Working Harder Won’t Help: Four Ways to Turn Obstacles Into Breakthroughs

Ever found yourself overthinking a problem, going around and around in circles? Thought you reached a limit, and believed you could go no further? What if the answer didn’t require confidence, will power, or years of effort? What you need is a breakthrough aha moment. So how do you get one? Read on to find out.

Feeling stuck—in your work, in your life—can feel a little like the path you’ve been on has stopped short at a sheer rock face. You might think you don’t have the skills (confidence, talent, fearlessness) to free climb that thing. So, instead, you might think you have to just take the long way around and earn access to the summit by following a long path of developing more practice, more knowledge, more something.

What if you didn’t have to scale a rock wall in order to live the life you want, or earn your way into your next chapter? What if it’s not about working harder, waiting longer, or being any “more” than you are right now.

The truth is, that wall is an illusion. You don’t need to scale up or go around. What you need is a change in perception, a breakthrough or epiphany—which has less to do with how hard you try and more to do with how ready you are for one.

In her book Epiphany, Elise Ballard defines an epiphany as “a moment of sudden or great revelation that usually changes your life in some way.” And when you boil epiphanies down to their essence, she says, what you find is love; love of your work, of others, of yourself. She describes acting on epiphanies as a “ripple effect” of love toward other people. Who doesn’t want more of that!

More specifically, an epiphany can manifest in lots of ways: as a dramatic shift in energy or perspective, a moment of clarity, a sudden knowing. When you have one, you tend to remember it, because afterwards, your life is never the same.

I think of epiphanies as breakthroughs, whether they’re big or small—but there’s a reason why we call them “breakthroughs”—and not “pass-throughs” or “walk-throughs.” Because they’re a kind of wonderful rupture; your life may not retain its original shape as a result: It gets bigger.

How to Set Yourself Up for a Breakthrough

You can’t force a breakthrough in your work, but you can create the conditions for it, and be sure not to block the emergence of one. Here are a few ways to do that.

Refine your definition of “breakthrough.”

Every breakthrough is not a cancer-curing moment. It can be far more subtle—and you can and likely are having more than you may realize. But the more you become aware of them, the more of them you can have.

“Whenever we break through any old thought pattern, any habituated way of thinking, and see what’s actually happening for the first time, it’s a breakthrough,” says internationally-acclaimed author, Suzanne Kingsbury, founder of the Gateless Method and the worldwide literary arts organization, Gateless Writing.

That means it doesn’t happen just once. What if you saw your life as a path of epiphanies, one leading to another? Because that’s what’s happening even on a cellular level. “When you experience a breakthrough, it’s because new neural-connections are made that were never made before,” says Kingsbury.

Other times, it can seem so obvious when you realize it, like the solution to a problem that suddenly clicks into place. It also often feels like…relief. “It’s like this energetic spaciousness that says, yes, this is possible,” she says. “You make connections you couldn’t make before, and the pieces suddenly all fit together like a jigsaw puzzle.”

You might have one and not even realize it at first. “They can feel so natural, so organic, that you might miss it altogether,” says Kingsbury. You might have a breakthrough with a friend or partner after a conflict or shared experience, she says, that makes you see the relationship in a new way. “The experience can be emotional as well as cognitive.”

Recruit your subconscious to create aha moments.

Thanks to a very outmoded idea of work, we think we’re supposed to switch “on” and stay that way for 8 hours straight. (Or longer.) This isn’t how the brain works, and it’s not how breakthroughs work, either. And often, trying to do more is not a path to success.

Consider how babies interact: If you try to make eye contact with a baby, they will look away after a few moments. Why? So that their subconscious can process things, explains Kingsbury.

“Adults are the same way,” she says. “Most cognitive processing is unconscious. And in order to let the subconscious work on a problem, challenge, project, you need to stop making it conscious or stop focusing on it.”

In other words, we can’t “force” it. “Forcing a breakthrough is oxymoronic,” says Kingsbury. “As soon as you tell yourself you ‘should’ or ‘have to’ do something, the mind tends to move into fight or flight, your cortisol levels spike, reducing your access to innovation, imagination, and long-term memory—the parts of your brain that allow creative or mental breakthroughs.”

And in some ways you’ve been preparing yourself for it all along. A breakthrough, Kingsbury says, “often signifies hours, days or even years of work that come together in a way your old mind never could have conceptualized.”

That’s why you’re more likely to have your breakthrough while taking a shower, on a walk, driving down the street—because in that moment, you’ve let go of the expectations and your mind is busy with something else, leaving the door ajar and your mind open to the very idea you’ve been waiting for.

One way to give your breakthrough a chance to emerge? Get out of your head by practicing mindfulness—which is simply the act of becoming aware of your surroundings and becoming conscious of sensation vs. analyzing and thinking about them. Tune into your physical sensations, your environment, and turn your focus from whatever problem you’re working on to the act of walking or even washing dishes.

Release your expectations—and the outcomes.

The “shoulds” we put on ourselves about what we “have to” — as well as a rigid focus on an expected outcome — actually close off the tap through which creativity flows.

Every time you tell yourself that you have to come up with a brilliant idea, or that this draft has to be perfect — or worse, that people have to love it, you’ve restricted your ability to explore, thanks to self-imposed limits and restrictions. And when you insist on a very specific outcome, you leave no room for breakthroughs to occur.

“The mind is plastic and malleable,” says Kingsbury. “Give it a challenge, and it wants to break through, to make new connections. That is its true nature. But if you put it in a vice-like grip, it stops its movement and can’t come through for you.”

On the other hand, she says, when you support and nurture your creative instincts, and let your mind wander and explore without fear of repercussions or criticism, it can bloom in ways you might not expect.

“When the fight or flight is gone, neurotransmitters start firing, new pathways are built in terms of neuro-connectivity, and you feel that breakthrough,” says Kingsbury.

Remain curious about what could happen—and ask “what if.”

You don’t have to know everything to have a breakthrough. Opposite! What we “think” we know is more dangerous because it leads us to make assumptions and draw conclusions too early, before we’ve fully explored possibility.

“Often breakthroughs come when we realize that what we’ve believed is not a static truth, but changeable and nuanced,” says Kingsbury. “Curiosity is key to the creative process.”

Take writing a novel, for instance. What I’ve been taught, by Kingsbury and others, is that the key is to keep asking, “what if”—what if the character lost their job? What if she fell in love with the wrong person? And on and on it goes. There is no right or wrong answer when you’re exploring.

Apply this to your own life: Rather than feel you must “know” the answer to a problem, explore a few options instead, the wackier, the better. Push the boundaries, say the ridiculous—and rather than ask what “should” happen, imagine what could.

The power of writing to create breakthroughs.

The act of writing is different from any other form of thinking or expression with regard to how it stimulates the brain. It’s different from talking it out, sleeping on it, or worrying about it.

“Writing allows us to activate parts of the brain that often go underused, and allow for new connections to be made, which is how breakthroughs happen,” says Kingsbury. “Writing, particularly by hand and particularly when writing an actual story, allows for so much brain activity that studies have shown the brain lights up like a Christmas tree when participants are writing.”

Writing does this, she says, by forming connections on the page between memories, words, concepts, ideas, and the senses—and is a great way to access your genius.

People in my workshops have experienced this time and again: Even when you don’t know what to write, simply the act of writing stimulates the thinking; it’s like the path appears once you start walking. It’s the only way I know how to do it! Otherwise, it feels way too hard.

When you let go of conditioned ideas and rules, stay curious, and give your mind room to do what it’s designed to do, there’s no reason you can’t or won’t experience breakthroughs, not as the exception to your life, but the rule. Because when you become attuned to your own potential for seeing things differently, you lay the groundwork for many breakthroughs to come.

How do you create the right conditions for these aha moments? You need the right critic-free environment, and to ask new questions that open your mind to what’s possible. Learn more about system for activating your creative brain—and setting the stage for instant breakthroughs.