We ended last month’s article by describing the “plateau of hidden potential.” In this month’s article, imagine you have an ice cube on the table in front of you. The room is cold (20 degrees) and one can see his or her breath.

Eventually the room warms up from 20 degrees to over 32 degrees. The ice cube never moves but now begins to melt. Remember, in last month’s article we talked about the 1% rule, namely improving something 1% daily, similar to the degrees of temperature that begins to melt the cube. Breakthrough moments (melting the cube) are often the result of many previous actions (the stonecutter) which build up and give someone the potential and thinking to make a major change. Case in point, cancer spends 80% of its life undetectable, then takes over the body in months. How do I know this? Because my wife and I have both lived with this. Bamboo can barely be seen for the first five years, as it builds up root systems underground, then explodes 90 feet in the air in six weeks.

Similarly, habits,when trying to change them, often appear to make no difference until you cross a critical threshold (death, divorce, job loss, diseases, scams etc.) and unleash a new level of performance. In the early and middle stages of any change, there is often what we call “the valley of despair or disappointment.”

You expect to make progress straight up and it’s frustrating how ineffective changes and habits are the first days, weeks, months. It doesn’t feel like you are going anywhere or accomplishing anything. Case in point, when I took over the Lakeshore Varsity basketball program in 1968, a winning season was a distant memory. Obviously I had never heard of atomic habits because the book didn’t exist. We were not very good the first year, but I had great kids who were willing to learn. All our skill sessions, practices were designed to get a little better every day, maybe 1%. We fought hard in the tough Erie ECIC League, but were up against championship teams like Springville, Iroquois, Lackawanna and ended up 4-14. Was I disappointed? Yes, for the season, but not for the kids. They were all juniors and committed to summer league basketball to improve. To make a long story short, in the 1969 season, we ended up 16-5 and went to the Class A sectional finals for the first time in 25 years. Were there sad moments, mad moments? Yes, there were, but in the end there were beautiful and glad moments, from breaking bad habits.

This team proved why it is so hard to build habits that last. They could have quit many times, but had goals in mind that improving a little bit every day (1%) would take them where they wanted to go. Conversely, people make a few small changes, fail to see tangible results, and give up. Someone who has been running every day for a month, and can’t see any change in his or her body, quits. This type of thinking allows good habits to fall by the wayside. In order to make a meaningful difference, habits need to persist long enough to break through the plateau of latent potential. Case in point, Lainey Wilson, the great new country western singer, was rejected six times by American Idol for being “too country.” She is now a millionaire many times over using the 1% rule.

If you find yourself struggling (sobriety) to build good abstinence habits or break bad ones (using) it is not that you have lost your ability to get better, it is often because you have not crossed the plateau of latent potential. Complaining about not being able to stay sober or achieve your goal is like trying to melt that ice cube when you heated it from 20 degrees to 31 degrees. Your work is not wasted, it is just being stored. All action will commence at 32 degrees.

When you finally break through the potential, people will call you an overnight success. Rodney Dangerfield, the great comedian, stated, “it took me thirty-two years to become an overnight success. All the bars, gigs from one night in Erie to the next night in Miami, no one saw those.” The outside world sees only the most dramatic event or events, rather than all that preceded it. Case in point, my dear friend and great diving coach, John Crawford, turned me on to “Atomic Habits.” When he read it, I think he knew he had lived through it. Five years ago he started coaching a seventh grade diver named Elizabeth Pucci-Schaefer at Fredonia High School pool.

John was on my track team at Cardinal Mindszenty High School in 1966. I knew then whatever he would do after in life, it was achievable because of his work ethic and his willingness to keep learning. So, he meets this young lady, sticks with her through thick and thin, and she keeps improving every day and this past year she becomes a New York State champion in diving and is on her way to dive for Penn State University. As coaches, the greatest joy we have is watching someone actualize by crossing the plateau of latent potential and becoming a champion in their sport with the tools God gave him or her.

The people that cross this threshold know it was all the work they did long ago, when it seemed they weren’t making any progress, that made that championship possible today.

It is the equivalent of geological pressure. Two tectonic plates can grind against each other for millions of years, the tension slowly building all the while. Then one day, they rub against each other once again, in the same fashion that they have for ages, but this time the tension is too great and an earthquake erupts. Change can take years before it happens all at once.

Next: the difference between goals and systems.

Mike Tramuta is a Rational Emotive Behavior Therapist. He can be reached at 716-983-1592