Essay
The Invisible Divide
There's a hidden line in personal development that nobody talks about – a line that determines whether advice will lift you up or push you down. Understanding which side you're on can determine what steps to take and what advice will unlock real, meaningful progress.
Personal development advice is often presented as a one-size-fits-all solution. Nuance and situational framing would clutter the sound bite and bury the hook that modern authors and life advisors need to grab attention in social media feeds.
The context of one’s life situation is absent from personal development discourse. But everyone exists within their unique situation — whether based on the season of life, environment they’re living in, or other circumstances.
Broadly, I see two categories of situational context that must always be considered. Where someone fits between these categories makes a monumental difference in the kind of guidance that's relevant. Advice offered for one group will be wrong for the other — sometimes to a harmful degree. This distinction needs to be clear when advocating an approach to life enhancement.
The big distinction, the giant bold line, is whether someone is struggling in a state of despair with a sense of being lost in life, or is on stable emotional and psychological footing. The path to climb out of a despair state, out of the sense of being stuck, is different from what someone can do when they're in a stable mental and emotional state on firm footing. The approaches can be polar opposites.
Someone struggling in a negative state needs to get to the stable state, ultimately opening up the broader range of options that await across that line. But if presented with those above-the-line approaches while in the despair context, it will seem impossible. They will not see a viable path.
Of course, it's not a stark binary line — it's more of a gradual gradient that needs to be traversed. But the feeling of moving from one zone to the other is dramatic, and the act of crossing it can happen quickly, making it feel like a sharper line. For the sake of our discussion, I'm going to treat it as a binary to speak more clearly about the two contextual states.
I’m not talking about mental illness here, that’s another state with even greater complications. That often deserves professional help and is beyond the scope of this discussion. The “dark state” I’m referring to is a sense of being lost in life or so far behind one doesn’t know what to do or how to recover. It’s a sense of helplessness and hopelessness in the face of life’s ongoing challenges.
In the dark struggling state, you need extreme clarity, simplicity, and the recognition that any progress whatsoever will start forward momentum — regardless of how small. You don’t need a perfect sense of direction, that will gradually emerge with future steps. Just walk, slowly. At this point, it’s about jump-starting movement from a standstill.
This provides indisputable evidence to yourself that you’re not helpless and the situation is not hopeless. It may be difficult, but you still have agency and can make constructive change. Prove that to yourself by doing something, anything. And as you start to make small changes, you will gain more power to take bigger steps.
I've written guidance for both states. My default is speaking from a stable foundation on how to turn ordinary into extraordinary. Though on a number of occasions, I've addressed how to start from a state of despair — for example, this video here.
The Pillars, Pipelines, and Vault System (PPV) is designed to take all of this into consideration. One of the biggest distinctions in the PPV system is that it begins by assessing the individual’s current state. It then custom tailors the path, allowing each person to design progress from a well-defined starting point.
But before getting to more comprehensive systems in future issues, I want to touch on a key principle for reaching a stronger baseline when in a difficult state.
If you're under the line, struggling in a state of despair, all you need to do is act in any capacity, to any degree. The thing you need to achieve is starting forward momentum — no matter how small.
Any momentum is progress. Any momentum is a success. Make zero judgment or evaluation of the quality of the momentum or outcomes. Just take a step, any step. Then take one more. The step is a win. The next step is a win.
If you line up enough of those over enough time to shape a habit, you'll achieve better balance. You'll feel better from the sense of progress, and can build further on top of that.
Even above the line, when life is more stable and balanced, feelings of frustration and incompleteness are common. Many of us feel we’re falling short of our goals or lagging behind others. This is normal, particularly in today's era of social media, where curated online personas and highly visible success stories can skew our perceptions and fuel unrealistic comparisons.
Few people are where they really want to be in life — a problem with expectations as much as with reality. The big distinction is whether you feel despair and hopelessness or feel a stable foundation that you can build on top of.
Knowing where you are relative to that line should be considered when listening to advice. If the advisor can't tell the difference, find someone with a better sense of context.
In upcoming issues, I’ll expand in much more detail on action plans from various starting points in life. This is part of an ongoing series that’s just starting.