The thing about breakthroughs is that they often happen when you least expect them.
Usually after a point of frustration.
Almost always after you’ve decided (even temporarily) to give up.
And often when you decide to look at the problem you’re solving from a different perspective (like that photo above of the ice covered branches flipped on its side…)
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As a family, last night we watched the biopic Young Woman and the Sea – the story of Trudy Ederle – the first woman to swim across the English Channel.
It is a story of Courage & Grit…
And one that is a lesson in breakthroughs.
This past week, I had a major breakthrough in my final sprint to finish the manuscript for Return to Real and get the book over the finish line…
Something I was stuck on for weeks.
And yet, I still feel like I have a long way to go.
Perhaps a bit like when Trudy left the shores of France to embark on her epic swim…
She had traveled all the way from America across the Atlantic – but still had the toughest stretch in front of her.
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Right now, I’m in the “open heart surgery” phase of editing.
Ripping apart what I’ve written – only to stitch it back together.
Most people who haven’t written book before assume that the hardest part is the writing process.
But anybody who’s written a book knows that the hardest part is actually the editing of what you’ve written.
And I am squarely in the middle of it right now.
Which brings me to the focus for this week’s issue:
As promised, building on where we started last week in [Issue #080] The “Contrarian Canon” (Part 1)
I’ve pulled yet another one of the most powerful – but overlooked – key ideas that I wrote about this past year…
What I consider to be part of the “Contrarian Canon.”
And an issue that’s very relevant to the conversation here today:
The Nature of Breakthroughs.
1 | How to Turn Your Current Setback Into Your Next Big Breakthrough (From Issue #051)
“Sometimes we need to break what we’ve built – to build something better.”
In this issue, we start with a 200‑year‑old sugar maple on our farm that recently endured a brutal ice storm – and explore a contrarian idea:
The moments you feel most stalled are often the moments you’re closest to a meaningful shift.
We look at how weeks of delays can suddenly give way to an “explosion” of progress once conditions change… and how that same pattern shows up in entrepreneurship, health, and creative work.
Along the way, we connect setbacks to flow (detaching from the outcome and committing to process), show how a frustrating limitation can unexpectedly create space for progress elsewhere, and then bring in the science behind why moderate adversity so often strengthens us.
(And why “creative block” frequently precedes insight.)
What you’ll get if you double‑click:
A grounded (and surprisingly practical) framework for interpreting “stuck” as signal to pay attention to – plus three (3) powerful reflection questions to ask yourself.
Along with research-backed context to help you turn your current setback into your next big breakthrough…
Here’s the full issue:
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Okay, I’ll leave you with that for today…
SEND ME AN EMAIL to let me know what you think about this one.
Maybe share a recent setback you’ve faced…
Or a breakthrough you’ve just experienced.
(I always enjoy hearing from you.)
In the meantime…
It’s back to manuscript editing for me…
No food.
No water.
Just words :-)
Remember to hug the ones you love.
And until next week,
Ryan :-)
P.S. I had originally planned on hosting a Town Hall on January 8th (this coming Thursday), but I’ve decided to push it back to create the space I need to get the manuscript for RTR over the finish line…
I’ll update you here as soon as I have a revised date scheduled (probably won’t be until next month at the earliest) – but in the meantime, I wanted to give you a heads up and to let you know that I haven’t forgotten.
Stay tuned…. :-)
