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I was in a state of despair, and taking real action, working hard for something for the first time in my life, was the antidote. In that moment, I understood that solid effort could change everything. The enlightenment, the realization that I was about to take action, cured my despair that day, and step-by-step, progress was made toward a new and better life.
The emotional arousal from a momentous epiphany is like a hit of a powerful drug, and it is because pleasurable neuromodulators are activated. A new path is created in the mind, and each step forward in that better direction provides a little rush of positive reinforcement that whispers, This is right.
At a simple level, how these neuromodulators work for ongoing motivation can be described via operant conditioning, as outlined by psychologist B. F. Skinner early in the twentieth century. It’s stimulus-response; the epiphany is such a positive experience that every additional step taken (the stimulus) that stays true to the vision allows the recipient of the vision to continue to feel that sense of rightness from its pursuit (the response). More details are in chapter 4 (#litres_trial_promo), but it’s this neurochemical boost that makes you take the next step, and the next one.
The quest comes to rule the synapses.
Self-Compassion vs. Self-Loathing
If you hate your body, you’ll be less inspired to change it. Because passion for health rarely comes from a place of self-loathing. Same goes for hating your life.
There are those who lose weight because they were filled with disgust over their bodies. It can work for some, but research indicates shaming and self-loathing over obesity leads to comfort eating and immobility far more often than generating action.
In a 2013 study, researchers at Florida State University assert that not only does stigmatizing obesity lead to poorer mental-health outcomes, but the authors state, “Rather than motivating individuals to lose weight, weight discrimination increases risk for obesity.”
And a 2003 study by University of Texas at Austin psychology professor Kristin Neff revealed the importance of self-compassion in boosting one’s psychological function. It “involves being touched by and open to one’s own suffering, not avoiding or disconnecting from it, generating the desire to alleviate one’s suffering and to heal oneself with kindness.”
It contrasts with efforts to boost self-esteem, which have come under criticism. Self-esteem often means judgments and comparisons, evaluating personal performances in comparison to a set of standards, as well as examining how others view you. And while low self-esteem can have negative psychological outcomes, boosting it is not a panacea for the psyche. The first issue is that it’s hard to raise, and the second is that targeting self-esteem can lead to self-absorption and even narcissism.
Part of the benefit of focusing on self-compassion is that it’s not just about you. It “represents a balanced integration between concern with oneself and concern with others, a state that researchers are increasingly recognizing as essential to optimal psychological functioning,” Professor Neff wrote. Winning at life need not involve competition. You may have a sudden insight that the best thing for your future is to dedicate yourself to helping others. Look at Chuck. He wasn’t thinking about looking in a mirror or strutting on a beach. He wanted to be a good dad.
We will examine self-compassion meditation techniques in chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo).
The body is often a source of one’s self-loathing, so I’ll share the words of Taryn Brumfitt, a body-acceptance advocate and director of the documentary film Embrace. She told me of the need to not descend into negativity: “I have never met a single human being that has made lifelong, meaningful change that came from shame or guilt.” Conversely, she has seen much positive change resulting from self-care, self-love, and self-respect. “I’m asking people to embrace their positive qualities.”
I gained a lot of weight in my early 20s and I hated myself, but the harder I tried, the less possible it seemed to lose weight. Finally gave up in my 40s. But then something clicked. I decided I needed to be kinder to myself, love the body I had, and love what it could do. Before I knew it, I had the confidence to get a trainer…. I feel the best I’ve felt and looked in years!
—Victoria
I bring this up because all this talk of unstoppable desire to succeed and motivation and willpower can send the wrong message.
Sticking to weight loss as the example, we live in an environment that manufactures body fat. With over two-thirds of Americans being classified as having excess weight or obesity, and the fact it happened in a few decades, it’s clear there has been a major societal shift contributing to it.
Obesity is not a personal failing. It’s not a choice people make. It’s not something to be ashamed of. Just because this book is about exploring the mystery of generating a massive leap in motivation does not mean those who don’t experience it are somehow lesser.
Losing weight or changing your life in other ways is complex. That’s because human motivation is equally complicated. A big problem with the weight-loss industry is a lot of the strategies are built on suffering, which are not effective for the long term. People feel the failure is their own rather than due to a corrupt industry that failed them.
I spent years unhappy with my weight…. I would hide food and opt out of gym whenever possible because I had been told so many times at that point that my body was flawed, I didn’t believe it was capable of anything…. In my late 20s, joining the body-positivity movement helped me see value and worth in my body and what it’s capable of … and I will be completing my 4th half marathon next month. —Amanda
You may have an epiphany that you’re done with worrying about your weight and decide to focus your energies on things more important to you, and I am 100 percent cool with that. It’s your life; you have the power to choose your own road.
If you’re guilty of beating yourself up, it’s time to ditch the self-loathing and accept yourself for your faults and your capabilities. Use your newfound self-respect as part of the process to energize your desire to find the best way forward for you.
Accept your humanity and that all humans are flawed. Being a perfectionist gets in the way of self-compassion. There will be detailed steps later, but for now, endeavor to ditch shame and guilt, and, in so doing, try to better understand yourself. Take some time to analyze what makes you unique. What are your strengths? Where do your capabilities lie? What could you accomplish if you were truly determined? Why would you be able to accomplish these goals? What is it that you bring to the equation that makes these goals attainable? Focusing on your qualities and your potential, imagine what your post-epiphany journey might look like.
You need to know yourself better, because there is no cookie-cutter approach to creating an optimal life outcome. It is unique to you.
I like cookies.
Exceeding Expectations
There are people for whom life has been criminally unfair. The cards they’ve been dealt are a puddle of cat puke.
It is possible, dear reader, you are one such unlucky feline-vomit recipient.
When it comes to body weight, myriad factors can add fat to your frame: genetics, environment, finances, abuse, mental illness, medical conditions, medication…. Regardless of a dream of getting in shape and/or bettering one’s life, there can be preexisting problems that will hamstring efforts.
People who proclaim anyone can achieve anything if they just work hard enough need to shut up and go far away, then shut up some more.
Life isn’t fair, and because it isn’t fair you must not feel shame or a need for comparison. Some have immense privilege. Others, their lives suck, and it is not of their own making.
And yet they are told to “Just do it.” They are shamed for their weight and shown photoshopped models on magazine covers as the “ideal” they should aspire to. Beyond that, there are the societal expectations to have fancier cars, nicer houses, bigger paychecks, better-looking spouses, and smarter children.
I’m calling bullshit on all that.
This is about you and bettering your life by playing the hand you’ve been dealt to the best of your ability. Yes, you can achieve a great deal by being passionate and inspired to succeed; you can exceed all expectations not just with your body, but with your career, happiness, relationships, and more. But it is still worth comprehending the reality of your situation.
There is merit in aiming high, because if you only make it three-quarters of the way to your goal, you’re still overjoyed at how much you’ve accomplished. But do not aim so high—do not quest for the unattainable—if failure to become Batwoman or Wonder Man would crush your will to continue.
Seek greatness on your own terms.
Fulfilling Life’s Purpose
Lee Holland had a “sit-down job,” something her family envied.
Living in Chattanooga, Tennessee, she came from poverty and was one of the few to finish high school and the first to go to college. She worked in a small cubicle as a customer-service representative for a major health-insurance company, which was seen as a big step up from working in fast food or doing manual labor. But her life felt unfulfilled, like she was going through the motions. Lee felt destined for more. All that was missing was the drive to figure out her purpose in life and then to chase it.
The drive arrived in fall 2007.
She took a call from a man who worked at a carpet mill in rural south-eastern United States. He was calling because his young son had been diagnosed with a rare form of bone cancer. The man was so relieved because he had just been recalled to work after a layoff and had medical insurance again.
Unfortunately, Lee had to tell the man his policy had a “preexisting-condition clause,” and any new diagnosis in the first year was not covered. This was prior to the Affordable Care Act, when the law changed, requiring policies to not have such restrictions for children.
Lee wanted to help. She had previous experience working for a state Medicaid contractor and saw a chance to get the boy coverage. She called the Medicaid office and was told they would cover the child, but only after they received a denial explanation from the insurance company Lee worked for. Prior to her company being able to issue such a denial they needed to send the boy to a pediatric oncologist. The problem was, the only such specialist within one hundred miles of the client refused to see the boy unless they knew they’d receive payment. Her company wouldn’t cover them. Medicaid wouldn’t guarantee payment until they received a denial explanation from her company. It was a catch-22: her company couldn’t provide denial until the boy saw a pediatric oncologist, but the oncologist wouldn’t see the boy unless payment was guaranteed.
But she’d done her job. In fact, she’d already gone above and beyond. Company policy was to end the call and move on to the next customer.
“At that moment, something in me broke,” Lee Holland told me.
Not caring that it was against the rules, she blocked calls on her phone and walked into her manager’s office. “I told him he could fire me at the end of the day, but I was going to get that child on Medicaid and in to see a pediatric oncologist.” Her manager replied with, “Do what you have to do.”
It required several phone calls, a discussion with her company’s legal department, and signing of privacy release forms, but she got the boy approved for Medicaid and scheduled to see an oncologist by the end of the day.
It was all buildup. After her shift, Lee’s life-changing moment came in the parking lot as she walked to her car.
It was a gray November day; a light drizzle fell. Then a question popped into her head: What are you doing working in customer service when you can help people like this? There was a sudden snap decision to change careers. It came so fast, she didn’t even break stride as she closed the final steps to her car. “I didn’t know what it was yet. It was just between me and the universe that I was going to do something. I felt I had potential to help people through the chaotic mass of the American health-care system.” The realization, Lee said, was like a dislocated bone suddenly popping back into its joint.
“I had instant drive to do it,” she told me.
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.
2 (#ulink_a13514f3-8cf4-5416-a58f-0fa4106678c5)
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.
