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: 33%

Hearing The Voice Of God In Business

There are common questions from our reader and listeners. There are many different ways  this question is stated, but it revolves around the basic theme of…

How Do I Hear God, Establish Goals & Plan?

If I wanted to confuse the heck out of you, I could give you all the nice little scriptures about man and God’s planning. But frankly, I find those kind of useless when it comes to implementing day in and day out in business. So let me share with you, where I am in this journey. This is not a fool proof way, but it’s where I am. In the end you need to sort this out with God, but maybe my sharing will speed you along this path. This may take a few posts, but what the heck.

Okay, lets start first and foremost with the biggie. Your Dreams.

Huh? My dreams? What does that have to do with planning and goals and day to day work? It has everything to do with all it and you can’t start this discussion until you understand dreams.

For the record, I’m not talking about your night dreams. I’m talking about the dreams in your heart. To illustrated this, I’m gonna get personal.

When I was the age of 9 or 10 (can’t remember exactly) I used to play a ton of golf at the country club. One day, I’m out playing late in the afternoon, the Fitzgeralds come up and join me on the 5th hole. They ask me who my father was, the standard questions.

Then they ask the biggie. “Matt, what do you want to be when you grow up?” My answer (and I can remember it as if it just happened) was… “I’m going to be the second Irish Catholic President of the United States of America.”

Fast forward a few years to 6th grade. My goal? To be a US Senator or President of the United States.

Throughout my life, I’ve been class President, Alumni Association President. Always been in a place of leadership. However, always in a place of leadership where I’m rebuilding or resurrecting something. Never in a place of taking over a thriving situation.

Couple this with all through my youth, as young as 13, I had plans and dreams to own my own business. First an importing company, then a record label. I’d write mini business plans at the age of 13, come up with numbers to make it work.

When I applied to get into the Golf School at Ferris State University, my essay needed to include goals. They were.. “Become a GM at the age of 30 ( a full 15 years ahead of the average), own my own golf course, or golf schools or be in a place of ownership.”

Can you see the trend? The dreams God has placed in my heart for as long as I can remember have been about leadership, ownership, doing great things in business.

To this day, I dream about running successful companies, to do ‘great things’ in business.

I love business. Always have. Can’t help myself when I look at a business to reinvent it, or figure it out.

God has placed this dream in my heart. Even when I didn’t know Him personally, it’s been a dream. Today, with my life totally given to Him, my dreams are still the same. Never has it been about missionary work or being a pastor. Never.

It’s always about resurrecting businesses, turnarounds, getting into something and making it work, then moving on. It’s never been about staying in one place doing one thing for 40 years.

It’s why, when my last company failed and others are suggesting for me to get a job or put out my resume that I balked. A few times, going to the computer, getting ready to apply for job and litterally hearing God say… “What are you doing? Why are you applying, that’s not what I have for you.”

For the record, he didn’t tell me what he had for me. He just told me what it wasn’t.

God perfectly made you when you were conceived. You are perfectly made today. Your dreams, no matter how crazy or nutty or off beat they are, are perfectly made.

The voice that comes to you in the day, while you are driving, the things you fantasize about that are good and pure, are from God. Those your dreams. That is him speaking to you. He wants you to step it out in faith.

When God speaks, he doesn’t speak like Charlton Heston or in a big booming voice. He speaks in quietness. With you, alone in a car, or on a plane, train or at the kids baseball game.

If you are lost right now as to what God wants you to do, I suggest you look at the track record of your life. He has prepared everything for you in the form of training over your life.

I see it in my life. My dreams have ALWAYS been about business. Never about serving in the mission field or being on a church fund raising committee. They’ve always been about leading a business enterprise and seeing it work well.

For years, I tried to suppress this desire. Thinking that there had to be something more noble. In the end, God showed me that my dreams are just as important to Him as the dreams of a song writer to write great songs sung by millions. Or the actor who desires to be in great films, the pastor who leads millions to Christ.

They all matter to God.

Grab hold of the dreams in your heart. They can only be placed there by one ‘person’ and that is the Lord our God.  Embrace them, walk them out and live in faith, that even when things crumble down, God is using that to take you to a new place of new heights in hearing Him.

Popularity: 23%

The Business Person Prayer Formula

Prayer. It is the way to connect to God. It is our local call to the holy of the holies, the bat phone to the big guy. It is how we communicate with God. The belief being, the more we pray, the more earnest our prayers and the more faith we have, the more our prayers will be answered.

There are classes, CD’s, workbooks, ebooks, seminars and month long classes on how to pray. How to break through to the Lord our God. Get into the inner sanctum of God’s most special places. The VIP pass to the locker room of God on Super Bowl Sunday.

It is even painted that all great movements of God are preceded by prayer. Find a revival and the kick off of it is prayer. Or at least it seems that way. I desired a revival in my business. To make it a great commission for God. Therefore, it made sense for me to really get into prayer. To start really seeking God in the direction of my company.

I figured all my business issues of the day, could be solved by praying more. By being a ‘prayer warrior’ for the Lord.

In my desire to hear God more, I’ve hired full time intercessors, put a prayer room in my office, fasted monthly and weekly, met with business prophetic people to find out what God is saying to me regarding my business, all in an effort to right the sinking ship of business or get preferred access to God.

A few years back, I opened an office. We installed a prayer room. I hired two full time intercessors. We would meet for 2 hours twice a week to pray from 8 to 10 AM. We prayed the blood of Jesus over the business. Listed our business issues on the wall, we sang, we clapped, we read the Bible. We fasted together and prayed together. All along there were prophetic words that God would save my business. He would miraculously come in and rescue it to be successful again.

My business got worse.

Then we tithed 10% of the business net, then felt we were to tithe 10% of the business gross.

My business got worse.

We prayed more, sang more, fasted more.

My business got worse.

I leased out part of my office to help make the rent, including the office where my prayer room was located. To a nice Hindu man.

One day, I came into the office and there was loud clanging and banging of gongs. I asked him what was going on. “It is our New Year!” I looked into my old prayer room and there was shrine set up to some Hindu God of the New Year. Complete with food and drink at the foot of the idol.

In the end, my business went bankrupt. My wife and I separated for 6 weeks, I lost friendships, my car and almost my house. Even the dog died. It felt like a country song.

I was crushed. How could a God who loves me, who I gave money to, prayed, fasted, hired intercessors, allow this to happen?

Simple, I was treating God like a mafia boss. Thinking my good works of having a prayer room, paying tithes on my business net/gross, hiring intercessors, committing specific time in my schedule to prayer twice a week, to fasting once a week would ensure that God would break through with a message of how to solve the problems of the day.

Yeah right.

Don’t get me wrong, I love to pray. But not in the way you think it is, or the way you’ve been taught to pray. God showed me that prayer can happen when I do the dishes, pick up my son from Karate, walk with my wife or when I write a blog.

Prayer in business is something that is developed over time. Much like communication in a marriage. It can’t be taught, it is not something that can be worked down into a formula. It can only be developed through trial, error and a willingness to see it from the other persons side.

Prayer is not something you do, like working out, or running 3 miles every morning. It’s something you learn to live out in every moment of every day. Prayer is something that happens 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. Not in some specific set aside time each day.

I know this will spur some level of discussion and comments. Many of you will site examples of Jesus and the top 12 praying and how they did as examples of what we should do today.

Believe me, I get it. I was there myself. In the end, anything that feels like a formula or is rooted in obligation is not from the Father. Love is not formulaic, it can not be taught. It can only be nurtured over time.

Popularity: 17%

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