Just like with evolution, your personal and your business development doesn’t progress in a constant, straight line kind of way.

Charles Darwin saw this pattern in the development of a species, but it’s true for you on an individual level as well.  And it’s true for anything you work to create.

If you’ve spent any time in personal development, you know the feeling of increasing tension when you KNOW there’s something has gotta change.  Nothing seems to be changing, but internally, you can feel things building up to a breaking (or tipping) point.  Then, suddenly, there will be a breakthrough that looks like a massive jump from where you were.  This is the definition of a quantum shift – a change from one state to another that doesn’t pass through levels in between – it jumps from A to C, never touching B.

The reality of growing a business, just like growing and developing yourself, is that you’ll work and work for apparently no gain, then suddenly there’ll be some kind of ‘shift’ or breakthrough, and things will step up to a new level.  I call these ‘quantum breakthroughs’.  Sudden progress.

The main point is, no matter how much us humans love the idea of a logical line that goes from point 1 to point 5 via points 2, 3 and 4, proceeding nice and evenly, taking 1/5 of the journey time between each, progress is not, never has been, and is highly unlikely to be, like this.  You can probably think of examples yourself – people who’ve gone from 1 to 3, others that skipped straight to 5.  Even the ones that take all 5 steps aren’t likely to have spent exactly the same amount of time on each – most of the time will be spent getting to point 2, with a shorter journey to 3, and almost no time at all between 4 and 5 – an exponential curve.

There are two lessons to take from this.  First, you have to ALWAYS keep the end goal in mind.  Keep your focus on point 2 instead of point 5, and it will feel as though you’re never going to get all the way, because you’ve been putting effort in, putting more effort in, and pushing through with no apparent result towards reaching what you know is only a stopping point.  After working hard and seeing no progress towards a point you’re not really motivated to reach (no matter how much it’s along the path towards your dream, when all’s said and done it’s still not your goal) the majority of people will naturally feel like giving up.

And that’s the second lesson.  Remember: “It’s always darkest just before dawn”.  The times when things seem most futile and pointless are often the turning points or the last stretch before you make that quantum shift – but you need to keep feeding energy in or it doesn’t happen.  It’s the few that persist through that feeling of “it’s never going to happen” and reply to that inner voice with “I’m going to keep on until it darn well does!” that end up making that shift.  (For those trekkies among you, remember that transporting to a destination always started with having to “energize” it!)

So, are you reaching for your Point 5 goal, or just plodding along with second base your destination, and wondering why the scoreboard isn’t changing?