How life’s toughest moments can guide you back to yourself
A few weeks ago at The Breakthrough Immersion, our advanced experience for The Breakthrough Weekend alumni, I had a conversation that has stayed with me ever since.
One of the participants was someone who has been at the forefront of some of the largest legal deals, mergers, and acquisitions in India. For years, he has been the person people call when things get complex, calm, precise, and brilliant at what he does.
But recently, life threw him into what I call a Kensho Moment — those times when life doesn’t whisper but hits you hard enough to make you listen.
The company he had been serving for years, the one he had poured himself into, lost 95% of its revenue and 100% of its profits overnight because of a new government legislation. Everything changed in a single moment, and not because of something he did wrong, but because life decided to rewrite the rules.
When that happens, it’s easy to get knocked out.
To question your worth, your effort, your path.
To ask, Why me?
But the deeper invitation in such moments is often different.
It’s to ask,
What if this rejection is actually redirection?
What if I’m being guided back to who I’m meant to be?
I remember looking at him and asking a simple question:
What would it take for you to bet on yourself in this next chapter the way you bet on this company?
He paused. You could see the question land.
Because the truth is, he has always known what his next chapter could look like. With his experience and wisdom, he could help hundreds of small businesses, entrepreneurs, and founders navigate the very challenges he has spent his life mastering.
But doing that would mean leaving behind the familiar, the structure, the security, the identity he had built, and trusting that his leap of faith would be met halfway.
That’s the threshold most of us face at some point.
The moment when life asks, Will you keep clinging to what’s safe, or will you follow what’s true?
