Ugly Breakthrough.

Many people struggle with transitions because of the unknown and unsettling phase that’s compulsory before arriving at clarity and significance. The more we depend on knowing and planning our next steps the harder we struggle with going through the inevitable place of nothingness necessary for growth and development.

Most transitions are like going back to (or finding new) default settings. We aren’t comfortable being blank or waiting. We get so restless when in a season of inactivity for various reasons. For some of us it’s the comparison with those around us who seem to be on the fast lane of life. The inactive season is sometimes heated up by financial discomfort due to accumulating bills. Bills have no halftime, they keep coming. I remember for the longest time my biggest fear has been poverty. I have often felt like if I stop running poverty that’s hot on my heels will catch up and pounce on me like a bandit. Working on my faith and trust in Sir God is still a work in progress.

American writer John Ernst Steinbeck remarked, “I wonder why progress looks so much like destruction”. I wondered about that too especially throughout most of my 40s. It felt like the fight for my life. Often, I was sure I wouldn’t survive that turbulence. I was being destroyed literally. We’ve often heard that nothing good comes easy. If that’s true then a good, meaningful and significant life will take much more effort to build. And most of that effort is internal work. Replacing old ways of thinking and outlooks on life is difficult. It often feels like trying to separate two sheets of paper glued together.

This week a friend called me to inquire If I could help her explore an opportunity in Kenya. She asked me what I do. Strangely I found myself explaining what I do now but focused more on what I was doing before I transitioned into coaching. It seemed easier to explain (and for her to understand) that I used to run an events business. Coaching is still a concept many struggle to understand as an occupation so I sometimes find myself diluting it further in my explanation. Sometimes the easiest things are the hardest to explain.

That’s one reason why moving into new seasons is difficult. Our past, good and bad combined won’t let us go without a fight. We need to bomb it all together so that we have nothing to go back to. The comfort zone is good but nothing grows there. Successful transitions require that we burn some bridges. Overstaying our welcome in places and phases that are over delays our next chapter. It might even deny us altogether if we take too long to move. Opportunities are rarely wasted they just move to the next guy who’s ready to take them.

Folks, uncertainty is certain in life especially when moving into new seasons. It is often scary, messy and even ugly. But that so far seems the only route to a life of purpose and significance. Until they invent a new less uncomfortable one. I once read that at the end of life what we will regret most is not what we did but what we didn’t do.

A good start then might be knowing what we will regret when our time is up. What are those deep desires and longings that keep haunting you? What do you enjoy doing that makes you lose the sense of time? Those things are worth being re-formatted for and that’s often the painful part. Maybe to sum up the courage to go through the destruction phase we can try and have a picture of what we are being destroyed for. What is your picture of success in your life? Hold it up in your mind like a placard raised above the teargas and smoke of stuff being burnt in your life.

 As you feel the discomfort and weariness, may that picture remind you of where you are headed and keep you going through that ugly phase. Stopping in the messy season is not an option.  You may get clobbered by distractions and even lose the way. Recently the streets of Nairobi have been a vivid pictorial of that scenario. The Gen Zs knew what they wanted and they achieved it despite the batons of cops and teargas thrown at them. Clarity is powerful. It can withstand a lot helping us achieve much against great odds.

I hope my musings today have been a paracetamol to someone going through the high fever of a messy period of transition. If anything, take it as a sign of progress to a better place. Once we accept that behind most breakthroughs is an ugly difficult period then we persevere. It’s called character development for a reason. My prayer for all of us is that we may not waste the difficult season and its lessons. That what we emerge into will be worth every struggle we have gone through. And since the path of transition is a bumpy ride may we be encouraged by French poet, Jean de La Fontaine. She said. “A person often meets his destiny on the road he took to avoid it. So, if it’s rough then you’re most likely headed to your breakthrough. And probably near.