Welcome to the Gathering Pod, the audio version of my weekly gathering room broadcast.

I'm Martha Beck.

Let's get right into our issue of the day, which is how to have a breakthrough.

Who wouldn't want to have a breakthrough?

I noticed breakthroughs this week because I was coaching some people.

As you know, I work a lot around the issue of anxiety these days.

And I was also coaching people through some very big tasks in the physical world.

And I realized that the process of having a breakthrough is always the same, no matter

whether the breakthrough is an internal one, like psychological

one, a career one, something having to do with relationship or a spiritual issue.

They all have the same pattern.

And unfortunately, it is the pattern that consists of tunneling your way through a solid rock mountain headed for the light.

And it would be nice if you could see the light at the end of your tunnel.

But that is not the nature of the tunnel.

That is not the nature of breakthroughs.

Breakthroughs happen because you take the same unrewarding step

over and over and over making a tiny bit of progress over and over and over until one day

everything changes. Some of you may have read a bestseller right now by the title of Atomic Habits.

It's by James Clear.

It's really good.

If you haven't read it, you might enjoy it very much if you like the stuff that I do.

I love this book.

...