A groundbreaking guide to breaking free from the thoughts habits jobs relationships and
even business models that prevent us from achieving our full potential. Almost everyone feels
stuck in some way. Whether you're muddling through a midlife crisis wrestling writer's block
trapped in a thankless job or trying to remedy a fraying friendship the resulting emotion is
usually a mix of anxiety uncertainty fear anger and numbness. But it doesn't have to be
this way. Anatomy of a Breakthrough is the roadmap we all need to escape our inertia and
flourish in the face of friction. Adam Alter has spent the past two decades studying how people
become stuck and how they free themselves to thrive. Here he reveals the formula he and other
researchers have uncovered. The solution rests on a process that he calls a friction audit-a
systematic procedure that uncovers why a person or organization is stuck and then suggests a
path to progress. The friction audit states that people and organizations get unstuck when they
overcome three sources of friction: HEART (unhelpful emotions) HEAD (unhelpful patterns of
thought) and HABIT (unhelpful behaviors). Despite the ubiquity of friction there are many
great unstickers hidden in plain sight among us and Alter shines a light on some exceptional
stories to share their valuable lessons with us. He tells us about the sub-elite swimmer who
unstuck himself twice to win two Olympic gold medals the actor who faced countless rejections
before gaining worldwide fame the renowned painter who became paralyzed and had to relearn to
paint with a brush strapped to his wrist and Alter's own story of getting unstuck from a
college degree that made him deeply unhappy. Artfully weaving together scientific studies
anecdotes and interviews Alter teaches us that getting stuck is a feature rather than a
glitch on the road to thriving but with the right tweaks and corrections we can reach even our
loftiest targets.
