Ep 3: Two Secrets To Getting Any Breakthrough You Want

It’s true! Breakthrough is totally possible. Now what do I mean by “breakthrough?” In today’s episode, I paint a picture using a sport’s analogy called “The Yips.”

If you’re looking for breakthrough in any area of your life, any real progress starts here with these 2 secrets. Don’t believe me? Press play and I’m sure you’ll be pleasantly surprised by how attainable breakthroughs really are!

If you’d like to dig deeper into this topic of breakthrough, I’ve created a beautiful gift just for you over at unsabotage.com/tryit.

And for your convenience, here’s today’s transcript:

Hello, Gorgeous. Ginny Townsend here, and I hope your day is already absolutely amazing. Thank you so much for joining me today, as we cover the two secrets to having any breakthrough you want in your life.

How does that sound? I know that sounds like a really, really big statement, but I honestly don’t think I’ve oversold it. I think that you’ll be pleasantly surprised with what I have to share. It is actually doable, that it’s actually attainable, and that you can have breakthrough in any area of your life.

Now, let’s first start about what do I mean by breakthrough? Now, okay, I love for the sake of analogy, sports and so even though I’m not a super athlete or anything, I enjoy running, but I don’t consider myself to be an athlete. I love sports analogies. The one that I think is probably most relevant today is the concept of having the “yips.” If you are a golf fan, or a baseball player, or a baseball fan you may have heard this term before. What the “yips” means, if you’re not familiar with it, is say a golfer is up to put, they’re totally like, “I’ve got this,” they hit the put and then they don’t actually get it in the hole, it throws them off. There’s a ton of anxiety, there’s a ton of just mental war, or air war, going on. Or with a baseball player, very similar. They go up to hit, very confident and then, WHAM, totally miss it and it throws them off.

Usually it’s not considered the “yips” if you just have an off game, but if that instance keeps repeating itself in your mind and causing a lot of anxiety and not allowing you to have your fullness expressed, your full capabilities out on the field, or on the course, beyond that first game. It extends into a couple weeks or maybe months, or even the whole season, that’s when it’s called the “yips.” That’s when it’s called … It can be a slump, is another way of naming it. But why I really think the “yips” is pretty on point for what I want to talk about is it has nothing to do with their physical capabilities. They’re an athlete. They have practiced for whatever they’re doing for a long time. It is all up in their mental game.

So, with that in mind, that’s what I mean by breakthrough, is being able to tune your mind to be able to be optimal for whatever breakthrough you want to achieve, whether that is getting out of the “yips” in a sporting game, or if it is actually achieving a goal in a business or your personal life. Whatever the goal may be, that’s what I’m talking about when I say breakthrough.

Now, the first secret of having a breakthrough in any area of your life is actually … I’m going to preface it by saying it may sound like an anemic secret, but I promise that it’s not. That is: Be aware of your thoughts. The Cleveland Clinic, a little while ago, released a report saying that the average person thinks about 60,000 thoughts a day. Okay, that’s pretty impressive in and of itself, but what I think is actually really captivating and extremely relevant to what we’re talking about today, is the fact that 95% of the thoughts we’ve thought today we thought yesterday. Isn’t that bananas? Then, to take it even further, as if us thinking the same 95% of our thoughts every single day wasn’t mind blowing enough, 80% of those thoughts are actually negative.

Now, most people agree that these negative-slanting thoughts are more of a survival mechanism, that we don’t necessarily use in our day-to-day life anymore, so honestly these thoughts just serve to hold us back. Interesting, huh?

But I want you know that it is not a hopeless situation. There is a concept, it’s been very accepted by the scientific community now. It was viewed as heresy, I think in the 80s when it was first published, but it’s this idea of neuroplasticity and by “neuro,” meaning brain, “plasticity” means it can change. Our minds, our brains are not these fixed organs that, well, “You’re born with these abilities, you’re born with this specific IQ, you can’t do anything to change it. You are who you are. The card you’ve been dealt is the card you’ve been dealt.” But that’s actually scientifically false.

If you want to take this analogy even further, let’s look at it this way. Our brain is actually the vehicle that all of our neurology travels within. It’s the container. Think of your mind, where all of your emotions, your personality, those daily thoughts, habits, all of that amazing “you-ness,” is actually a passenger in the car of your brain. If you think about … Or the driver, actually. It’s the driver that can actually steer where the brain or the car, in this analogy, goes. I want you to know that being aware of your thoughts, even though most of them we think every day, and then most of those we think are negative, it’s not a hopeless situation! You absolutely have in your power at your disposal, more control than you realize, more power than you realize, and you can change that! You can absolutely change that for breakthrough.

Okay, so awesome. We … The first secret is to be aware of our thoughts. Cool. So, what do we do about it? What’s next? That’s secret number two, is having the ability to see your thoughts. I think when we see things, we understand them so much more. I think especially in our culture and in these last couple generations, we’re a very visual society and so that’s how we comprehend a lot of things, and I think that’s how we understand so many stories, so many emotions. That’s how we understand where we’re going. We like to see a map, right? How can we get from here to there? We like to see a map.

I love the analogy here of sword fighting in the dark. Now we know that we have a lot of these negative thoughts that, whether or not we know that they exist, they fuel, they direct us everyday. They pretty much direct us every day. So why I really like the analogy of a sword fight in the dark is we now know we have kind of an opponent in this situation. It’s like, “Alright, these are thoughts that I know I want to change, but I can’t see them.” We have the sword. We’re doing what we know to do, but we’re just swinging. If we can’t see our thoughts, how can we actually do anything to change them?

Another analogy I really like is this idea of, have you ever woken up in the middle of the night to go get a drink of water, and as you walk through the living room you totally biff it and hit your knee really hard on an end table? I mean, you knew the end table existed. You knew it was there. It’s not a surprise to you, it’s just you couldn’t see it so you ran right into it. That’s why it’s so important for us to be able to see. What we can’t see we can’t really do anything about, and so because of this, and because I really believe that this is the start of every breakthrough, I’ve created a free gift for you, and it’s because I adore you. I absolutely love you.

If you go over to unsabatoge.com/tryit, there is a free printable, and it’s a really simple exercise that walks you through getting the thoughts out of your mind, onto your paper. Then there’s a second part of the exercise that actually allows you to map your thoughts and see your thoughts in a totally new and different way. I promise you’ve never seen anything like it. I promise it’s really simple and it’s really powerful.

So, let’s say this neuroplasticity thing just really isn’t doing it for you. You’re like, “Ah, whatever. I’m not super into neurology or science, whatever,” I have another analogy, it’s kind of my next set of evidence for the case that we have the ability to create breakthrough in our lives, and it starts with a question. The question is, “how are humans and animals different?” I bet you didn’t expect that one!

You could answer this question in several different ways, but as it relates to today, animals have this amazing, well some more than others, have this amazing ability to blend into their environment. If you do a quick search on YouTube “animals blending into their environment,” which I encourage you to do because it’s mind blowing, you’ll find hours of video where you see an animal and then you don’t. They’re totally blended into their environment. Right? It’s just, it’s kind of a part of who these animals are. It’s how they stay safe. But … Okay, that’s animals.

Humans, on the other hand, have the ability to make their environment reflect them. We are very unique in that we have control. We can allow our surroundings, we can allow our life to mirror what we want it to look like, completely in reverse to how animals have to, to stay safe or to stay alive they need to mirror their environment, we can make our environment mirror us!

I really, I encourage you to go over to unsabatoge.com/tryit, and download that free printable. You have the ability to make your life look like you want it to look. You are closer to breakthrough than you think, and it’s just these two secrets, of being aware of our thoughts and how they can tend negative, how they can tend habitual, and then being able to see them for what they are. This is where breakthrough happens.

So, did you like what I had to share today? I would be so honored if you would share this video with your friends, and if I don’t talk with you until next Tuesday, I will see you right back here next Tuesday at 11:00 AM Pacific, live here on Facebook. Okay, have an amazing day and I encourage you to seek some breakthrough. Bye, Gorgeous!