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

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      “I had been sedentary my entire life,” Lesley said. “I was a good student and had it in my head that you were either a brain or a jock and ne’er the twain would meet.” This attitude had a negative effect on Lesley as she reached her third decade of life.

      Lesley explained that she smoked and drank and would often eat an entire pizza for lunch by herself. Significantly overweight, she believed this was what life had in store. She’d become fatalistic.

      Life sucked. She wasn’t happy but wasn’t seeking change, either. Life was a slow, downward spiral she felt powerless to prevent.

      “When you’re drinking too much and smoking and eating crap all the time, it’s going to chip away at your happiness,” she said. She became depressed because she wasn’t doing anything with her life. Her routine was work, drink, smoke, watch movies, repeat.

      But fencing changed all that. Quickly.

      Lesley’s story is one of finding a passion for a specific sport that challenged not only her body but also her mind. She was living in Lexington, Kentucky, and an Olympic-fencing coach began offering classes at the local Y. Lesley heard an announcement about it at the university where she worked, and thought, Why not? Fencing was the one sport that held even a modicum of interest for the librarian, as it seemed sophisticated to her. “Grace Kelly fenced,” she said.

      She found the sport intellectually engaging. “You’re concentrating so hard that you don’t realize you’re winded.” In addition to the Olympic-level coach and the mental stimulation, there was another instance, a seemingly minor event, Lesley remembers with clarity, that defined the next stage of her life.

      Many embark on a path of lifestyle change and suffer through for a while, only to quit, but not Lesley. What made her experience different? Why was her journey of personal transformation successful when so many others fail?

      The answer can be found in a single moment, when a new sense of purpose clicks into place.

      Lesley had been fencing just a couple of months. The fencing area at the Kentucky YMCA is an intimate space atop three flights of stairs; climbing them was a workout all by itself. She’d be gasping and sweating by the time she reached the top, wondering, Why the hell am I here?

      Her commitment to continue was tenuous. Then a switch flipped.

      On that day, early in her fencing career, Lesley noticed a group of child fencers had stopped their practice to watch the adults engaging in partner drills. Knowing she was being observed by these impressionable youths, she doubled her efforts at parries and lunges, trying her best to make a good show. “Suddenly, I felt like I belonged there,” she said, “and that I wanted to get really good at this.” There was a powerful awakening in both heart and mind that this is what she was meant to do. “In that emotional moment, I knew I would keep coming back to learn everything I could.” It was an overwhelming sensation that made her feel as though she could weep with joy at what she had discovered: she would not quit. She would do whatever it took to become the best she could be. She would not quit.

      Sacred excrement!

      Suddenly and with surety of purpose, Lesley changed. It was not the step-by-step process like many behavior-change theories focus on. It was both instantaneous and total. A new part of her mind opened; a new Lesley was born, one that would never have to struggle to be motivated again.

      She saw progress in her skill in increments, and it led to quitting cancer sticks so she didn’t cough up alveoli during matches, giving up booze so the hangover didn’t feel like she had a brain aneurysm during practice, and eating healthier to fuel performance and lose forty pounds so she could move faster and present a smaller target for her opponents.

      “The changes are substantial,” said William Miller, an emeritus professor of psychology and psychiatry at the University of New Mexico and cocreator of the popular behavior-change technique called motivational interviewing. Miller is also the coauthor of Quantum Change: When Epiphanies and Sudden Insights Transform Ordinary Lives. He is a leader among the handful of researchers examining the topic of sudden and massive psychological change.

      For the book, Professor Miller and his coauthor interviewed fifty-five people who had experienced life-changing epiphanies to create a structure around the phenomenon. He explained there can be focal changes, such as ceasing an addictive behavior, adopting a physical activity, or even a massive shift in mood, such as dramatic alleviation from depression. But such sudden change can also be broad-sweeping—a total shift in identity with far-reaching impact through a person’s life. What’s more, his coauthor did a ten-year follow-up and found something incredible: “No one had gone back to their state before the event happened. To the contrary, everyone spoke of moving ahead.”

      Maintenance of the new behaviors, Miller explained, was high because it wasn’t a struggle to do so. “People didn’t talk about it using motivational language,” he said. They changed at a fundamental level. They became a new person for whom the new behaviors were the norm. It’s not a decision, it’s a sudden transformation.

      I remember my holy-shit moment, when everything became clear. It’s when your inner grizzly is released from its cage as a roaring beast ready to achieve your utmost potential. It can manifest in various ways and for a multitude of reasons, but the reality is, it happens! It happens all the time—Professor Miller asserts as many as one-third of people experience such life-changing events—and yet we ignore the possibility of it happening for us. Accepting the verifiable reality of this phenomenon is the first step in making it happen for you.

      It happened for Lesley that day, years ago. She was still overweight, still smoked and drank, and she was still a rookie fencer possessing negligible skill, but in that instant of self-reevaluation, her true personality awakened and ultimately led her to the silver-medal win. Along the way to a much healthier body, this new sense of purpose alleviated her despair.

      “I decided in that moment that I was serious about becoming an athlete,” she said.

      The pounds fell off.

       Escaping Quiet Desperation

      Think of all the people throughout history who never had the chance to reveal their genius. Across the eons, most of humanity remained uneducated, toiling at physical labor to survive.

      Henry David Thoreau wrote, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” Women too. Women especially.

      But times are a-changin’. Bob Dylan doesn’t want you to sink; he is telling you to start swimming. To quote from the Pixar film Up: “Adventure is out there!”

      You have one shot at life, and it’s not over yet. Many will continue to log the days, months, and years until they begin the long, slow slide into a dirt nap, heart songs remaining unsung.

      For this to work, you must desire more. You must thirst for adventure. You must be ready to rattle the cage of the inner grizzly bear and yell, “Wake up! It’s time to kick ass!”

      Adventure can take myriad forms. Think of Lesley. Fat, drunk, inhaling cancer sticks, depressed, and going nowhere except continuing an unexceptional life, few if any marks made upon the world, no quests undertaken, no major life missions accomplished.

      And picking up a sword changed all that.

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