There’s little more frustrating than the realization that your efforts toward your personal growth seem to have gotten you into a rut.
While all the work you have done up to this point may have served you well, it lately seems to have lost its spark. You may find yourself feeling listless and bored in both your personal and professional life, yet your efforts to push yourself higher all seem to fall flat.
You may not even feel motivated to try to climb out of the rut in which you are stuck. In some ways, it’s like hitting a plateau while trying to lose weight – you can’t seem to progress further toward your goal, no matter how hard you try.
So how do you motivate yourself to get off that personal growth plateau? Much as you would do for your exercise routine, you need to change-up your approach to your personal growth. Perhaps the best place to start out is to look at some of the beliefs that you may have about how your personal growth plans should be working.
Below are some of the more common personal growth ruts people fall into, along with how you can get yourself out of them if they apply to you.
1. You don’t have anything to improve
There will always be areas in your personal and professional lives that need to be better. Maybe you need to learn to be more patient with your kids or to be better at multi-tasking. Even if you already have a good handle on these things, they can always use fine-tuning. Sometimes even small tweaks to your personal growth plans can be just the boost you need to get you going again.
2. You don’t have time
It can be all too easy to dismiss personal growth opportunities, such as work seminars or educational classes, by saying that you don’t have time in your busy schedule. While this may be true, it can also provide you with an opportunity to re-evaluate how you organize your time.
Do you hate to delegate tasks to coworkers? This could be a great time to practice doing just that, so you can take advantage of that seminar. Do you have more time available in the evenings after the kids have been put to bed? An online distance-learning course that you can do on your schedule may be your best option. Don’t lock yourself into a rigid mindset about how to schedule opportunities to improve yourself.
3. You can’t really change
The idea of completely turning into somebody other than who you are is daunting. It can be easy to stall-out on your personal growth journey if it feels as though the person you might become is not who you really want to be.
Of course, a personal growth plan is unlikely to turn you from a wallflower into the life of the party overnight. However, it may put you at more ease in social or business situations.
The key here is to remember that your personal growth needs to only happen on one timeline – yours.
There is no question that working on your personal growth, both for your work and your personal life, is rewarding. The trick is to know when it is time to stop and evaluate – and when it is time to get creative with your practice to get you to the next level.
