The Quest for a Breakthrough: Totally Worth It.

After eight months of voice lessons, I’ve just had a breakthrough.

I've been struggling with the middle part of my voice; something the experts call the "middle mix." It's been so bad that when I first started voice lessons, I was convinced that I had damaged my voice from years of using my “teacher voice.” I'd get to certain notes and either my voice would completely disappear or I had to strain so hard to get it out that it made me sound strangled (and felt awful).

My voice teacher noticed it from the first lesson and there were a whole host of things she said to me again and again lo these past eight months:

Don't reach for it…open.

It should feel so easy.

Release the tongue.

You're tightening back there.

The sound should be forward.

Smile with your inside smile.

Relax.

But these things didn't mean anything to me. Not really. How do I "release the tongue" when I have no idea what I'm even doing with my tongue in the first place? Honestly, most of these were just frustrating to hear again and again because I didn't know what to do with them. I didn't have the foundational skills and understanding to use them productively.

But thankfully, my teacher is wise and oh-so-tricky. She didn't ONLY say those frustrating things to me. She also listened carefully and asked me to do weird things that had nothing to do with anything (or so I thought). She’d say things like…

Sing "Haaa-le-loo-ooo-ooo-ooo-ooo-ooo-ya" into a "well."

Do it again like you have a reallllllly thick southern accent.

Plug your nose and sing "EEEEEEEEE!" as nasally as possible.

When you breathe in, make a "k" sound.

Sing that again with a fat tongue.

Wave your arms around like this when you sing that.

It seemed there was no end to the strange shit she could come up with. When I did these exercises, it wasn't overtly about opening and relaxing. It was only about playing around and seeing what happened.

Little experiments.

In each of these exercises, I would have glimpses of what it was "supposed to feel like" and I'd spend the following weeks re-listening to those lessons and trying to build on those tiny moments of success by doing the weirdo things over and over and over again.

And then one day a couple weeks ago…SNAP. It just made sense.

I was opening.

It felt so easy.

My tongue was releasing.

I was loose back there.

The sound was forward.

I was smiling with my inside smile.

I was relaxed.

It really did happen almost overnight. All of the experimentation I'd done through the exercises she gave me had allowed me to have a breakthrough. And once the breakthrough happened, all of the statements that had previously felt like empty platitudes made complete sense. And even more than that, they became helpful reminders for what to do when I was singing, because they now had real meaning. I knew what she’d been talking about all along.

Implications for the Learner

It got me thinking about how amazing breakthroughs are, as a learner. Before you've had one, you literally cannot imagine what it would be like to live on the other side of the understanding you seek. You can't imagine because you've never been there and don't have the "vocabulary" for how to make sense of that new way of being. It can be a very frustrating place to be if you let it.

Or, you can experiment. And ideally, you can find a skilled teacher who's already had the breakthrough to help you set up those experiments. Instead of only telling you what it will be like when it's "right," they help you come up with little mini-challenges to uncover the learnings on your own.

You have to try the weird shit again and again. You can't be discouraged when the first or second or third or forty-second way doesn't click. You just keep trying new things and then following it where it leads you. All of this must be done mindfully and intentionally and with lots of practice and reflection.

Implications for the Teacher

But there are also good lessons for me in this as a teacher and coach. As the teacher who has already seen the other side of such a breakthrough, it might be ok to talk about the perfect ideal of how it “should be,” because those descriptions may be useful later as the learner progresses. However, it can’t stop there. Describing the end-state alone will only frustrate the learner who doesn’t have the context and tools to actually get there.

Instead, I must define the activities and lessons that will allow the learner to uncover “how it should be” on their own. Each step I take them through should be juuuuuust enough stretch for where they are right now. It’s this “just right-ness” that keeps the learner motivated to continue. They can see progress as they go along and have hope that there are more AHAs to come.

Even better, if I can make the activities and lessons novel and silly, it can distract my learner from obsessing over the perfect outcome and encourage them to focus on the experiment itself. Like Mr. Miagi’s “Wax on, wax off”, the exercise is distracting them from striving to figure it out. They’re just doing the work.

Breakthroughs are Rare

My biggest realization in all of this is the impact of how rare breakthroughs are. 99% of our time learning something is spent in the pre-breakthrough, frustrating-as-hell practice part. For me, it was 8 months of frequent practice for a moment of breakthrough. One exhilarating moment and then everything changed. But because breakthroughs are so infrequent, it can seem a bit like being on a quest to find Bigfoot - Way too improbable to even bother with.

I think this happens to a lot of us. We haven’t had a breakthrough in anything in so long that we’ve forgotten they’re possible. So we just stop trying. And life gets boring. We feel stuck and sad.

The good news is, it only takes one breakthrough to remind us of everything that’s possible with focus and practice. Once we have that first breakthrough, we crave the next. And the next. Things start getting fun.

And so I wonder…

What breakthrough have you been dreaming of?

What teacher has already had this breakthrough and knows how to create weird experiments for you to get there too?

Could you take the first step and call them today?

And just in case you’re curious about what it took eight freaking months for me to figure out (Yet is still wonderfully imperfect), here you go…