Why it’s a life skill to understand why, “What got you here won’t get you there.”

It’s a beautiful thing to kick a problem around in your brain for a while, wrestle with it for a few days, know it’s not working, and then let it go.

I woke up at 5:00 this morning, still kicking the problem around. I went to the old wells to look for answers as I was feeling the new well had come up dry.

A voice inside bubbled up from my own depths saying to me, “What got you here won’t get you there.”

It’s the kind of fortune cookie meme shared widely throughout the toxicity that is Facebook. But it’s also a truism that’s consistently both helpful and hurtful. Like Facebook memes, it’s nothing more than the layer of foam atop a cappuccino — the fluffy, pretty bubbles are ready to pop. The layer is rapidly dissolving to reveal the slightly more acidic and deeper layer beneath.

What got you here won’t get you there.

Get past the fluffy layer of bubbles and drink in the hot, brown acid below. The saying is a truth, a guidepost. When you feel it creep up through your existential dread as I did at 5:00 this morning, know it’s there for you like a helping hand. It shows up when you need a slap.

What got you here won’t get you there.

This is the realization that —although there is much to be proud of— there are still more goals to conquer, more fun to be had, and the journey isn’t over. There’s a moment when we’re conscious of the arrival we worked so hard for…and the moment we know the next leg of the journey is about to begin. Slap.

What got you here won’t get you there.

This is the acknowledgment that one is in a good place. You made it. But you still want more. You’re not dead yet. You’re working towards the next level. What you did to arrive here probably won’t let you coast onto the next stop, no matter what your ego tells you.

What got you here won’t get you there.

This is your cue to change tactics. Time to rise to meet a new occasion. The level of difficulty has increased.

The flip side to this is not knowing that what got you here won’t get you there. It’s an unconscious land where you’re using the same strategies, tactics, and all your “tried and true” methods. Months, even years go by before you realize you’re spinning your wheels.

Ego gets in the way. You tell yourself likes, like:

“This is what I’ve been trained to do. This works.”

“I’ve always done it this way.”

“But they told me I’m so good at this! I won awards!”

Eventually, the ego is so wounded, it crawls into its hole. You open up. You ask yourself, “Why isn’t this working?”

Because what got you here won’t get you there.

I know this because I’ve been there. This is a skill we must learn before we go insane. When we want something and it’s not happening for us — we are the ones who must change. Not the world. We must tell our ego to sit down, take a deep breath, and ask what we must change about ourselves and our methods in order to get where we’re going.

Then we must free ourselves to be exactly where we are.

Then we must free ourselves to fail — painfully and dramatically if need be.

We must have the courage to look at what we’ve been doing and why it’s failed so we can let it go and move on. We have the realization. We reach understanding.

What got us here won’t get us there.

The luckiest among us will see through the right lens to the truth, no matter if it hurts or if we must give ourselves grace — and we will have to do both.

Having this realization is the easy part. Finding the path to up-level from the old way to get to the new place is where the real journey begins.