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

Reflect on what Sawyer said about winning the Hugo. Recall the description of how an electron at a higher level must vacate the premises prior to a lower-level electron being able to make that quantum leap to the higher energy level.

This is all about achieving a higher energy level.

And if your higher level is full, something needs to vacate it and make room for your inspiration to be instantaneously promoted, the way Rob’s desire to lose weight was.

It’s a fancy way of describing prioritization.

If your highest energy level is maxed out with “life stuff,” you must reevaluate that stuff, because something needs to be deprioritized, perhaps even eliminated.

What takes up a lot of your energy?

Some things are critical. There are aspects of work and family that are challenging to deprioritize, but everyone wastes time, even those who think they don’t. You say you need your downtime to watch TV or surf the net, but how much time? A 2016 Nielsen report determined that the average adult American spends over 4.5 hours each day watching TV shows and movies. This doesn’t even consider surfing on your laptop or phone. Surely there is room to make room.

MAKE IT HAPPEN!

I have a few of these special exercises in the book. Call them “Act Now!” on steroids. I save them to call attention to more critical tasks. This one qualifies, because if a quantum leap of motivation is going to take place, your highest energy level needs an open slot. This is the detailed analysis, rather than sudden insight, for which writing things down may help. Examine your schedule and where your focus lies. Make a list of the stuff you do that sucks up a lot of energy and time. Consider where room can be made. You need this hole, this vacated spot, because then there will be a yearning to fill it. Give this task of making room the extra attention it deserves.

What may happen as a result of completing this first “Make It Happen!” exercise is that, through careful analysis, you determine, “Of course staring at a screen sucks up a lot of my time, so I’ll just cut way back on that.” But you don’t. You keep staring, because it’s paying off for you in some way.

But now you know this is part of the solution, and it sticks and gets unconsciously turned over, and then perhaps the epiphany comes through that uncovers why you have that behavior, how meaningless it is to continue the way you do, and how much more meaningful it would be to your life to spend that time on a passionate pursuit.

One day, you could be watching The Big Bang Theory and say, “Wow, this show has strapped a couple of hydrodynamic boards to its feet and achieved altitude overtop a carnivorous fish,” and you start walking each evening instead.

The Ground Shifts

“This is about exponential change.”

Ken Resnicow is a professor of health behavior at the University of Michigan and has published several papers on the phenomenon of quantum behavior change. He explained how the stages of change—the transtheoretical model discussed in chapter 1—“is a very linear progression that is also quite proportional. They even talk about standard deviations of change.” This means studies of TTM show groups of people based along a bell curve changing a specific amount at a specific rate.

Conversely, Rob Sawyer explained that quantum leaps of change are not linear, not proportional, and not in stages. “Exponential” means going from baby steps to Olympic-caliber long jump in a single stride.

“Using their terms [from Prochaska’s TTM],” Resnicow said, “one can jump from precontemplator into action at a moment’s notice.” And this is not just action but dedicated action, aka “maintenance.” In TTM, the “action” stage is tenuous. One is struggling to adopt the new behavior to achieve maintenance. But with a powerful epiphany there is no struggle; it is not a half-assed adoption. It’s full-assed.

Lee Holland did not slowly slide over into laborious action because of her epiphany. Rather, she became dedicated to taking “action” regarding her career and into “maintenance” in an instant after the realization in the parking lot that she was destined to do much more with her life.

“Epiphany can be primed for,” Resnicow said. “The raw materials for the perfect storm are something that can be provided.” Priming can give people the information and skills that make it happen.

“Don’t pressure yourself worrying that your light bulb hasn’t gone off yet,” Resnicow said. Doing so creates a state of anxiety. As we’ll examine further, it’s positive mood states that set the stage for sudden insight. Besides, “Sometimes things have to marinate for a while before epiphany happens.”

It’s a struggle to escape struggle.

Post-epiphany, the changes in behavior won’t feel like work. It doesn’t mean you don’t have work to do first. I’m going to kick your ass a bit in coming chapters, and then, suddenly, perhaps …

“It isn’t about struggling,” said Professor Miller, who has been treating addictions for forty years. “With overcoming addiction, some people are often white-knuckle holding on to not go back to their previous situation.” But he explained it is different for others, the ones who experience an epiphany, because they suddenly realize they’ve had enough.

“The typical epiphanies are, ‘Oh, shit! I don’t want to be this person anymore!’” said Resnicow. “If you’re religious, it can be, ‘This is not what God put me on Earth for.’ It’s an overwhelming sense the ground has shifted beneath you.” Resnicow explained quantum change as a tectonic-plate movement in how you view your identity and your behavior, and how the two no longer are compatible.

An example of how well sudden change in behavior works comes from a 2009 study of seventeen hundred smokers and ex-smokers published in Nicotine & Tobacco Research. The authors found that those who spontaneously quit smoking are almost twice as likely to still not be smoking after six months than those who chose a carefully planned quitting attempt. It’s also interesting that spontaneous quitters were less reliant upon pharmacotherapy to quit. They didn’t need that nicotine patch. They were just done.

My best friend Craig woke up one day and promptly decided to quit when he realized how much money he’d wasted over the years. This cessation of smelling like an ashtray was done much to my and my wife’s approval. After more than a quarter century, he’s never wavered.

Battling addiction or weight or finding purpose are not the only things a quantum leap can assist with. A 2005 study published in Behaviour Research and Therapy looked at “sudden gains” in cognitive-behavioral treatment for depression. The research found not only did 42 percent of patients experience a great leap of improvement in a short time, but those who did were more likely to sustain such gains and had a higher rate of recovery.

I want to repeat something regarding epiphanies: It’s not calculated. Professor Resnicow refers to it as a “metacognitive event.” This means the solution to the problem often arrives while you’re not actively trying to solve the problem.

For now, this is not helpful for those looking to achieve epiphany in order to change their lives. But I did the research and created a guaranteed* method for making it happen.

*JK. Not a guarantee.

Unlimited Drive

Until recently, the phenomenon of quantum change bestowing unlimited drive didn’t mesh with research into “ego depletion,” in which willpower is considered limited. Regular exertions of will to complete tasks or resist certain foods were thought to fatigue the mind; people run out of mental energy to adhere to their new lifestyle.