It’s common to think that insight is required before you can make a change to your life, to your work, or to your relationships. From this perspective you’ll put off changing until you’ve “got it”, until you’ve understood what’s called for.

But it’s equally true to say that insight is what happens as a result of the changes you make.

Being different, or understanding more deeply, often requires first standing in a different place to the one you’re standing in now – giving up your certainty, taking up new practices and behaviour and a fresh, perhaps temporary, story about who you are and what’s possible for you. You have to step purposefully and with some courage into the unfamiliar territory of not knowing before you have much chance of understanding from a new perspective.

If you’re waiting for insight to strike you first, you might have it exactly the wrong way around.