Breakthroughs
Sometimes breakthroughs come when you least expect it, when you’ve reached the point of giving up, when you make the most minor tweak to your routine or your mindset, when you prioritise rest, when you stop pushing, when you simplify, when you breathe.
Sometimes breakthroughs come after the twentieth or thirtieth attempt of doing something. It’s like we have battered a door with a ram time after time and not realised the door has been weakening. Then finally the door just gives way. It’s as though our physiology finally accepts that we are not going to give up. Or the contrary, that we are going to give up if it refuses to bend to our will. For years I tried to get consistent at the gym, but I would typically attend for a month or so and then my attendance would slowly dwindle to nothing at all. I would then stop training for a few months before restarting the whole process. Finally, after many years, I concluded that I should either give up completely or get consistent. The cycle I was on felt pointless. If I was going to make the efforts that I was making I may as well just give in to consistency. At least that way I would see more of the rewards.
When a breakthrough happens it often feels remarkably easy. The question I ask myself is, if I gave my younger self the blueprint for success could I have expedited the process, or were the failed attempts, the exhaustion, the falling down, the getting up again, the almost but not quite giving up, the passing of the years, was all that part of the process and necessary for me to make the seemingly simple breakthrough. Probably the learning, the tweaking, the adapting, the strengthening, the passing of time is necessary, but I can’t help thinking my progress didn’t need to take as long as it has. I think it is my recent adoption of a growth mindset that has really ignited the change. The belief that improvement will come and that you are ultimately responsible for that improvement, expedites the process. The idea that there is a way, you just have to keep searching.
Like many of us I have read self-improvement books over the years. But I didn’t really have a self-improvement mindset. Now my mind is continually playing the self-improvement track. What do I want? How do I feel? What do I need to be doing? Are my current efforts working? How can I be more consistent? I feel like I am on the self-improvement path, and even if I wander off the path to go and pick berries in the bushes, I am always aware that I need to get back on the path soon.
I sometimes wonder if one change is more important than another. Did meditation allow me to get consistent at the gym or vice-versa? Would I ever have gotten consistent with meditation without first giving up alcohol or did meditation enable me to give up alcohol? Often different changes feed off each other. I tend to think that if I was advising my younger self, I would advise that giving up alcohol be the single best thing I could do to improve my life. Quitting drinking removes the self-imposed ceiling many of us place on ourselves. I often wonder if those who have never drunk, experience the same quiet exhilaration that those of us who have quit drinking experience. Quitting drinking has enabled me to build strong meditation, journalling, and gym habits, that I would not have now if I was still drinking. But at the same time, I don’t know if I would have been able to quit drinking without my meditation, journalling, and gym efforts.
What I have learned is that the path to improvement and consistency is winding and often it feels circular. I’ve also learned it’s interesting trying. Can I manipulate this thing (me) to act in a certain way over a sustained period of time?
What Breakthroughs?
It’s interesting that none of my breakthroughs relate to external rewards. I don’t have a new job, an improved salary, or a better car. One of my biggest successes has been in quitting alcohol. This is something I would previously never have believed to be possible. Another success has been in developing and maintaining a simple yet consistent morning routine consisting of meditation, exercise, and journalling. My mental health is as good as it’s ever been, my confidence beyond anything I have ever known. I genuinely used to believe that my lack of confidence was an integral part of me that could never be overcome. I would look at confident people and marvel.
The question I’m asking myself now is, if I feel so good without the aforementioned external rewards, do I really even want/need them at all?