When It Comes to Daily Breakthroughs... Seek and You Shall Find

I like breakthroughs; I seek them out, daily. And often times, quite unexpectedly, they seek me out.  

I try never to leave a day without experiencing a breakthrough, and I invite you to share in this life-changing experience.

 What is a breakthrough?

 A breakthrough is an important (or remarkable) advance in knowledge or technique, often a success or ‘ah-ha’ moment in the pursuit, or the attainment of a goal / intention. It’s also been my experience that breakthroughs help us navigate through adversities and barriers to achieve the successes we desire.

 Breakthroughs come in 4 sizes

 Small: The career coach asks the job seeker, “What are your key achievements from your prior jobs?” The job seeker responds, “I never thought about that before.” (Small breakthrough)

 Medium: The career coach uses different terminology to encourage greater job seeker engagement. She refers to the résumé as a ‘strategic hiring proposal’ and the job search as a ‘design-your-future-on-your-terms marketing campaign.” The job seeker buys in. (Medium breakthrough)

 Large: The coach hands a newly revised résumé to the job seeker, who almost falls off the seat when he looks at it. “Wow… I’d hire myself,” he says. (Large breakthrough)

 Monumental: As a result of all prior breakthroughs, the job seeker confidently lands the perfect job quickly. (Monumental breakthrough)

 The chain reaction

 Energy attracts like energy. It’s hard to attract anything worthwhile with a negative, defeatist attitude. But nothing can stop a person with a positive, nothing-will-stop-me attitude. And as we see in the example above, one small breakthrough begins the chain reaction. 

 Another example: Marc begins his new job as case manager (career coach) for the Connecticut Department of Labor. He asks his boss, “What specifically must I do to exceed expectations in the first 90 days?” His boss replies, “Great question. No one ever asked me that before.” Small breakthrough.

 After three months, Marc exceeds his 90-day goals. Medium breakthrough. Then, Marc’s boss recognizes some potential here, and creates a 6-month plan for Marc, that Marc also exceeds. Large breakthrough. Marc is then offered a promotion to lead supervisor. Monumental breakthrough.

 Acknowledging breakthroughs

 Yes, sometimes breakthroughs just happen, like a long-lost friend that you've been thinking about, who calls you from out of the blue (medium). Or, perhaps, you met that perfect person at a bus stop and eventually got married (monumental).

 But, most times, we need to create or just acknowledge our breakthroughs or be mindful of the ones we take for granted. For instance 'I woke up this morning,' or 'my kids returned home safe today,' or, 'I caught an exquisite sunrise.' (Gratitude, itself, provides an endless list of breakthroughs).

 Recently, I acknowledged that I couldn’t identify a ‘legitimate’ breakthrough. So I simply learned a new word – solicitous (Small breakthrough).  The next day I inserted the word into a client's resume. (Medium breakthrough - because I used what I learned).  

 The client also never heard of the word, but once defined, loved it and left it in the resume written as: A collaborative, solicitous management style." (medium breakthrough - using a word we knew most hiring managers wouldn’t know - but would be impressed with!).

 In all three of his interviews, that one word - solicitous- was discussed in detail and in a positive way. (large breakthrough). He nailed two job offers and chose the best one for he and his family (monumental breakthrough).

 Daily challenge

 Invest 10 minutes at the end of each day (out of the 1,440 you have), and ask yourself, "what breakthroughs did I have today?" And start your own chain reaction. 

And if you can’t think of one – just learn a new word.