We will all have moments in life where we come to a new realization, a paradigm shift, where we’ve had enough, and we take the steering wheel of our life. Author Jim Rohn refers to it as the day that turns your life around; the father of American psychology, William James, calls it mental rearrangement; German Sociologist Max Weber coined the term metanoia to capture a massive change in a person’s outlook. Other names for this phenomenon include inflection points, crossroads, U-turns, crises, pivots, monster curveballs, ampersands, life quakes etc. These moments come in different shapes, sizes and forms. These life-changing moments are usually an opportunity for a rebirth, as the character of George Clooney in the movie “Up in the Air” remarked.

These moments are not linear; they happen when we least expect and even when things are going great. These moments can be either good when you get the break or phone call you have been waiting for or harmful when you receive a devastating message about a loss or life situation. The key to navigating the rollercoaster bitter nature of life is never to let success get into your head and not let failure get into your heart. Life is full of twists and turns; the key is not to lose yourself or forget how great you are during the trials and tribulations. Every moment happens to us for a reason, and every season teaches us a lesson if we pay attention.

Bruce Feiler, the author of Life Is in the Transitions: Mastering Change at Any Age, refers to these moments as lifequakes. They are Lifequakes because the magnitude with which they upend our lives is exponentially worse than everyday disruptors. Lifequakes involve a fundamental shift in the meaning, purpose, or direction of a person’s life.

Feiler cites some great examples of life-quake moments:

• Beethoven was thirty-one and already the virtuoso composer of his first symphony when he learned he was going deaf.
• F. Scott Fitzgerald, already the bestselling author of The Great Gatsby, was thirty-eight and suffering from marriage woes, financial worries, drinking problems, and tuberculosis when he fled to the mountains of North Carolina and had what he described as a “crack-up.
• Mark Felt was fifty-nine when he was passed over to become head of the FBI by Richard Nixon, prompting him to flip and help bring down Nixon as the anonymous mole Deep Throat.

Yet just going through such an experience is not enough to make it a lifequake. You must assign it meaning it might not otherwise have; you must be aware that a change is happening and accept that it will lead to some kind of transition.

Lifequakes are massive, messy, and often miserable. They come at inconvenient times that usually make them more inconvenient. They aggregate. But they also do something else: They initiate a period of self-reflection and personal reevaluation. They set in motion a series of reverberations that lead us to revisit our very identity. They force us to ask what we don’t ask often enough:

These moments that turn our life around and usually get to the core of our being happens suddenly. It is that phone call about losing a loved one, your boss out of the blue informing you that you have been fired, or your spouse filing for divorce/moving out, etc. Psychologist and military veteran Dr. Gordon Livingston noted in his book Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart: Thirty True Things You Need to Know Now: “Only bad things happen quickly.“

When we think about the things that alter our lives in a moment, nearly all of them are bad: phone calls in the night, accidents, loss of jobs or loved ones, conversations with doctors bearing awful news. In fact, apart from a last-second touchdown, unexpected inheritance, winning the lottery, or a visitation from God, it is hard to imagine sudden good news. Virtually all the happiness-producing processes in our lives take time, usually a long time: learning new things, changing old behaviors, building satisfying relationships, raising children. This is why patience and determination are among life’s primary virtues.

Meditation

• Daily Calm with Tamara Levitt – Non-Reactivity
  • We learn to observe sensations in a non-reactive way in meditation. Slowly, our day-to-day habitual reactivity softens. Suddenly, the small stuff doesn’t feel as big; when someone is late, we aren’t as bothered; when we lose something, we can keep our cool, and when we experience a setback or loss, our disappointment fades a little quicker. When we aren’t fighting the reality of the present moment, we move into acceptance; which allows us to be less reactive to the ups and downs of life.

“Mindfulness gives you time. Time gives you choices. Choices, skillfully made, lead to freedom. You don’t have to be swept away by your feeling. You can respond with wisdom and kindness rather than habit and reactivity.”― Bhante H Gunaratana

• Daily Jay with Jay Shetty – Investigate Your Fear
• We fear things we don’t fully understand or have misconceptions about. We fear the unknown; we are often afraid of change because we are not sure of what will happen on the other side of it. We are so scared of trying new experiences because we don’t want to look foolish, so we avoid these things. When you investigate your fears and get to know them, it is usually not as scary anymore.
• Why am I afraid? Is my fear based on something that happened to me or is it based on the unknown? Is there a way I could potentially work with my fear or through it?

• Daily Trip with Jeff Warren – Deconstruct Yourself

Podcast

• 5 Ways To Get Over Yourself | Pascal Auclair | Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris

All the best in your quest to get better. Don’t Settle: Live with Passion.