I really do share your excitement about the huge breakthrough you just had. Something new and exciting has clearly happened for you, and I’m in full support of the change! Why, then, you ask, do I not seem as excited as you do? Well, I wonder if what you’re experiencing is not exactly a breakthrough just yet, but more of a promising pre-breakthrough experience.

When you’re not yet on the other side, but you’ve caught a powerful glimpse of it will be like when you get there, instead of a “breakthrough”, let’s call that a “peekthrough”. Let’s say you’ve had a huge peekthrough. Now the question is, how can you get from this glimpse, this new state, to an integrated, sustainable way of being that will actually last, to a new stage?

There are a number of things you can do to get from peekthrough to breakthrough:

• Write down the conditions that allowed you to enter the new state before you forget them.
• Create structures (involving other people) that will remind (or force) you to practice this alternative way of being.
• Find the feelings beneath the insight or realization you’ve just had and help them move.
• Learn to ‘Be The Workshop’, facilitating for other people the process you went through.
• Practice, practice, and more practice.

Watch the video for examples and more detailed instructions on how to integrate the change!

About the Author

Steve Bearman, Ph.D., earned his doctorate in Psychology from the University of California, Santa Cruz. He founded Interchange Counseling Institute in 2002 and is the lead teacher of Interchange's San Francisco-based year-long counseling and coaching training. When he's not counseling people, leading workshops, and advocating for social justice, Steve climbs mountains, adventures in the urban wilderness, explores the edges and limits of what's possible, deconstructs everything, and finds new ways to put it all back together.