Life is meant to be a wonderful and glorious adventure. We help make it so by searching for breakthroughs, epiphanies, and miracles and treating them as key milestones along our journey.
Our normal approach to life is to ensure we’re heading in the right direction and keep taking small steps forward. We can live happy, satisfying lives by making positive progress, one day at a time.
Occasionally, we may find a shortcut that gets us where we want to go much faster. Because we can sometimes achieve breakthroughs in our lives.
A breakthrough is a dramatic discovery or development that changes our life for the better. They come when we experience an epiphany that allows us to understand something important in a new and clear way. Our lives can be improved by such a paradigm shift when the insight it brings opens the door for us to experience a better way of thinking—and living.
Some breakthroughs are even more amazing, because we can experience miracles! A miracle is an extraordinary event that brings welcome consequences. More often than we think, they happen when God directly and supernaturally intervenes in our lives. Which he does all the time.
Our lives become an adventure when we make it a habit to be on the lookout for epiphanies and miracles, and celebrate them as breakthroughs and milestones along our journey.
LEAP: Discovering Positive Breakthroughs in Our Life
Epiphanies and miracles do happen in real life, and we can experience more of them if we look for them. STEPS provides practical how-to principles to help people live life better, and our “LEAP” initiative is about how we can discover positive breakthroughs in our lives in two main areas:
- Life Enhancement (“Breaking Through”)
- Addiction Prevention (“Breaking CHAINS”)
Life Enhancement – There is a proven way to live life better and find more peace, joy, and purpose, an approach touted by scholars for centuries. We do it by identifying positive values and aligning our lifestyle around them. Together, our values and other core beliefs form our worldview, which guides the way we see the world and choices we make in life. Our values can also be shaped into daily affirmations which we can use to keep us on target and encouraged each day.
Addiction Prevention – We all have negative habits or addictions we repeat over and over even though they have negative, sometimes dangerous, consequences. STEPS calls those behaviors “CHAINS.” We can avoid the pain they bring with a positive lifestyle that prevents bad habits from getting worse. The prevention of issues and the life-change those breakthroughs bring become wonderful blessings. Learn more in the article “Breaking the CHAINS that Hold Us Prisoner.”
Each of us will have opportunities in our lives to take a LEAP forward by embracing breakthroughs we encounter along the way. Better yet, we can take active steps to find them!
Life Enhancement: Breakthroughs and Values
During my 20s, 30s, and 40s, I experienced a series of breakthroughs that would shape the rest of my life. The events were exciting, but sometimes accompanied by anxiety and even deep pain. It was in looking back that the miraculous nature of these milestones became clear.
During that time, I was looking for answers to some of life’s bigger questions. But, in retrospect, it seems more accurate to say that I encountered and discerned these epiphanies rather than created or found them. In a way, it almost seems that they found me, and each of the epiphanies that I experienced served as a breakthrough that taught me how I could live life better.
Those events serve as some of the most important milestones of my life. They led me to recognize universal values such as meaning, identity, community, contribution, and purpose. Now, for any of us looking forward, those 5 values are a good place to start our search for breakthroughs.
True breakthroughs happen only rarely in our lives. We may have small epiphanies (“Aha’s!”) more often, but big ones come along only occasionally. Still, we can search for them along the way.
They often seem to follows a period of significant thought about a problem or something we are wondering about. Sometimes, we may spend months or even years pondering life’s big questions, and we can keep learning and growing gradually along the way.
Until, one day, “Ta da!” The truth hits us in a way that is different and more powerful than ever before. This epiphany may be triggered by a new piece of information, and it sometimes (but not always) happens suddenly, catching us by surprise with the clarity and power of this new insight.
To live life better, one of the biggest principles we need to understand is the importance of being intentional. We can choose to search for values, and we decide to be intentional about looking for answers to life’s bigger questions. We can read, think, and talk to people along the way and keep taking steps forward. And we may encounter small epiphanies—“Aha!” moments—along the way.
That’s how it happened with me, even though I wasn’t very structured about it at the time. But, in looking back at the epiphanies I encountered, I can discern a pattern in those experiences that will hopefully be helpful for others as they travel along their journey looking for answers.
The example below reflects how the epiphanies that I encountered during those years are portrayed in the material on “What Do You Yearn for in Life?” There are 5 examples described there that can be distilled into a repeatable process we can all use that looks like this:
- We notice our “Before” – We become aware that there seems to be things missing from our lives, sort of like holes that are meant to be filled with something important.
- We yearn for something – If we think about it, we will notice that there are things we deeply desire—yearn for—and we can continue to ponder about each of them.
- We have questions – It is a healthy process to ask ourselves questions—and take the tough ones to God—that can lead us toward more specific insights in life.
- We face an epiphany – A “crisis” is when an important decision must be made. At times, we face a crisis that forces us to declare, one way or the other, what we choose to believe.
- We live out our “After” – The values we choose in those moments of crisis define us, and they dictate much of what the rest of our lives, and the legacy we leave behind, will be like.
Is that true, that the choices we make during key epiphanies can change the rest of our lives? Yes, it is. In life, we do not control our outcomes, and many things—good and bad—will happen to us along the way. But the choices we make shape our journey, both for us and those traveling with us.
The Breakthrough Process
We can use LEAP to help us focus on “Life Enhancement” as an intentional and ongoing way of living. Below is a simple 3-step process we can use to remind us to become and remain both thoughtful and proactive about how we use our values to live life better. Those steps are:
- Recognize that all of us choose our own worldview.
- Determine a positive set of values to guide our life.
- Capture personal affirmations and review them daily.
1 – Recognize that all of us choose our own worldview.
Good times and bad times come and go, but we determine how we look at the world and how we respond when things happen. We should acknowledge that we do, in fact, maintain such a view of the world—a perspective on life—that affects how we think and what we choose to do or not do each day. Step 1 is simply to recognize, “Yes, I have a worldview, and I should be thoughtful about how I define it.”
But what is a “worldview?” It is the philosophy we choose for dealing with life, or our conception about how the world operates. Our worldview is a choice, one we make piece-by-piece over a period of time. One way or another, our worldview includes our decision for who we recognize God to be and what he is like. Our choices about faith do not define God. After all, he is God, and we are not. But they do declare how we will choose to think about God and what role we allow him to play in our life choices.
2 – Determine a positive set of values to guide our life.
Our worldview is the sum of the values and core beliefs we choose to accept to help guide us through life. Often without thinking about it, we all operate around core beliefs that affect how we think and what we choose, and those beliefs can be either positive or negative. They are often influenced by how we experienced life growing up, but we can shape and change our core beliefs throughout our lives.
“Values” are the beliefs we choose as our guiding principles and standards of behavior. Whether we are aware of them or not, values represent those things most important to us. As such, we use them to set direction for our life. Our values help us make choices to maximize our potential and address the pain and problems in our lives. Some universal values have been espoused for centuries because of their enduring relevance and importance, such as: meaning, identity, community, contribution, and purpose.
3 – Capture personal affirmations and review them daily.
We all have internal statements we say to ourselves over and over. Our inner voices come from multiple places, including our subconscious, but we can learn to monitor and manage that self-talk that goes on in our head. One way is to use our values to create positive statements of affirmation to guide our thinking. We can post those affirmations in a visible place and repeat them to ourselves during the day.
“Affirmations” are positive phrases we choose to be true, things we aspire to absorb into our life. We can use them to challenge negative thoughts that hold us back. Affirmations are practical, powerful declarations we choose to follow, and they can bring support and encouragement into our conscious thinking. We can use them to improve our mindset, including how we view what happens to us during the day, and we can utilize them to help us make better choices.
In summary, we all have a worldview which guides how we look at life and the choices we make. To inform that view, we can adopt good values and align our lifestyle around them. Our values can be shaped into positive affirmations we use each day for encouragement and to help keep us on track.
Breakthroughs from Problems and Trials
For all of us, life is often a struggle. During some stages in our journey, we may go months, years, or even decades when it seems that we are living each day in quiet desperation. We may think: “Isn’t life supposed to be better than this? Why is everything so hard, and when will things get better?”
Sometimes, our problems do get better. But other times, they get worse, at least for a while.
Where do problems and trials come from?
- Sometimes, bad things happen and have nothing to do with anything we’ve done. During those trials, we need to know we are not “being punished.” We live in a broken world, and it is an unfortunate and tragic reality that bad things happen at times, and they grieve God too.
- If we allow addictions into our lives, problems and trials will inevitably follow. To reiterate, if we allow negative, compulsive habits (what we call “CHAINS”) in our life because we think they will help us feel better for a while, that choice WILL bring pain and heartache as well.
- One source of trials is a way of living many of us embrace on a daily basis. It is when we aren’t intentional in our choices and lifestyle, and problems arise. Our heads-down focus on comfort or busy-ness indicates, “We don’t know what we don’t know,” and trials often follow.
To help limit trials, we should be intentional in how we conduct our ongoing affairs. That means being proactive and responsible, and doing all we can to prevent or break CHAINS in our lives.
That said, all of us will have trials at times. Since it is going to happen, we should do what we can to be ready for them. One way is to understand that, amazingly, trials are often a good thing!
That statement is much more than feel-good encouragement or glad-it’s-not-me empathy. It is one of the most important realities in our lives, and it is also one of the most incredible things about how God works. Here are some of the facts—yes, facts—that make this statement a reality:
- People can limit or prevent problems, but sometimes they choose not to. Unfortunately, for some it takes “hitting bottom” for them to muster the motivation for life transformation.
- Trials may bring out the best in us, leading us to higher levels of courage, perseverance, and patience. Our deepest problems can act as a crucible to help refine and purify our character.
- God cares more about our heart and eternity than our circumstances in the short term. He uses our tough times to help us move toward deeper levels of surrender, trust, and faith.
- One of the most exciting aspects of how trials work is to lead us toward an area of calling in terms of serving others. It happened that way with me and with many other people I know.
- Trials position us to help others with similar problems. One of the most empathetic things we can say to someone hurting is, “I’ve been there too, and I know how you feel.”
Tough times and trials are when we grow the most, and they are often when God does his best work. Many times, they prepare us in ways that can lead to positive breakthroughs in our lives.
If you are struggling, or you are close to someone who is, you need to know these trials may lead to blessings you would not have experienced otherwise. Amazingly, you may become the person you are meant to be not in spite of your problems, but because of them!
Breakthroughs from Getting Over Hurdles
The new normal in society is characterized by a quote from Henry David Thoreau: “The mass of men (women) lead lives of quiet desperation.” The proliferation of CHAINS in our lives is a big part of the problem, but there are also less obvious hurdles standing in the way of people’s happiness.
We mentioned that one source of our problems is when we are not intentional in our choices and lifestyle. The good news is that, as with other trials, these hurdles can turn into opportunities if we approach them in the right manner. Even better, they can lead to breakthroughs.
The hurdles you need to get over in your life may be different than what you expect. A summary of some of those that were cited in the article “10 Hurdles to Making Life Better” is captured below:
Busy-ness and distractions: We brag about being crazy busy like it’s a good thing and fool ourselves that we’re productive by doing stuff. But getting over this hurdle is a breakthrough when we learn to focus on picking important projects and working on them effectively.
If the devil can’t get you to sin, he’ll keep you busy. (Anne Lamott)
Lack of awareness or denial: Many of us do things not conducive to living effectively, and we aren’t even aware of it! Unfortunately, what we don’t know can hurt us. The problem gets worse when “we don’t know what we don’t know,” and the breakthrough comes when we figure that out.
Living in a chronic state of unawareness can cause us to miss much of what is most beautiful and meaningful in our lives. (Jon Kabat-Zinn)
Having a fixation on comfort: Being comfortable is fine, but not at the expense of doing things we ought to be doing. Then, it is a hurdle. Sometimes, comfort is more dangerous than that: when it becomes an addiction. But breakthroughs are possible when we prevent that from happening.
Life begins at the end of your comfort zone. (Neale Donald Walsch)
Fear of change or discouragement: Everyone feels discouraged or fearful at times, and change brings uncertainty to all of us. Emotions make us normal; what matters is what we do. Courage is not a lack of fear; it is taking a step even when we’re scared. And that is a breakthrough indeed.
Everything you want is on the other side of fear. (Jack Canfield)
Hurdles like the ones mentioned above may seem innocent enough, but that is an illusion. In fact, the passive nature of those behaviors is one of the biggest reasons why they are so dangerous.
The Bible offers wisdom we can all learn from, even when it strikes uncomfortably close to home. This includes the book of Revelation, which is foreboding to most people, and frightening to many. In that book, Jesus sends letters to 7 churches with commendations and rebukes for each of them.
We can learn key lessons by studying the characteristics Jesus rebukes, which include: loss of spiritual enthusiasm, compromise, tolerating immorality, superficiality, and being indifferent. Jesus gives the most severe rebuke to the people in Laodicea. What is their issue? Being lukewarm!
Similarly, some dangerous aspects of today’s society don’t seem so threatening, things like busy-ness, lack of awareness, comfort, and fear of change. Again, that’s what makes them dangerous!
The good news is that by becoming wary of these passive threats, we can find breakthroughs.
Other Ways to Discover Breakthroughs
We can find breakthroughs by pursuing our values, dealing with problems and trials, and getting over hurdles in life. There are other ways to discover breakthroughs as well, for example:
1 – Breakthroughs happen more often when we look for them. Along our journey, we can keep our eyes open for epiphanies and miracles and move forward expectantly in anticipation of finding them. Life is an amazing adventure when we expect to find treasures (such as small blessings) and miracles (such as divine appointments) on a daily basis because, more often than we think, we will.
2 – Our environment shapes us, so changing our circumstances can lead to breakthroughs. We don’t control much of our circumstances, but there are key aspects we can adjust to some degree:
- People – To a large degree, we choose our friends, select our mentors, and decide how we interact with family. This is important because, in many ways, “We are who we hang around.”
Tell me who you walk with, and I’ll tell you who you are. (Esmeralda Santiago)
- Places – Sometimes, especially when we have bad habits influenced by our surroundings, changing the places we hang out can be a good thing because, “We are our environment.”
Change your location and you just may change yourself. (Eric Weiner)
- Knowledge – We can improve our lives is by improving ourselves. Reading, finding mentors, and deep conversations lead to learning and growth because, “We are what we learn.”
Develop a passion for learning. If you do, you will never cease to grow. (Anthony J. D’Angelo)
- Mindset – Our perspective affects everything, and improving it leads to breakthroughs. Much of our life experience takes place in our mind, because, “We are what we think.”
Once your mindset changes, everything on the outside will change along with it. (Steve Maraboli)
3 – Seeking and following our calling is a life-changing adventure. We seek our calling by examining our talents and experiences, talking to wise people, and praying for guidance, and finding our calling is one of our biggest epiphanies. We all want to find significance in life, leave a legacy for future generations, and hear that gentle, “Well done.” Now that’s a breakthrough!
4 – The biggest LEAP is when we choose to take a step of faith. As with many epiphanies, we can actually look for breakthroughs. In our faith, we can commit to “search for the truth.” What does that mean? It is when we keep an open mind and read good books, talk to knowledgeable people, and pray about finding God. The final step with God becomes our biggest breakthrough of all.
Our life is a gift, and we should do what we can to make the most of it. One of the best ways we can do that is by searching for breakthroughs and being on the lookout for epiphanies and miracles.
Late in life, when we look back, we will likely be able to identify the key milestones that occurred along our journey. Just think of how much fun it will be to start looking for them now!
Question: What is 1 approach you will use as you move forward to look for breakthroughs?
Next Right Step: Wait a few days, then re-read this article about discovering breakthroughs.
