Most people know when something is off. They can feel it. But ask them exactly where they are in their growth – whether they’re actually shifting or just having a better week – and they go quiet.
That’s because most of us don’t have a way to measure it. We rely on mood, memory, and a vague sense of whether things feel easier than they used to. And all three of those are unreliable.
The Ladder of Growth changes that. It’s a measurement framework for human growth and consciousness that tracks change over time across the different areas of your life. Not who you are. Where you are, right now. And whether that’s moving.
In this post:
- What the Ladder of Growth actually measures
- The five stages of the Ladder of Growth
- Why the Ladder of Growth measures across multiple lenses
- Floor, ceiling, and baseline on the Ladder of Growth
- Inner and outer – what the Ladder of Growth tracks that other tools don’t
- What the Ladder of Growth is not
- How the Ladder of Growth connects to consciousness
What the Ladder of Growth actually measures
The Ladder of Growth doesn’t tell you who you are. It tells you where you are, right now. And whether that’s changing.
It answers the question most people can’t answer about their own growth: “Am I actually changing, or do I just feel different today?”
Memory is unreliable. Mood changes depending on sleep, the weather, stress, or what you had for breakfast. The Ladder of Growth gives you a measurement that holds still long enough for you to track yourself against it. Take a reading now. Do some work. Take another reading later. See what moved.
Unlike personality tests that describe fixed traits – introvert, extrovert, ENTJ, high-D on DiSC – the Ladder of Growth measures states. How your growth looks right now across different parts of your life. Today’s state isn’t permanent. That’s the entire point. If it were permanent, there’d be nothing to track.
The five stages of the Ladder of Growth
The Ladder of Growth has five stages. Each one represents a meaningfully different way of moving through the world – different patterns, different responses, different capacity. Growth isn’t linear. You don’t climb the ladder once and stay put. People move between stages across different areas of their life.
Each stage is named after a ball. That’s not whimsy. The physical characteristics of each ball mirror how a person at that stage shows up, responds to pressure, and interacts with others.
Stage 1: The Conker – Reactive and Defensive. A Conker is prickly and hard to handle. It has a spiky, hard shell for a reason – inside, there’s vulnerability that needs protecting. A Conker also picks up everything around it. All the leaves, all the dirt, all the noise. At this stage, everything sticks, everything triggers, everything feels personal.
Stage 2: The Washing Ball – Aware and Unsettled. As the prickles soften, the Conker becomes a Washing Ball. Brighter, softer, something you can hold. But a Washing Ball lives in a washing machine, going round and round. You can see the patterns now – “I keep doing this” – but you haven’t yet figured out how to stop the spin cycle.
Stage 3: The Bouncy Ball – Emerging and Erratic. More fun. More energy. People invite you places because you’re not bringing the room down. But a Bouncy Ball that hits the wrong bit of pavement can suddenly shoot off in a random direction. Inconsistent. Enthusiastic but unpredictable. Growth is happening, but it’s uneven.
Stage 4: The Snooker Ball – Integrated and Focused. Solid. Precise. Directed. Someone who can set a goal and follow through without drama. Steady in a way that people around them can feel. A Snooker Ball can still fall into a pocket – an old pattern biting you on the bum – but the recovery is quick and the trajectory is clear.
Stage 5: The Glitter Ball – Aligned and Coherent. People are drawn to a Glitter Ball because a Glitter Ball reflects their brilliance back at them. This isn’t perfection – nobody’s as smooth as a ball bearing. But there’s a coherence and alignment that makes everything around them lighter. Magnetic without trying to be.
Where do you sit right now?
The free Head Trash Quiz gives you a starting point – where your emotional weight is concentrated and which areas of life are heaviest.
Take the free Head Trash Quiz →
Why the Ladder of Growth measures across multiple lenses
Here’s what most consciousness models get wrong. They treat you like you’re one homogeneous being at one level. You get a single number, a single label, and that’s supposed to describe the whole picture.
But you’re not one thing. You might be a Snooker Ball when it comes to managing your team and a Washing Ball when you have to present to the board. Steady and capable at work but a Conker in intimate relationships. Glitter Ball with your friends but Bouncy Ball around money.
That’s why the Ladder of Growth measures across categories. So you can see where you’re strong, where you’re stuck, and where something specific is weighing you down. The nuance is what makes it useful. Without it, you’re working on the wrong thing.
This connects directly to the gold bullion metaphor. Your internal garage isn’t evenly weighted. Certain compartments carry more density than others. The Ladder of Growth shows you which ones, so you know where to direct the clearing.
Floor, ceiling, and baseline on the Ladder of Growth
If growth fluctuates day to day, how can the Ladder of Growth measure it?
Think of a port with boats moored at the dock. There’s a waterline on the wall – that’s the sea level on a calm day. But tides come in and go out. Storms push the water higher. Droughts pull it lower. The waterline isn’t always where it normally sits, but most of the time, it’s close.
Your baseline is the waterline. It’s where your growth sits most of the time – not your best day, not your worst, just your usual day.
Your ceiling is where you get to when everything’s going your way. The sun’s out, someone told you your work was brilliant, and the coffee was perfect. That’s your high-tide mark.
Your floor is where you drop to when things get tricky. You’re under pressure, tired, blindsided. This is reactive mode – the version of you that shows up when the shit hits the fan.
The distance between your floor and your ceiling is your bandwidth – the emotional and mental range you operate within. If your baseline is Bouncy Ball but your floor drops into Conker, then when things go wrong, you don’t just dip – you crash through several stages. Knowing that gap exists is the first step to narrowing it.
Inner and outer – what the Ladder of Growth tracks that other tools don’t
Two people at work have to make a decision by Thursday. Both make the deadline. Both deliver the same quality of work. From the outside, identical outcomes.
But Person A spent three sleepless nights getting there. Pros and cons lists. Lying awake wading through fears and doubts. That’s high-functioning anxiety dressed up as competence.
Person B made the call and got on with life.
The outer is what you do – the behaviour, the output, the decision. The inner is what it cost you to get there. Most tools only measure the outer. The Ladder of Growth measures both. Because the gap between inner and outer is where the drain is. And the drain is what suppresses your level of consciousness.
That’s why every Ladder of Growth assessment asks how you feel about something and how you behave around it. The gap is the tension. The tension is where the work is.
What the Ladder of Growth is not
To be clear, the Ladder of Growth is not a personality test, a fixed typology, a mental health diagnostic, a coaching programme, a spiritual hierarchy, or a moral ranking system. It doesn’t describe who’s better or worse. It describes patterns of growth over time.
It doesn’t tell you what to do. It doesn’t prescribe an intervention, a method, or a pathway. Growth happens through many routes – coaching, therapy, clearance work, meditation, time, life itself. The Ladder of Growth sits alongside any of those without competing with them.
Its job is to measure where you are, whether you’re making any shifts, and in which direction. That’s it. No judgement. No prescription. Just visibility.
How the Ladder of Growth connects to consciousness
The Ladder of Growth builds on the same 0-1,000 consciousness scale used by Dr David R. Hawkins and Frederick Dodson. But where those frameworks give you a single number, the Ladder of Growth gives you a map across multiple life lenses.
When you combine that with consciousness calibration, you get something genuinely powerful: not just where you sit overall, but where specific areas are heavier than others. Where the wounds are concentrated. Where the baseline is being held down. And where clearing will have the biggest impact.
That’s why the Ladder of Growth is built into programmes like The Ascent – measurement at every stage, so you can see the shifts as they happen. Not hope. Not guess. See.
Where to go deeper
- The Ladder of Growth – the full framework page with assessment details and the ball system explained in depth.
- Free Head Trash Quiz – your starting point. See where your emotional weight is concentrated across your life lenses.
- The Clearance Club (£49/mo) – ongoing clearance with tracking. Watch the needle move over time.
- The Ascent (£5,777) – three months of structured deep clearing, measured at every stage using the Ladder of Growth.
By Alexia Leachman · Method developed and refined since 2010 across 1,000+ clearance sessions
About the author: Alexia Leachman is the creator of the Head Trash Clearance Method and founder of Ladder of Growth – the consciousness measurement framework that maps where you are on the path of becoming. She’s worked with clients to raise their consciousness 200+ points on the Hawkins scale, and built The Ascent, a three-month deep clearing programme for people moving from 3D to 4D with measurement at every stage. More about Alexia
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