From Insight to Transformation

I was at the movies with one of my kids last week to see the Odyssey. While waiting on our popcorn, a worker behind the counter told a co-worker that he recently saw the movie Hook for the first time. Hook - that Robin Williams movie from 1991 where Peter Pan returns to Neverland as an adult. I loved that movie!

What I remember most about the movie was a moment near the end, when Peter realized that the happiest thing about his life is that he’s a daddy. It dawned on him like it never had before, and his long list of more important priorities disappeared in the light of that brilliant insight.

Insight is powerful. People in the transformational coaching and self-help circles are sometimes insight junkies! I’ve been one myself at times. 

Insight is like a flash of lightning. When it strikes, we see something that we’ve never seen before about ourselves, others, the world, or life itself. The brilliant light of insight is sometimes powerful enough to knock our minds, hearts, and nervous systems into a new and lasting state of being.

Most of the time, though, after the initial brightness of that flash of insight, our conditioned minds, hearts, and nervous systems go back to business as usual. (We sometimes then even add some guilt and self-judgment on top, for seeing Truth but not acting on it.)

While insights are powerful moments of awareness that inspire, motivate, and move us, that flash of lightning fades quickly without sustained, reliable, and effective practice.

A flash of lightning vs. the sustained and reliable light of the sun itself.

That’s how lasting change happens - a consistent returning to and grounding in the truths that show themselves through insight.

A more direct way of saying it is this: insights only make a difference when we practice them.

Yes, it gets dark sometimes. It gets stormy sometimes. Man, I've been going through the bumps and potholes of that dark and stormy inner weather myself a bit more intensely lately! The light, however, is always there, reliably returning to us as we return to it.

If you're lucky enough, or committed enough, to experience insight in areas of your life that matter to you, honor that stroke of lightning and consider how you might sustain the light of that insight into transformation.

What are some recent insights that you’d like to deepen into your being and your experience of life? What would support you?

Not every insight needs to be honored with consistent practice, discipline, and support, and some are really worth it.

Much Love. ❤️