Concepts from Basecamp (The Inner World): Understanding Why the Mid-Life Plateau Happens (Part III)
We’ve now touched on two major aspects that can lead to the mid-life plateau. Initially, we talked about a lack of purpose. We’ve also talked about confusion as it relates to identity. Each of these things are fundamental to the totality of our lives. Misdirection on either front can mean confusion and frustration when life stagnates.
Let’s keep learning. What’s reason number three?
Reason #3: Diminishing Return on Success
When success no longer satisfies like it used to, we often hit a point of diminishing returns. It’s not that we’re failing, it’s that the same wins no longer give us the same feeling. That’s when the bigger questions creep in:
Is this all there is?
What is all this even for?
Am I truly happy?
These kinds of questions tend to surface in our mid-30s or 40s, though the timeline looks different for everyone. Some get there earlier. Some later. But no one’s ever late. You’re right on time, every time.
Before we dig into why this plateau happens, we need to zoom out. Your history matters. Not just as something that came before, but as the blueprint that shaped how you define success in the first place. The best way to put it is that the years prior to our mid-life don’t just precede it, they program it.
First, let’s talk programming. Why don’t we look at how these preceding years unfold under optimal conditions first. Later, we can contrast that with how they play out when they’re sub-par?
Optimal Conditions
In our 20s, we get our first real shot at living life on our own terms. The world might have told us to go to college or trade school, but the follow-through is largely up to us. Like trying on different hats, we get to explore careers, relationships, and lifestyles to see what fits. If we’re paying attention, this exploration helps us build an aligned identity, or an outward reflection of our core values and inner character. Through trial and error, we start listening to the combination of body, mind, and soul to build a life from the inside out.
As we move through our late 20s into our 30s, we begin to cement our habits. This includes everything such as hobbies, workout regimens, coping mechanisms, and even our work ethic. By the time we reach mid-life, those habits aren’t just second nature, they’re identity. That word keeps coming up, doesn’t it?
If our habits are healthy and aligned with who we are on the inside, congratulations! We’ve built good momentum heading into our mid-life era.
In this optimal scenario, we used our 20s and early 30s to form our identity. This is what the quintessential “angel on our shoulder” wants for us. But it doesn’t happen passively. It requires facing our fears, trying new things, and learning from failure. The key elements? The ability to listen inward, to follow our hearts as much as our minds, and, most critically, to trust ourselves.
Special emphasis on trust. That’s often the hardest part. Especially when those closest to us want something different for our lives than we do.
Even when a plateau shows up under these conditions, it feels more like a redirection or refinement and not so much like confusion, frustration, or a hard stop.
A Personal Example of Optimal Conditions and Soft Redirection
My early to mid-20’s consisted in-part of a three-year stretch where I tried on the “gym rat” lifestyle. In my teens, I was enamored by the bodybuilder physique. While I never competed, I trained like a bodybuilder. I loved the idea of being that 240-lb. mass monster who walked into a room and made people double-take. Even if it only meant having the off-season look.
Honestly? A part of me equated that size with confidence. (Sounds insane to write that down, I know.)
Another part of me liked that it was a discipline like no other. In team sports, the game ends and you’re done. In bodybuilding, the game never ends. Every meal, every workout, every hour of sleep is intentional and calculated. Top-tier bodybuilders often describe it as a selfish sport, and I get why. You're always thinking ahead, monitoring every macro you ingest, and every micro-development in the mirror.
I loved the principles: discipline, consistency, resilience, mindset. You had to push yourself to grow, even if “getting lean” wasn’t the goal.
But after about three years of chasing size, doing intense workouts, and obsessing over meals, I burned out. I had gained decent size, was fairly strong, but lifting started to feel more like a chore than a joy. I knew I wasn’t going to compete, so I hit a crossroads:
Go all in or let it go.
I chose redirection. The goal was to move toward something new that lit me up again.
Note: Please don’t mistake this for a “perfect” example. I was aligned in one area but not in others. None of us get it all right.
I had a gym buddy who was even deeper in than I was. We trained together constantly. I didn’t communicate my redirection well (my boundaries were still under construction), but the shift was still easier than a crash. I knew it wasn’t aligned, and I chose to pivot.
Sub-Par Conditions
Now, flip the script. If we spend our 20s chasing validation, numbing with alcohol or drugs, or living on autopilot, we risk building a life that doesn’t feel like ours. Ask yourself:
Why did you start chasing those early goals?
Were they aligned with your internal compass, or driven by external validation?
When poor habits define those formative years, we enter mid-life with a heavy anchor. Not only are those habits misaligned, but they’ve become deeply ingrained.
The more misaligned habits you reinforce, the heavier and the more complex the anchor is.
The longer you reinforce each habit, the deeper that anchor sinks into the ocean floor.
Put plainly, rewiring your life is going to take serious effort. Often, the genesis of misalignment is so far back that we can’t even remember it. We just wake up one day confused and stuck. But it’s not a mystery. That feeling is the inevitable result of a shallow or misdirected goal created years ago.
What’s that other word we keep coming back to? Self-awareness.
When we live under sub-par conditions, we use our 20s and early 30s to create a gap between who we are and the external life we’re living. That gap is what leads to the feeling that “this life isn’t mine.” This is the epitome of what the devil on our shoulder wants:
The path of least resistance.
Numb the fear.
Stick to what’s safe and optimal for survival, not happiness.
Follow the “shoulds.”
Keep up with the Joneses.
We don't chase what we actually want when we choose to side with the devil on our shoulder. We chase what’s safe, easy, and accepted.
And when the mid-life plateau shows up here? It’s not a gentle nudge. It’s a hard stop. It’s a crash.
An Example of Sub-Par Conditions and a Hard Stop
At 22, I had a Humanities degree, no job prospects, and a fork in the road. I moved from the East Coast to the West Coast after my family encouraged me to take a good job opportunity. The decision was easy. There were no jobs at home, and my gut told me I was on the wrong path as it was.
When I went, I was chasing one thing: money.
I had a number in mind, driven by my upbringing. My dad was an engineer who had great income. He valued discipline, control, and planning. If it wasn’t in the budget, it wasn’t happening. My mom struggled financially, cleaning houses to provide. She gave everything she could, often at her own expense. From my own child’s view, neither of them actually had money. So, I overcompensated. I wanted freedom. I wanted to never worry. I didn’t see it at that time, but my goal was shallow and misunderstood.
A couple years after I landed that West Coast job, I grew tired of it. I decided to get a Bachelor’s degree in the easiest, most lucrative field I could think of. Eventually, I moved into a technical role that taught me a lot but eventually that too grew to be draining. In conjunction to the approaching money target, I was mentally exhausted, burned out, and deeply unfulfilled. There were many positive parts of the job but over time, the negative aspects outweighed the positives. The work environment was riddled with everlasting poor communication, last minute pivots, blame culture, extremely rigid systems, low morale, and a very heavy presence of politics. I had hit my financial target, but it came at a steep cost.
That’s just the financial perspective of life leading to my own plateau. That doesn’t even touch the competing identities I chose to build, the unresolved father wounds I chose to carry, the avoidant attachment style I maintained, or the weekend binge drinking I carried through my 20s and much of my 30s.
My anchor? It was heavy, complex, and I sunk that mother f**ker deep into the ocean floor!
How Does All This Add Up to a Diminishing Return on Success?
If diminishing returns are about success no longer satisfying us the way it once did, then it all boils down to one question:
Does the success you’ve achieved, and the success you still strive for, actually satisfy you?
If your answer is a resounding yes, then any mid-life plateau will likely feel like a recalibration, not a collapse. You’ve built a strong, intentional life that reflects who you are inside. You’ve leveraged both wins and failures to build something real. You are aligned. That’s winning.
If your answer is no, feels misaligned, disconnected, or weighed down, you’re not alone. When I was 22, my goal was money. Fantasizing about hitting that number felt awesome! At 35, the money wasn’t satisfying me like I thought it would. My goal was shallow and misunderstood. I found out the hard way that I wasn’t actually after money to begin with.
You may have built your own version of that complex anchor, but there’s power that comes from the effort of rebuilding. You’ve known both sides. You’ve lived both stories. That makes you extremely powerful.
Some might call it a “zero to hero” story. I disagree. You were always enough. You just had to live the way most people do before you could fully appreciate what it means to elevate.
Key Takeaways:
The foundation of your mid-life identity is built in your 20s and 30s, whether it is done with intention or not. Your identity becomes your anchor. It either holds you steady in good waters or keeps you stuck in bad waters, depending on how it was built and where you sank it.
When we live those years with intention, we try on careers, relationships, and lifestyles like hats, learning what fits and what doesn’t. This leads to an identity that’s aligned from the inside out. The result? If a mid-life plateau shows up, it’s often a redirection, not a collapse.
When we live those years on autopilot, chasing validation, numbing pain, and following the “should,” we build a heavy, complex, deeply seated anchor. When the plateau hits, it’s not just a redirection, it’s a hard stop, if not a crash. Rebuilding takes serious effort, but it’s also where deep transformation begins and real power reveals itself.
The Built to Elevate mission is rooted in this simple progression:
Knowledge creates power.
Power creates choice.
Choice becomes empowerment.
Empowerment is freedom.
This is where the plateau ends, and the real climb begins.
Only one question remains: Are you ready to elevate and move into that all-powerful version of yourself?
Yours in Elevation,
FJ.