The worst thing that can happen when a self-employed professional or creative is working on an important project — like a book, a course, a design, a website, or a report — is a breakdown. An essential resource is suddenly unavailable. One of your key concepts turns out to be unworkable. Someone you were counting on to provide a crucial element doesn’t deliver. Arrrgh!
It can feel like a disastrous setback, and sometimes, it is. But not always. The silver lining of breakdowns is that they can also lead to unexpected discoveries, creative solutions, or even huge leaps forward.
Author and ghostwriter Joe Bunting describes his experience with setbacks like this: “At some point in every major writing project I’ve ever worked on, I’ve wanted to give up. I’ve gotten to the point where I’ve felt so exhausted, so stupid, so humiliated that I wanted to quit being a writer… when you reach this point, you’re close to a breakthrough. Push through. You can do it.”
Now, it would be terrific if you could just be chugging along through your regular work day and a breakthrough would suddenly descend upon you like an unexpected spring shower. But that hasn’t been my experience with breakthroughs at all.
When I’ve had a breakthrough about a project, it’s always come at a point of supreme frustration or confusion. I’ll be feeling as if I don’t know where to go next, as if I’ve tried everything and nothing has worked, like walking away from the thing or chopping it into bits. I won’t know how to go on or even if I should. It’s then, and only then, that the right direction will appear.
Of course, I wish it were true that every time I got frustrated or confused, I’d have a breakthrough. Sadly, it doesn’t work that way. But the reverse is always true for me — without first facing a painful difficulty, no breakthrough ever emerges. This is why I believe that producing good work takes a certain level of grit.
It’s because the process can be painful that I need encouragement to keep going when the going gets tough. One of my favorite quotes to inspire me in those difficult moments is from an 1869 Harriet Beecher Stowe novel. Perhaps it will help you, too: “When you get into a tight place and everything goes against you, till it seems as though you could not hold on a minute longer, never give up then, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn.”
