The Unexpected Way to Create a Breakthrough

A breakthrough is a new insight or awareness that shifts the way you see yourself, your situation, or the world.

It’s that moment where suddenly you see everything differently. You see what you couldn’t see before.

A breakthrough is a revelation.

It creates an opening for something to shift — for a change that renders life as “before” and “after.”

Sometimes a breakthrough just happens. But you can also create the conditions for a breakthrough.

How do you do that?

The Common Mistake to Creating a Breakthrough

First, let’s discuss how not to do that — the common mistake people make.

Many people trying to have a breakthrough keep trying new things and new approaches. They do something for a week and then try something else.

You might think constantly trying new approaches will lead to a breakthrough because you’ll find the approach that works.

It’s true that you may stumble on an approach that works, but that’s more because of luck than because of a real breakthrough.

The reason constantly trying a new approach doesn’t work is because your mind needs to be engaged in learning that new approach or the new skill. In the initial learning phase, the majority of your effort and energy is directed to basic comprehension and motor patterning.

The energy required to stay focused on the mechanics of your task or the problem at hand occupies too much bandwidth, leaving little available for new insights and connections.

In effect, you’re so absorbed in doing the task that you can’t see beyond it. You have no capacity to get out of the mix and above the fray.

The Unexpected Way to Create a Breakthrough

To create the conditions for a breakthrough you must engage in repetition.

By repeating the same process, techniques, movements, or patterns, your mind becomes more familiar with the mechanics of it, freeing cognitive resources to make connections or notice details that you initially overlooked.

Essentially, you free up your capacity to observe what you’re doing, even while you’re doing it.

Each repetition deepens your familiarity with the mechanics, allowing you to spend less cognitive effort on the process. With your mind freed up, you can transcend surface-level understanding and see the bigger-picture patterns.

Once you’ve internalized the foundational elements and mechanics, you create space for creative thinking and insights.

As my teacher Nevine Michaan say, repetition leads to revelation.