LivinGology

Hitting the Plateau

Whatever people do in their lives it's very likely that they hit a plateau at one point in their activities. Plateau in its figurative meaning is the point at which one's activity has peaked and is unlikely to develop any further. Three main areas one can hit a plateau aresport, work and relationship with their partner. 
Let's take sport, for example. Say you are trying to lose weight and you've started going 
to the gym a couple of months ago. After the first few weeks you were crazily burning calories and fitting into smaller and smaller clothes sizes. After 3-4 months the situation changed. You weren't neither getting any thinner nor were you enthusiasted to the same extent. What happened? You reached a plateau. It's the same mechanism in work. You start a new job, enoy it a lot in the beginning and then at one point things calm down, no more promotions or salary rise are likely to happen and you know it's gonna be like this for a long time, unless you do something to change it. I've also noticed that people can hit plateaus in their relationships. This is the moment when both partners already know each other very well and are very unlikely to surprise each other with something new or they just don't have the desire to do so.
It takes different time for different people to reach a plateau in what they are doing. Nowadays, people tend to do so faster than ever perhaps because of the endless variety of options they can choose from.
When one is going to reach a plateau and how they will handle it depends on one's personality, previous experience and the situation itself. For example, highly dynamic people who get easily bored can reach the plateau in what they do faster and simply change the activity with a new one as they constantly need new stimulations. Say, you've been training tennis for several years. You reach a point at which it is very unlikely that you become any better and besides it's got boring long ago. In that case, there are two things you can do. Either challenge yourself with higher expectations, say playing with better partners, increase your endurance or improve your service or change to another similar sport, say squash. In both cases you are out of the plateau. It's a little bit more complicated with relationships as it's difficult just to change partners. When you think you've reached a plateau with your partner and you don't want to change him/her with another one it's better to change something in the relationship itself. This can be something new you can do together, say doing sports together, cooking together etc. or cheer up a little bit your relatinship by making surprises to your partner - sending them flowers to their workplace, putting love notes in their pocket or just kiss them goodmorning. Whatever and wherever the plateau it can always be overcome as long as one is willing to do so!