Walk to the highest hill you can see. Climb until you get to the top. Sweat, crawl, scramble, and drag yourself until you can go no higher. It felt good at first, didn’t it? Succeeding in challenging goals often feels like conquering Mt Everest. Good job, you earned it!

But what then? You can’t climb higher on this hill. None of the tools that got you here can take you higher. You can try to crawl harder than you ever have, or scramble or drag yourself, but the fact of the matter is you are at the top of this hill. This hill has nowhere higher to go, and stagnation feels like failure.

So what now? It’s scary to think of leaving this hill. You would have to climb down. Give up some of the comfortable view you have. You’d have to learn new things. Going out and finding a new hill might mean your old tricks don’t help there. You have to start all over again. There is good news though. There’s hills out there much higher than the first one you found. They dwarf it. It’s fine that the first one was the highest point you’d ever seen, but that doesn’t mean it’s the best you achieve. There is a ceiling to what your best can accomplish on this hill. And your best can take you much higher in other places.

So much of life is like this. Your best effort can’t change what’s possible on this hill. It doesn’t matter how much you sweat, how many books you read, how many new tricks you try to learn. This hill has nothing more to offer you. Go find a new hill.

This was brutally hard for me to learn. I created a cushy spot in a small company. I was a big fish in a small pond. I had influence, allies, control, respect….and nowhere left to grow into. This happens with relationships too. You can refine and learn and improve and grow into the full potential of the hill, but you cannot change how tall the hill is. Some are taller than others, and if you’re driving yourself insane because your best isn’t making things better, then this post is for you.

If you’ve done everything you can think of, if you’ve given your best effort over and over again and all of the hard work you do does not take you any higher, trying to work harder or blame yourself isn’t going to help. You need to find a new hill. It will suck at first because you’ll have to start over, but do you remember how good progress feels? To learn and develop mastery at a new game and struggle and overcome and develop yourself and achieve new heights that were inaccessible before?

This is not your ceiling, it is just the ceiling of the hill where you stand now. Don’t give up and don’t settle and don’t think that you’re broken because your best is not taking you higher. Take your best and use it to climb a higher mountain. There is so much more for you to see, and I promise climbing a higher mountain feels better than stagnation on a small hill.

Further Reading: If this post resonated with you, I think you’d get a lot out of Who Moved My Cheese? by Spencer Johnson. It helped me rethink my resistance to change and understand letting go of old hills frees you up for better ones. It’s very human to resist change, but we both know there’s higher mountains out there. Let’s go find them.