The Holy Sh*t Moment: How lasting change can happen in an instant

The moment she got home she logged on to her computer to look at what education programs she would need. Thirty-six years old and possessing a degree in cultural anthropology, she began by upgrading her science and math courses at a community college. There were many challenges over the next decade, but for Holland, there was never any doubt she was going to make a difference in the world. She recently graduated with a doctorate in pharmacology and a master’s degree in public health, and has accepted a research fellowship in D.C. that ensures pharmaceutical quality for Medicare and Medicaid recipients. She has won prestigious grants, awards, and scholarships, conducted important research, delivered numerous presentations, and mentored other students.

At first, Lee was leery of pursuing a doctorate as part of this new path in life, because it was a four-year commitment and she was already in her forties at that point. But a friend explained the time would pass anyway, and in four years she’d be four years older either with or without the degree, and her mind was made up. “There were a lot of challenges in between,” Lee said. If one path didn’t work out, she had to find another. “Even though I had suddenly become singular in my determination, I had to be flexible about the way I did it.”

And it all changed in that parking lot in 2007. “Since then I’ve met so many amazing people. My social life exploded. I got to travel the world.” She also met her husband and has been married for eight years.

“Now I feel like I’m really fulfilling my life’s purpose.”

Tuning In to Being Turned On

In the introduction, I discussed the “magic moment” and how you might need to meet it partway by engaging in traditional methods of behavior change for a while and hoping epiphany strikes somewhere along the way. It’s also important to not let the magic moment pass you by. This is your final task for chapter 1 (#ulink_432c42ac-62e6-5b08-b240-728394934c71): I want you to envision what it’s like to seek the magic moment.

Lee Holland might have missed hers. It wasn’t anything jarring like a sudden pregnancy announcement. She had done her job and could have ended the call, but in her mind, there was an opportunity to really help, to make a difference on that one day. She was somehow attuned to that opportunity, and it primed her brain for that epiphany in the parking lot.

Imagine what it’s like to be attuned.

Now that you know a life-changing epiphany can come from anywhere, it’s important to be able to recognize it. Yes, it is powerful; usually so much so that there is no denying the experience. But perhaps it needs a nudge. Perhaps it doesn’t take place in a microsecond, but over several seconds. So instead of squashing down the beginnings of overwhelming emotion because you’re too cool for that, imagine what it’s like to embrace the feeling, explore it, and let it flow.

Because in the first second or two you could lose it by ignoring the sensation or even crushing it. Society conditions us to not show too much emotion, but screw that. You must feel this experience and feel it deeply. This book is about learning how to experience something so powerful it changes you down to the bone marrow. I want you to experiment with breaking with your conditioning and seek.

Seek meaning from your sudden insight.

Too often we tune out, seeking constant entertainment to distract from what our unconscious is trying to tell us. Break from that and examine these moments when the brain goes off on a tangent and, rather than try to snap out of it, explore it. Feed that sensation some fuel.

What kind of fuel? The kind that understands that, as humans, we seek experiences that allow us to be comfortable, and by attuning yourself to a life-changing insight, you must be willing to get uncomfortable. Lee had that comfortable sit-down job her family envied, and she knew that rejecting it to chase opportunity would involve struggle.

“One does not become fully human painlessly.”

These are the words of twentieth-century psychologist Rollo May. In his 1950 book The Meaning of Anxiety, he wrote of how such negative emotions can be a good teacher, because while we can avoid the reality of certain problems, the feeling of disturbance is something we carry with us: it gnaws. Suffering, said May, is an integral part of growth. Take that pain, pull it like a sword from its scabbard, and wield it!

That being written, please don’t go off your prescribed anxiety medication. This is just about using your negative emotions to spark personal evolution. Mark Beeman explained that anxiety triggers analysis, and analysis is the opposite of insight. But it’s still part of the process. Remember: Work until you get stuck. Analyze, then engage in diversion. As we will learn later, it is during a positive mood when epiphany is most likely to strike.

This book is not all “Think positive and you can live your dreams!” ad nauseam.

There is an adage in motivational speaking and internet memes: “Dream it. Wish it. Do it.” And it is bullshit, because this is not an easy road of endless happy thoughts in which if you keep your eye on the prize and always think positive, you’ll miraculously attract what you desire.

You must rethink positive thinking.

Gabriele Oettingen is a professor of social and developmental psychology at New York University and the author of Rethinking Positive Thinking. She explained to me it’s beneficial to have these lofty goals you wish to pursue, but not to daydream about your achievement, because it creates complacency. If you fantasize about how wonderful life will be after you’ve attained your goal, it fakes a sensation of already achieving it, so you no longer strive. Instead, focus on overcoming obstacles to achieving the goal. (Details on how are in chapter 8 (#litres_trial_promo).)

Changing who you are can be frightening. As a concept, it may fill you with dread. But it’s not some scary Jekyll and Hyde personality shift. You’re still you, just an improved version. It’s about change for the better, not worse.

When you learn to control fear of change, you open yourself to becoming more.

Priming Directives and Quantum Leaps

“Mount St. Helens blew up in a single moment.”

Sherry Pagoto told me this as an analogy of a life-changing epiphany. She’s a full professor at the University of Connecticut and a clinical psychologist specializing in behavioral counseling for obesity. “But the explosion was years in the making.”

We may not even see the pressure building, but it doesn’t mean it isn’t there, simmering away, ready to explode like a Diet Coke with a dozen Mentos dropped in.

Thinking about the future is but one action helping prime a brain for change, Pagoto explained. Often, for people to be able to make a massive leap of behavior change, they must have been pondering it in some way. It can involve a feeling of malaise, depression, or dissatisfaction. Conversely, such thinking can revolve around a desire to improve, to transform from good to great. Such thoughts may reside in the back of our minds for years before we’re ready to act upon them.

Contemplation can be subtle. It can build and build, but still, there is resistance to change because it is both fearful and challenging. And yet one day a time may come to pass when one cannot hold it in any longer and the emotional volcano erupts. A specific life event can bring it about. But what control do we have over these dramatic, triggering events?

That is not an easy question to answer, because life, and our approach to it, is often chaotic in nature.

Chaos theory can help us understand the dilemma better. A branch of mathematics examining complex systems sensitive to small changes in initial conditions, chaos theory has been referred to as the “butterfly effect,” a metaphor that lets us imagine the minor air disruption of a butterfly’s wings culminating in tornado formation weeks later. Slight alterations at an earlier juncture can end up yielding widely different results farther down the line in a person’s life.

I first learned of chaos theory from actor Jeff Goldblum in the 1993 film Jurassic Park. While seductively placing droplets of water on costar Laura Dern’s hand to show how minor alterations in initial conditions would affect which way the drop would roll, Goldblum explained that the theory “deals with unpredictability in complex systems.”

The human brain is a complex system. Life is a complex system.

About those “minor alterations” in initial conditions: Subtle changes in where the droplet was placed or how Laura held her hand or even the way the breeze was blowing could cause the droplet to go in a different direction. Such is the case with life as well. What if Lesley never picked up a sword? What if Chuck and his family had chosen a different bar? What if Lee hadn’t gotten that call? What if the person who decided to quote Joan Baez in the school paper picked Judas Priest lyrics instead? How would all our lives have turned out?

Such questions are difficult to answer because behavior change is not always a rational, linear process.

Sometimes it’s a quantum leap.

Act Now!

Take a break from rationalizing change and instead examine your feelings. Get emotional and listen to what it tells you.

Remember that song by Journey and “don’t stop believin’.”

Let the fast, intuitive System 1 be the hero, and make the slower, rational System 2 the supporting character. Don’t let System 2 overanalyze the benefits of the story System 1 constructs. Get the confirmation, then stop.

Forget worrying about the “cons” of change and instead imagine how powerful the “pros” will be. Endeavor to become pro focused.

Again: Work till you get stuck, then divert and let the unconscious do its thing.

Accept that this is about change both in identity and values, rather than a change in behavior. The altered identity-value construct makes new behavior adoption automatic. Lose the fear of becoming a new person, because this is a critical component.

Aim high, but realistically so. Choose goals that have a high value to you but are deemed achievable via concerted effort.

Embrace self-compassion. Don’t hate yourself or what you see in the mirror. Realize positivity is the path.

Don’t daydream overmuch. Keep your fantasizing of achievement to a minimum so as not to sap energy. Rather, consider the primary obstacle to success and how to overcome it.

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EMBRACING CHAOS: QUANTUM VS. LINEAR BEHAVIOR CHANGE IN THE ROLE OF EPIPHANY (#ulink_a13514f3-8cf4-5416-a58f-0fa4106678c5)

A moment’s insight is sometimes worth a life’s experience.

—OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, SR.

My grandmother was an evil and bugshit bonkers hell-beast of a woman who hated everyone and everything. A while back, we were having a family get-together, and my sister asked which kid had possession of grandma’s engagement ring.