If you’re feeling stuck on something, perhaps you’re looking for a breakthrough. But will that really help you move forward?
In the personal development space, it often seems like what people are after is a breakthrough. And this is what many coaches promise.
But here’s the truth: breakthroughs alone won’t help you move forward.
Breakthroughs are a dime a dozen. In fact, if you’re reading this, I suspect you have had many breakthroughs but still aren’t moving forward.
That’s why you feel stuck.
Breakthrough vs Transformation
My coaching mentor Joanna Lindenbaum, founder of the Applied Depth Institute, drills into her students the difference between a breakthrough and a transformation.
If you’re feeing stuck, this is an important distinction to understand.
What’s a Breakthrough?
“Breakthrough” is a term that’s thrown around a lot, but what, exactly, is a breakthrough?
Let’s define it:
A breakthrough is a moment of insight or new awareness about something. It’s an opening; a moment when you see the light, when you get a new perspective on an issue. It’s an a-ha moment.
How Do You Get a Breakthrough?
There are lots of ways to have a breakthrough.
A breakthrough can be triggered by a potent question that makes you see the situation from a different angle, or by something that someone says. It can be sparked by your self-generated awareness about a topic, through journaling, or by someone’s reflection back of something you said. You can have a breakthrough while your mind is wandering and you’re not even thinking about the issue, while listening to a song, or watching a television show or movie.
Breakthroughs can emerge from a state of total chaos or confusion, from exposing yourself to new ideas and new people, from a change in your routine, a change in your location, or in a dream.
The Limits of Breakthroughs
Breakthroughs feel great. They open us up to new ideas. But unless we take further action, that’s where it ends.
Insight, without more, won’t actually change anything.
That’s where transformation comes in.
What’s a Transformation?
Transformation is real and lasting change that is integrated into the mind, body, heart, and soul.
A breakthrough is seeing things differently; transformation is being and doing differently.
A breakthrough can catalyze a transformation — but the transformation won’t happen on its own. Transformation requires consistent and persistent effort over time to apply the breakthrough.
Pain = The Gap Between Breakthrough and Transformation
Breakthroughs tend to happen regularly, while transformation is more rare. Because of this dynamic, there’s often a gap where we have breakthroughs but we don’t follow through to effect transformation.
When this happens, you might realize you have new awareness: you know yourself well, you can see how and why you get stuck, but you’re still not moving forward.
This place of gap between the breakthrough and transformation is a place that breeds pain and frustration.
How to Close the Gap
To close the gap between a breakthrough and transformation requires a willingness to change what you’re doing. You must take your new awareness and put it into use through daily rituals and practices that help you embody the new breakthroughs.
The best coaches don’t only help you have breakthroughs; they also help you turn those breakthroughs into transformation.
And, more than breakthroughs, this is really what you want. You don’t just want to see things differently — you want to be different and do things differently.
You don’t have to do this alone.
As a Sacred Depth Coach, I’ve cultivated mastery in helping my clients have profound breakthroughs and lasting transformations.
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