Pinnacle and Plateau
What do you do when you hit a plateau? When I decided to leave the business I founded and grew after so many years, I found myself wondering the same thing:
What am I to do next?
There may be times when we reach a pinnacle in life and then find ourselves stuck on a plateau. It can be difficult and uncomfortable to work through, but if there’s anything I learned from my own experience, it’s that plateaus are a normal and necessary step and I elaborate on the reason why in my latest video.
After any pinnacle in life, we are going to hit a plateau. While it is not a place we ever imagined we would end up in, it is a very normal place to land. We all reach pinnacles in our careers, building our businesses, or in other things that we do in life. Oftentimes a little place of rest follows that pinnacle before we begin to climb again.
A plateau offers an opportunity for us to regather our energy, take stock of where we are, and make big gorgeous goals for the next leg of the journey.
However, a plateau can be a very uncomfortable place. For instance, in my own life, the plateau I hit in my life was the reason I wrote my book, Big Gorgeous Goals. I had left Mabel’s Labels and was sitting on the plateau of being unsure of what to do next.
I faced a lot of struggles on that plateau because I was used to working hard and being busy. I had taken great pride in those qualities of mine which is why this sudden slow down was something I needed to get used to. I was in such a rush to get off the plateau that I did not realize that I simply needed to rest on it instead.
This was difficult for me and it took something different from me to set new big gorgeous goals and move off of it. At the time, I felt like I was doing something wrong, that plateaus did not happen, and that I would never, ever get off.
What I know now is that a plateau is a normal place to end up after you have reached a pinnacle. After founding, growing, and exiting the business I built, a plateau was a necessary step in the journey I needed to take.
As I looked at the white space that opened up in front of me, I found it within myself to step out of my small box and dream again. Once I began to dream again, I began to see another climb to another pinnacle and I was able to start getting off that plateau.
It is normal to have plateaus in your life, in your career, and in your goals where you need to stop, take a breath, smell the flowers, and enjoy yourself for a little while. Do not put too much pressure on yourself to get off the plateau.