Have you ever had that feeling of making great progress in your business and life only to all of sudden lose your shit again and get further stuck?

Have you ever wanted to give up on your dream at that point?

Do you know what really occurs in the process of progressing from where you are to where you want to be?

Let’s discuss the misconceptions about the growth rate of you and your business, the peaks and the dip and what you can do navigate those periods when you’re ready to pack it all in.

What does “Growth is exponential” mean”?

There’s this saying that you hear in coaching a lot, and that is that “Growth is exponential”.

It’s a pretty cool term, but what does it actually mean?

Often you see it explained graphically. (See blue line on the graph below) It looks like a smooth, steady upward curve that increases as time passes.

What the term “Growth is exponential” actually refers to is that the more you apply yourself to the process, the more time and energy that you put into it, the more rapid your growth becomes, and the more your growth compounds and accelerates.

The more you put in the more you get out.

So yes, growth is exponential, and this much is true. However, the smooth curve creates a little bit of a misconception for people.

The misconception

A lot of my Mastery Matrix® Purpose Coaching clients are actually people who have been through a lot of personal, professional and spiritual development. It either wasn’t for them or it didn’t stick, and they’re ready to do something a little bit more advanced.

They therefore often come to me with quite a few preconceived ideas about what coaching is and how it works. One of the big misconceptions that they have is this saying, “Growth is exponential”.

And there’s a real problem that comes up for them.

We kick into action, and they start to get great results. They start to get some traction really quickly. They start to become really confident about their business, about the direction that they’re taking; they start to become more certain in their decisions and their decision process. They start to back themselves more. They start to become highly motivated and start to move out of procrastination. They align with their purpose, and they start to get real results – life starts to change.

Then, all of a sudden, something happens. I get a message one day that says, “I’m right back where I started. The problem has started again. I haven’t got anywhere, I’m right back where I started!”

The problem behind this is that they’re thinking that growth should be a nice smooth exponential curve. So when for some reason it’s not, then something is wrong. They’re failing.

“The Dip”

What I want to tell you is that on your coaching journey from being stuck to having purpose and fulfilment and abundance, and amplifying your impact, that your progress isn’t necessarily this beautiful, smooth curve. It actually looks a little bit more like this (See the red line on this graph).

What comes with your growth is a series of dips. Seth Goden talks about this his book The Dip. He observes that this point is one that entrepreneurs often hit and that it generally happens just before things are about to take off.

So remember often just before you are about to get the traction you’re seeking you may hit this dip. The dip is not the problem; the issue is what happens when many entrepreneurs hit the dip. Many often exit or give up on the thing that they were doing because they think that, for some reason, it’s not working.

Another misconception

Another misconception is the fact that when you’re actually kicking goals, that’s when the growth is happening.

Bullshit.

That’s actually not when the growth is happening. When you’re kicking goals, when you’re getting traction, when you’re doing exceptionally well, that is actually THE RESULT of the growth. The growth doesn’t happen at that point in time. The growth is actually happening when you’re in the dips. When you’ve actually fallen below the smooth curve of progress that you thought you were on.

Sometimes when my clients hit these dips they ring me up and they say, “Well, all of a sudden, I’m doubting myself. All of a sudden, I’m not sure of my direction anymore. I’m second-guessing myself. I’m starting to procrastinate a bit. I think I’ve lost my mojo. I think I’m going to give up on my dream. I think I need to give up on this journey.”

Step into your power

What I want to say is that this is actually the very point in time when you need to really step into your power and fucking own it. Once and for all.

This is when you need to realise that the dip is where the real growth occurs. That’s when you’re becoming your best self because it’s the point when you are facing your fears, when you are facing your doubts, and when you are facing your patterns of limitation. It’s when you’re literally looking at the blocks that are holding you back from being all that you are.

If you don’t face them, you can’t clear them and are unlikely to ever become everything you came here to be.

When your business and life forces you to step into your true love, to step into your true wisdom, to step into your true power, aligning you with your purpose and your direction – that’s when you have the greatest opportunity for growth.

Three big keys to navigate the dip

What I want to share with you now is three big keys that are going to help you navigate that dip when you’re in it.

The first key, is to realise that if things are going exceptionally well and, all of a sudden, they’re not, that you are actually in a dip.

Step 1: Acknowledge you are in a dip

The moment you acknowledge that you’re in a dip, what happens is you immediately dissociate from your stuff. You see it as a part of the process, as opposed to something that’s personal. You disconnect from your body’s patterns of reaction, and you step into a level of higher consciousness that says, “Well, look, this is just a dip. It’s just a thing that I experience. It’s not personal, this is simply my experience, and I can use this experience as an opportunity”.

Once you’ve done that you’re ready for the second step.

Step 2: Observe the thought, feeling, and action patterns that are taking place.

Observe your blocks from a dissociated perspective, as opposed to something that is personal. Become very clear about the thought pattern and the feeling pattern and the behaviour pattern that has actually surfaced for you. Because, in the dip, there’s this massive amount of information about what you need to learn and what you need to integrate and the growth that needs to occur in order for you to get back on that upward curve again.

The third thing you need to do is really important.

Step 3: Consciously apply the tools, the insights, the techniques, the methods, the learning that you have experienced previous to the dip.

Tap into what has been successful for you. Tap into that which you are being asked to integrate. Put your skills into practise to clear those thought, feeling, and action patterns, to overcome them. Because the dip is not when you need to give up, it’s actually when you need to give out. It’s where you need to give more of yourself to yourself and you need to dig deep for the resources that you’ve been developing.

Here’s the thing

If you can apply your newly discovered inner resources in the dip, that’s when the next level skills you have been learning actually stick. That’s when you start to make the real change in your body that you need to make in order to get to where you want to go, to become more productive and profitable, in order to have more purpose and have more abundance and more fulfilment and more impact in your business and life.

The Next Step

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If you want to learn more about how to better navigate your dips and set backs in business and life, so you can optimise your growth and achieve greater results then click the link below and book yourself in for a Free 10 Minute Chat with me.

Book a Free 10 Minute Chat with Heath Myers