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Much of the pre-work involves information gathering and embracing new ways of thinking, but it also requires not letting sudden insight pass you by.
It involves opening your mind, asking the question Is this it?
It’s about looking at the world with an investigative mind-set, in which what you seek is opportunity to change. Inspiration can arrive from anywhere and at any time. Be prepared.
Is. This. It?
Ask yourself that question when you experience something that might be a catalyst for change. Most of the time, the answer to the question is going to be “No, it really isn’t.” But it’s all practice.
It can be because of this practice, the opening of yourself, the attunement, that allows epiphany to strike. Speaking of practice, getting stuck is good.
“When you tackle a problem, and fail to solve it, it sticks in your craw—and your brain.” This is from Professor Beeman’s book The Eureka Factor, coauthored with John Kounios, a professor of psychology in cognitive and brain sciences at Drexel University. The authors explain that ideas can require an “incubation period.” The work you do thinking now doesn’t mean you have your epiphany right now too. You work until you “get stuck.” Then the unconscious takes over while you’re busy doing other things.
In most stories of major life transformation, an epiphany is almost a constant. Many who have experienced massive change can identify a specific instance when their outlook got on track in a much more positive way. Changing one’s body is a powerful manifestation of the moment of change, because a healthy body often equates to a healthy mind, and overcoming the challenges associated with physical improvement also imparts valuable life skills. I mean, unless it’s weight loss resulting from unhealthy methods such as popping unregulated diet pills like they’re Skittles or going on some batshit crazy fad diet some celebrity is flogging. The latest dietary dumbassery I heard about was an Oscar winner proudly proclaiming the completion of her eight-day-long, goat-milk-only cleanse. I’m happy I don’t have the job of cleaning her bathroom.
The Snowball Effect
There is a switch inside many people set at “I can’t.”
When it flips over to “I can” for one thing, it doesn’t stop there. Research shows life-changing epiphanies are rarely “one and done.” Often the catalyst for initial change is a massive mental shift, but smaller epiphanies can arise at random during people’s life journeys, to bump them further along their quests to be the best humans they can. Professor Miller explained that people who have such experiences often have further, clarifying epiphanies later in life. “There appears to be an opening to having that experience,” he said.
Take a moment and think back: Has this happened before?
Have you experienced a life-changing moment in the past? What was it like? How did it manifest? Can you relive it? Can you imagine something like that happening again? Did you learn something important from the experience you can bring toward future life change?
If the answer is yes, it’s called a “past performance accomplishment.” It’s a parameter of self-efficacy theory, created by Stanford University psychology professor Albert Bandura in 1977. It’s about how you form perceptions regarding your ability to perform specific behaviors. Past success = confidence, which makes people more determined to persevere, even in the face of adversity.
If you’ve had an important insight in the past, it makes it more likely you can have one again in the future. Cue Jimi Hendrix: Are you experienced?
Positive life change can assume myriad forms; don’t fret if you’re not interested in pushing your body. But I do encourage contemplating some form of activity as part of the new you. I say this because you were not meant to sit idly and watch Earth spin on her axis. You were meant to rise and join the fray that is the human condition. Movement empowers from top to toenails; it can even come to define you, should you find the right exercise.
Whichever activity a person chooses, if they enjoy it, is the right one. The path ahead has more choices than there are beers in a Munich autumn. Finding which flavor suits best requires taking a few taste tests.
The Holy Sh!t Moment is about achieving the clarity of purpose to carve your own path to success.
Switching Tracks
Consider this word carefully: “momentous.”
The topic of this book is not about merely deciding the future path your life will take. It is about a momentous event in which you suddenly become aware of the answer and change at a fundamental level from the experience. It’s not only a spark of insight, it’s an awakening of passion.
Such an “answer” is rarely well-defined or black-and-white, and effort is required to find your way along the appropriate path.
Do you remember The Karate Kid? Not the worst film ever, but the message is dogshit.
Perhaps you’re too young, or maybe you were there, in that theater, and you disagree. That’s because it was the eighties, the decade of bad decisions, even though we didn’t realize it at the time. So many pastels …
Go ahead and watch it again—the original with Ralph Macchio—and see if you realize why the message it relays is canine feces.
My wife is a second-degree black belt in karate. Both our children are black belts, and my daughter competes at the international level. I can attest that you don’t get good at karate by spending a few weeks waxing cars and painting fences. You get good at it because it’s your lifelong passion. And because it is your passion, you are motivated to do the damn work, hours of work, day after day and year after year!
The Karate Kid disrespects the work by advocating an extreme shortcut to success. It disrespects the fact that my daughter has been in karate since she was five years old, and trained her ass off, sometimes twenty or more hours a week, to win that gold medal at the USA Open ten years later.
Work is glorious, and inspired work transforms. It transforms your body, your mind, your spirit. Someone who kicks ass at life is not a sofa-sitter. Such people can be efficient, but they’re not the type always questing for a quick fix. They don’t believe—using weight loss as an example—that some miracle macronutrient ratio is going to open a rift in the space-time-insulin continuum and magically transport their belly fat to a parallel universe. They know effort is required, but they don’t mind, because they’ve become inspired.
Work equals accomplishment, the forms of which can be innumerable, and such accomplishments are habit-forming. Again, this is far from being just about diet and exercise. For someone who feels their life lacks purpose, it can be an amazing thing to suddenly find more drive than you know what to do with.
Here is a quick task. It should only take a few seconds, but that doesn’t mean it will be easy. You ready?
Make a promise to yourself that you’re done with believing in bullshit quick fixes and unrealistic shortcuts to major accomplishment, be they accomplishments with your body, your brain, your career, your finances, or your relationships. Accept reality: it is work creating your desired outcome. Do it now. Integrate this fundamental truth. Then move forward.
The overarching goal is to change the way you feel about the work so it doesn’t seem like work. That is an attitude adjustment that can happen in just a few seconds. There can be a rapid change in mind-set. You can’t become a karate master quickly, but you can become inspired to do it in an instant. It’s this accelerated mental shift that has the power to change your life.
As British historian and philosopher Arnold Toynbee said, “The supreme accomplishment is to blur the line between work and play.” Your passion to achieve can be triggered in that single defining moment when you realize, Enough of this bullshit. Motivation is no longer a scarce resource after such a momentous event. It comes built in.
Being active is hard. Eating healthy is hard. Conquering addiction is hard. Relationships are hard. Making money and advancing your career is hard. Life is hard, whether you choose to work at improving it or not. A life-changing moment can make everything much less of a challenge. Sometimes, if the epiphany is powerful enough, it makes the changes not just easier but mandatory, because every new step feels as though it was meant to be. The recipient of the epiphany is compelled to walk this new path, perhaps even race down it.
Speaking of racing and things that are hard, recall the words of President John F. Kennedy regarding the space race and putting a man on the moon. He said we choose to do these things “not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”
You should aspire to do more with your life.
Because it is hard.
Act Now!
Dream (realistically) big and imagine the new person you want to be.
Think of an ambitious quest you could undertake.
Develop a thirst for adventure. Remember the librarian who traded cigarettes for swords.
Consider not using a notebook, but instead committing ideas to memory for regular rumination to achieve later enlightenment.
Ponder until you “get stuck.” Then engage in a diversion to let your unconscious continue working at it.
Endeavor to meet the magic moment partway. Realize you may have to engage in some uninspired work prior to the lightning strike.
Become attuned for lightning to strike. Ask yourself, “Is this it?”
Ask if a life-changing moment has happened to you before. Examine if this is something you have experience with—determine if you have a past performance accomplishment—so you can use that knowledge to make it happen again.
Accept that work is not only necessary but glorious in its ability to inspire passion and transform you. Try to find work that will feel like play.
Remember the words of JFK and embrace change: because it is hard.
PART ONE (#ulink_75e395e2-f868-5ee7-bbbc-a5b6b3260209)
Epiphany and Cognitive Behavior Change (#ulink_75e395e2-f868-5ee7-bbbc-a5b6b3260209)
1 (#ulink_bfe839a0-406a-5015-9ee5-a5a3bee07787)
THE ANTIDOTE TO DESPAIR: THE EUPHORIA OF THE LIFE-CHANGING MOMENT (#ulink_bfe839a0-406a-5015-9ee5-a5a3bee07787)
There are opportunities even in the most difficult moments.
—WANGARI MAATHAI
On the schoolyard field of battle known as gym class, I made the geeks look good. I was such a klutz, I was always picked last when teams were selected. I often came out of dodgeball with head trauma.
In college, I got the “freshman fifteen”—those pounds one tends to put on during their first year—factored by three. I was twenty-two and felt my life was circling the drain. As mentioned before, my health, finances, and scholastic situations were a mess. There was no fall from grace; my life had always been blah, and it was my fault.
I wasn’t just a bad athlete growing up, but a bad student. I was smart but lazy. I squeaked my way into an easy postsecondary program with half a percentage point to spare, then promptly began failing. I went to the campus pub instead of class. The credit-card companies were calling. Things were bad and looking worse; I was about to be kicked out of school because of my poor grades.
I was in a hole of my own digging; Joan Baez pulled me out.
The folk singer’s words appeared in the school newspaper, and my life changed in a moment.
“Action is the antidote to despair,” the quote read.
I sat in the food court at my alma mater, reading the comedic highlights of the paper’s section referred to as “Three Lines Free.” It’s a place for students to publish quotes and witticisms and proclamations of undying love or temporary lust. Partway through reading, Joan smacked me in the face. It was so simple to realize that, as bad as things seemed, they could be fixed via concerted effort.
In that instant, my life switched tracks.
Because, you see, there was a woman.
Her name was Heidi. I loved her like no other. You know stories of finding “The One”? This is such a story.
She was a straight-A student destined for medical school; I knew flunking out spelled the beginning of the end. I say this not to ever speak ill of her. But you must know that she, an amazing woman, deserved a good man; a man I had yet to become.
I was in a state of despair, and taking action—working hard for something for the first time in my life—was the antidote.
And suddenly I felt so much better. Even though no effort had yet been expended, the anticipation of having these problems and this beer belly no longer weighing on me was euphoric. It’s like when you hear your parole has been approved and you’re getting out of prison but you’re still in prison. I’ve never been to prison. I got some speeding tickets when I was younger, but I paid them. Anyway, euphoria and stuff …
Instead of hitting the pub as I’d planned for a few barley-based beverages to wash down a plate overflowing with fries and gravy, I got up and booked an appointment with the appeals committee to beg my way out of my failing report card, allowing me to continue as a student. It was the first step of many, and it felt right.
When it comes to experiencing a life-changing epiphany, the way things feel is critical. It involves, as mentioned earlier, unleashing one’s inner quadruped.
The concept began with the classical Greek philosopher Plato. In the fourth century BC, Plato wrote a “dialogue” titled Phaedrus, which contains an allegory about the charioteer. In it, the driver of the chariot represents a person’s more rational self, the guiding force based on intellect and reason. (Because those guys doing the death race in Ben-Hur were totally reasonable.) Conversely, the horses pulling the chariot represent a person’s emotions; they are what provide the power to move forward. And if they want to run wild, the driver of the chariot can do little to control them.
Let’s ignore the part about Plato’s horses having wings, so as not to confuse the issue.
It is important to note that the horses are not like-minded. According to Plato’s tale, one is more virtuous in its passion; the other has a dark side driven by baser appetites. One wants to train for a marathon; the other wants to down tequila shots then go in search of a chili cheese dog to later throw up.
The goal of the charioteer is to obtain the help of the noble horse to overcome the desires of the troublesome one. Otherwise, you’re blowing your groceries in the gutter. I’ve done that. It’s not fun.
The allegory was adapted some millennia later, in 2006, with the publication of The Happiness Hypothesis by New York University social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, who referred to the rational, conscious mind as the “rider” and increased the size of the emotion-driven, unconscious-mind quadrupeds to a solitary elephant. Part of the upgrade involved increasing the intelligence of the beast, asserting elephants are smarter than horses. As we’ll see when we examine the neuroscience of attaining sudden insight, Haidt is right. In most cases, the unconscious driver is the correct one; the conscious needs to learn to listen.
A short time later, the rider-vs.-elephant analogy became a core component of the 2010 book Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard, by brothers Chip and Dan Heath. Chip is a professor of business at Stanford, and Dan is a senior fellow in entrepreneurship at Duke.
A determined elephant will go where it pleases, regardless of the urgings of a more rational rider. To achieve a desired destination, one must appeal to both rider and elephant.
The elephant is the passion and the drive. Whereas the rider may prevaricate and overanalyze, the elephant is the part of the human spirit that can change directions in a flash, and with powerful determination, because it is driven to get shit done. Rather than needing to ponder, it is compelled to act.
Let’s try an experiment in which you talk to your four-legged friend.
How do you feel about changing?
In the introduction, I asked you to awaken your thirst for adventure. I expect you generated some ideas of songs unsung, mountains unclimbed, finish lines uncrossed. And now you’re faced with the opportunity to sing your way across that finish mountain, or something. Have you got it? It doesn’t have to be concrete. Big picture is fine for now. Is it in your brain? Are you thinking about it?
Good. Now stop.
Stop thinking.
Instead, start feeling.
Don’t rationalize this change. Don’t try to think about all the reasons why you should stop doing a thing (like sitting all day, drinking too much, smoking, being angry, overeating treat foods, doing drugs, staying in a dead-end job or relationship, wasting money on stupid crap) or start doing a thing (going back to school, exercising, eating healthier, being kinder, working at your career, spending more quality time with loved ones).
I want you to stop thinking, because of paralysis via analysis. If these goals you imagine—things to stop and things to start—have been around in your brain for a while, you’ve already thought them to death. And yet here you are. Still struggling. You rationalized your way out of change. Well, crud.
Time for a dramatic change of tack.
Ask yourself: How do I feel about this change? You don’t completely cut thinking, but alter the focus. Instead of thinking about this new path, you’re examining your emotions. It’s not about making a list of reasons why and why not. It’s opening your mind to what your heart is saying, metaphorically. I know the heart doesn’t literally control this. It’s still in the brain, just a different part. Enough semantic blather. Let the feelings flow and listen to what they tell you.
Why are you reading this sentence?
You’re supposed to be examining your feelings. Examine your change! You go feel it now. I’ll wait. I’ll even put an extra space between paragraphs to make it easier to pick up again.
Welcome back. How did it go?
Was there a twinge? Did you have a moment? Was there a positive rush of emotion? Did you gain some special insight or wave of motivation to change because you quested to understand your emotional drivers rather than rational ones?
Was the grizzly released from its cage?
Don’t fret if it didn’t happen. We just began and will work through exercises like this at appropriate times throughout the book. And hopefully lightning will strike.
Hopefully.
There are no guarantees. But the harder you work at these exercises, the more you strive and the more you believe epiphany can happen, the greater the likelihood it will.
It’s like that song by Journey, the one about the mythical place called South Detroit we’ve all heard way too many times: “Don’t stop believin’.”
It’s in your head now, isn’t it? My bad. But take something good from it.
Believe. Believe it’s possible to unleash your beast. In The Eureka Factor, Kounios and Beeman write, “Insights are like cats. They can be coaxed but don’t usually come when called.” You must learn to coax your elephant. Or grizzly. Or a really determined kangaroo, if that’s your thing.
Conscious thought rarely incites life-changing epiphanies. Instead, the snap revelations to change in a moment are based on what is often an overwhelming feeling that it is right, arriving from the unconscious. As Plato and subsequent authors revealed, it is such an emotion that gives epiphany its power. I was in fear of losing a beautiful and brilliant woman who let me see her naked, and I felt quite emotional over the impending loss of love. She was not threatening me in any way, but I knew deep down that such a driven woman (she had a perfect GPA and completed medical school at the top of her class) wouldn’t stay for long with a drunken dropout who was letting his health go to hell.
I got my shit together, and we made babies. Told you she was The One.
