Several years ago, as I neared the top of a ladder I had been climbing, I realized that there was nothing but a blank wall at the top of it. No window. No door. No decoration. Just a blank wall.

I know I’m not alone.

I’m pretty sure that happens to most of us at some point in our lives. Probably more than once. Has it happened to you?

As I thought about this analogy, I realized that there are pretty much three things that you can do.

1. You can climb back down the ladder and start over on a new ladder.
2. You can decorate the wall at the top of the ladder, make it pretty and comfortable so that you can hang out there.
3. You can bust through the wall and see what’s on the other side.

Personally, I like option #3.

If you climb back down the ladder, you’re losing all your momentum and probably leaving a lot of your experience and knowledge on that ladder. You may not need them or even be able to use them on a new ladder.

If you decorate the wall, sure, you have something pretty to look at it, but isn’t even that view going to get old after a while? How many times will you have to redecorate the wall?

By busting through the wall, you keep and value all the experience and knowledge you’ve brought with you up that ladder. You use the climbing skills you’ve developed and retain the success that you’ve reached. And, this is the important part, you’ve opened up a window (or door) to a whole new world of possibilities.

But, breaking through the wall isn’t always that easy. After all, you built the wall!

Yes, you read that right. You built the wall.

You built the limitations on your view of available possibilities by buying into what other people said you could and couldn’t do.

You built the wall by turning negative experiences in your life into beliefs about yourself that probably aren’t true.

You built the wall by deciding somewhere along the way what your life would look like and accepting that as fact.

The good news is that if you built it, you can also break through it!

You have the ability to change your beliefs and your conditioning, get clear on what’s important to you NOW, and upgrade your state of being!

That’s what a Transcendent Leader does. Change. Breakthrough.

If you’re at the top of a ladder, you get to decide what you do next. Only you.

You climbed the ladder. You built the wall. You decide what happens next. What option will you choose?