The Breakthrough

Having a breakthrough can be one of the most liberating feelings you can ever have.  You can only experience this feeling through constant effort and consistency.  During the process of reaching a breakthrough you will go through feelings of doubt, feelings that you aren’t getting any better, and days of showing with little or no motivation.  The breakthroughs only come when you find ways to get past these internal mental barriers you set for yourself.  These mental barriers that we create in our mind come from the perspectives shaped by our past experiences and ideas we have been taught and exposed to.  When we learn to increase our limits through self improvement, unlearning past thought patterns, and reprogramming our mental programs, we can grow into a different person.  This person you become has an expanded awareness of what is possible, that you had no idea of before.  The excitement this can create is unlimited when you find the passion for self improvement.  Self improvement is never ending and it gives you undeniable purpose in your life.

When you start to find some sense of purpose it can give you the mind space to imagine.  If you give yourself space to believe in yourself, you will create these liberating breakthroughs with persistence.  If you don’t give yourself time and space to believe in yourself, you will see no evidence of improvement in your life.  These familiar feelings of what I call the “comfortable uncomfortable” are kryptonite for your necessary growth.  It is uncomfortable because you lack the feeling of improvement and accomplishment.  It is uncomfortable because it is something we don’t want to accept about ourselves because all of us want to feel like we are getting better or are good at something.  But you are comfortable at the same time.  You are comfortable with where you are because you are still alive.  Surviving is different than growing and whatever is happening in your life, there hasn’t been an emotional sensation strong enough to create a sense of urgency to make the decision to work diligently and consistently towards your breakthrough.  Breaking down a barrier is going to feel uncomfortable because you have to literally go somewhere you haven’t been, do something you haven’t done and feel something you haven’t felt.  You have to rise to an occasion mentally, physically, emotionally, and sometimes spiritually.  You have to keep going.  We often give in when things get difficult, but we reluctantly don’t see how far we have really come and how close to a break through we actually are.  You have to learn to trust a plan and trust your work ethic.  You have to get emotionally charged and excited to continue to pursue that breakthrough.  Not even because you want to accomplish something, but because you want to be proud of the person you HAVE to become in order to have the breakthrough.  

When you have a breakthrough, you now have something very powerful in your possession.  You have access to new information you didn’t have access to before.  This is such an exciting part of self discovery because it allows you to create an improved, fine tuned perspective.  The more clear of a perspective you can create for yourself, the greater you can operate in the world of possibilities.  If you don’t have access to certain information, you literally have no idea that it is there to use to your benefit.  When you don’t put the work in, you don’t know how life changing this information can be for you.  What you need is already here on this Earth, you just have to be courageous enough to keep digging for it.  When you spend time brainstorming a new idea, or read a new book, or listen to a lecture, this work gives ammunition.  It gives you ammo for your own breakthrough.  It can build your motivation, your interest, your determination, and give you a set of tools that you are going to need in order to take more responsibility for yourself.  We share our stories of personal breakthroughs to inspire others.  These stories give us so much of what we need if we allow them to move us emotionally.  The power these stories can ignite inside of us can be a huge difference maker.  Be inspired by others.

Listening to these stories and the information is not enough.  In the Age of Information, there is an unlimited amount of accessible information to most.  Differing perspectives on the same topic, philosophies from thousands of years ago, translated foreign texts, literally the world of unlimited information is accessible from the palm of your hands with a cellphone.  You just have to take interest and minimize distraction.  I’ve said this before, but it is more important to be interested than to be interesting.  You have to find this spark inside of you.  You have to want to access information and learn about it.  You have one life to live and it goes by one day at a time.  Your life will be a collection of the days you create, and you want to master the use of your time and energy as much as you can.  You have to problem solve and improve your decision making to the best of your ability. This will allow you to better control the options in your life in ways that positively impact your experiences and your future.  Your future is going to materialize regardless, why wait to realize you have the power to shape what it can look like for yourself and the people you love?  

Small breakthroughs come before the big ones.  If you can’t create small breakthroughs, the big ones will come much less often, if at all.  Your daily breakthroughs create the confidence to push forward.  Those days when you don’t feel like doing something you promised to yourself, are the days you have to make sure you do it.  You have to.  You just have to.  Yes, you can give yourself needed breaks, but you need to be careful.  The more you give yourself “outs”, you make a habit of this when you feel anything less than motivated.  If you get used to that mentality, you start to realize you are not a person of your word.  

Being a person of your word starts with doing exactly what you said you would do.  If you are a person of your word that means your words are backed up by actions.  Actions create results.  You have to complete what started in your mind as a thought.  You want to imagine what you want, and you have to work until you get it.  Don’t let naysayers and disbelievers get in your way.  They will be everywhere.  And they will only increase in intensity the more breakthroughs you experience.  But eventually, you will start to form a group of people that recognize your breakthroughs and support you.  And what is great is that it isn’t the breakthroughs that are actually impressive to those people now attracted to your story.  What it is, is people trust your consistency.  They notice how often you show up, how serious you take what you do, and how serious your take yourself.  People with the same values and aspirations want to be around like minded people.  Search for and get around those like minded people and stay away from the ones that distract you.  These distractions might seem harmless at first, but they will come back to haunt you if let it shift your trajectory and you aren’t even realizing it.  Make sure you surround yourself with people that call you out when you are messing up.  Appreciate those people, they care about your future, and they need to be celebrated and thanked.  Be open to recognizing this as fast as possible.

Your breakthroughs will take a lot of effort, but when you channel your emotions and focus properly, you will find this feeling of exhilaration instead of being tired.  You would think you would be tired, but you won’t be.  It gives you strength. It gives you relief. It gives you inspiration.  It gives you the energy to realize you can always create more.  

Your creative energy is harnessed by you ability to control your mind.  How you learn to influence your mind will dictate what you eat, who you talk to, the boundaries you set, and the images you create with your imagination.  We all have an imagination that has wants and needs.  These don’t even need to be extreme feats like winning a grammy or growing a million dollar brand.  In fact, those grand accomplishments come long after the initial understanding of harnessing one’s creative energy.  When someone realizes the process that works for them, they become obsessed with refining it to pursue their goals.  They pursue it endlessly.  

Within that grand pursuit are small accomplishments that are just as valuable as the final vision.  If it weren’t for these small accomplishments, there would be no evidence to continue the pursuit.  When you realize these small accomplishments  are all a matter of perspective, you can “trick” your mind into a positive flowing energy pattern.  You can formulate the significance in your own mind when you realize you get to assign this.  You get to decide what you feel excited about and what you need in order to continue your positive motion.  When you listen other people’s opinions of your accomplishments, it gives them the power to downplay them.  Who is anyone else to dictate where you are on your journey?  Don’t let these false ideas of success slow you down.  Stay on your mission and enjoy your own process and timeline.  The only one that can give the final word in stopping a pursuit of something, is you.  No one else.  Don’t let them in.

Your process will feel a lot like this in the beginning:  Attempt, Fail, Learn, Repeat.  But when you do this enough times, eventually you will get that sliver of a moment that will look like this:  Attempt, Succeed, Celebrate, Learn, Repeat.  Your consistent pursuit will help you find the formula to create this as consistently as possible.  Just like failure, success is temporary and at times you will feel like you are right back where you started.  But you aren’t.  You now have more information than you did before and when you learn to craft it to your benefit, the less you will fail.  The less you fail, the more confident you grow. The more confident you grow, the more likely you will continue succeeding because you begin to trust yourself.

Build the trust.  You have one life to do it.  No matter what has happened in the past, today is a new day to lay your first brick, or your 50th. Build the trust inside yourself one day at a time.  Get around things that make you happy.  Listen to music that makes you feel something beautiful.  Watch films that make you see the magic this life has to offer you.  Volunteer to help people less fortunate than you.  Show up to experience life, your breakthroughs will always come, and they will always make you stronger.

Keep working for your breakthrough, it is coming.