5 Ways to a Breakthrough

One of my online mentors is Darren Hardy. I started reading Success magazine 15 years ago when they still had CD’s to listen to 3 people. Now, he has Darren Daily every morning and it’s become part of my morning routine (even on the days I start with patients at 6a). It gives me a focused message to ground myself, strive for excellence and be the best I can today.

A few months ago, his message was the 5 ways to experience a breakthrough and although I’ve used his categories, I’ve put my spin on the rest:

1. Do what you resist
2. Push past hard
3. Go for failure
4. Suck it up
5. Supersize goals

Do what you resist: When you feel the nudge, follow it. Follow it even when you don’t know all the answers to the ”how is this gonna work?” questions. When you hear the voice, listen to it. You don’t need to know why, just full trust and faith that you’re where you’re supposed to be.

What are you resisting right now? Write it down and start taking ACTION!

Push past hard: Hard is a perceived feeling and we have learned it from other “hard” experiences. That has created your reality. Nonetheless, when it feels hard, bust through the barrier so your brain can start perceiving “hard” differently.

What do you continue to tell yourself is “hard”? Write it all down (and keep a running list) because you will find yourself thinking and saying this much more often that you think.

Go for failure: What if failure isn’t what you think? What if you’ve been looking at it in the wrong way? What if the amount of failures is indicative of your growth as a person.

When is the last time you failed? What happened? How did it feel? What were the lessons learned because of that experience?

Suck it up: We are responsible for experiences that aren’t our fault all the time. When we force ourselves to be positive and optimistic all the time, we take away our lens of seeing life’s problems. And the opportunity to feel the ‘suck’ so that you can feel the pain and see that life is showing you the lesson. Keep going, admit that it sucks and have the courage to take action.

Where are you avoiding “suck” and covering it up with thoughts like, “Be grateful that you are alive; I’m going to do something to take my mind off this; ‘So and so’ has it so much worse so I should just be quiet?”

Supersize goals: Define what you want and create your goals; refrain from creating someone else’s dream. We are inundated with seeing the superficial side of everyone’s life (aka social media) and begin comparing. Focus on what you can control, spend time defining what you want for all areas of your life: family, physical, career, social, financial, emotional. Look at where you want to be in 100 years, then retro fit it. Think of building a house…the GOAL is the house. Every room is an objective to get to the goal. This is a brief breakdown to depict that it takes times, effort and intention. The first mistake we make is wanting someone else’s dream or what someone else wants for us. If we want our life to be exceptional, we need to spend time.

Just start getting your dreams on paper, it doesn’t need to be perfect. There are a bazillion different ways to do this, but nothing will work if you don’t take responsibility to start.

As Malcolm Gladwell teaches in Outliers, it takes 10,000 hours to be a master of anything. How much time have you spent on your life?

Commit, then Act.

Dr. T