesus and the beating he took for us.  We cannot stand that Jesus had to suffer and die FOR ALL THE SINS I’VE DONE.  We drive up the “debt” of guilt and spend all our time working to free ourselves from that debt.  All our service and activity is geared toward relieving that guilt.  That makes us feel better.

What did Jesus really demand when he talked about “the cost” of following him?  Could he mean something way different than money?

One of my friends sent me an email a while back, and he said he had a dream about me.  In his dream, he was watching a man shovel hay in from a huge pile into a bigger barn.  The man was doing the work himself.  On a bench away from the action, another man was sitting there watching the other man do all the work.  At closer inspection, my friend identified the man working as Jesus (don’t know how, but he knew), and the man sitting on the bench was me! Jesus turned to my friend and told him that the work he was doing was for Bob and he looked over at me on the bench.

When I heard of the dream, immediately I had 2 reactions – I am seriously allergic to hay, so the thought of taking a pitchfork and shoveling hay into a barn on a hot day closes my lungs up.  Yet even with my aversion to hay and what it would do to me physically, I felt really guilty and had a desire in my heart to pick up the fork and help him.

Then it hit me with 100-ton force – I am a bad receiver.  I cannot accept grace from anyone — even Jesus himself.

I HATE receiving gifts, and NEVER feel comfortable receiving anything for free.  I always position myself as the giver, and absolutely love giving the bigger and better gifts and the feeling that produced in me.  I never allow myself the grace to receive anything from anybody without giving back in return.

Strip that all away and it is nothing more than pride and false humility.  It’s not humility at all – it’s sin.

So when I had my breakdown, and I had to give up everything, I had to let Jesus start doing things for me. I had to let others start doing things for. It made me really uncomfortable.  I mean physically uncomfortable.

Think about that dream.  It was as if I was embarrassed and unable to allow Jesus to work for me.  I wanted to take his place even in a state of weakness.  How in the world do I resolve in my mind that me doing something like shoveling a mountain of hay is not something I can allow Jesus to do for me, even if it will kill me?  I remember Peter had the same issue.  “Jesus you ain’t washing my feet, dude.”

Jesus WANTS to do the work. The work would kill me, but for him it’s easy and enjoyable.  Why is it so hard to let someone else do the work for me, let alone my brother and savior Jesus Christ? This attitude makes it impossible for me to accept grace from him, or get it from others.  I just could not receive anything from anybody, especially God himself.

I have to think that in the scheme of things, this extended season I am going through is as much about me giving up the things which drove me – pride, approval of others, being the giver not the receiver, always being the “fall guy”, doing the work myself when others need to do it, taking financial and emotional responsibility for people that willingly give it up to me, always being the “responsible one”, never accepting a handout, never accepting a gift with grace, and countless other flaws.

Letting all of this go has been painful – for me and those around me.  People are confused, upset, and judgmental.  It’s been a horrible ride for people that counted on me in the past, and I can no longer provide the support or be counted on doing the work. There’s people I even owe things to that I cannot pay back right now.

I am in a season where I am limited in what I can do, and limited in where I feel free to roam.  My “ministry or service” is nothing anyone would sanction with a budget or fanfare.  Loving people one at a time and engaging them in conversation seems too simple and small, yet it’s what he’s showing me to do.

He’s got my spiritual life, my business, and my relationships in a purifying fire to burn away all the crap that I’ve allowed to pile on.  I’m betting there’s a lot of crap in that hay pile that Jesus needs to shovel away too.  It’s getting to the pure gold and burning away the garbage I’ve built up on it.

I am accepting the fact that Jesus paid it all. I am accepting the fact I don’t have to pay him back.  I am accepting the fact that in this season I will let a lot of people down that used to count on me, and people will continue to question, judge, and be upset with my lack of action.  There are people that have given me financial help, physical help, spiritual help, and advice for which I am unable to pay back now, or maybe ever.

My life has been simplified to a being totally engaged with Father, Spirit, and Son and figuring that out without distraction.  Being totally engaged with my wife and daughters  and family in a new way.  Getting real with a few old and new friends who are accepting this new me and totally supporting me, even while going through their own process. Being a person that lives in the moment, and has eyes to see what’s going on around me right now and totally live in that.

My question to you is this – are you trying to pay back a debt for something you cannot pay? Is Jesus someone you accept gifts from, or accept and try to pay back?  Are you able to accept gifts from others?  What have you experienced?

Popularity: 16%

Darin Hufford Video Series – Love Is Not Rude

Posted here for your listening pleasure, the incomparable Darin Hufford (wearing a shirt and tie, no less) preaching the Love message that led to the book, “The Misunderstood God”.

Popularity: 9%

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