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

Are there ceilings in your life you wish to burst through? Let’s rattle that cage and see what we can stir from its slumber.

How you direct this powerful creature is up to you. As a health-and-fitness columnist whose work has been read by millions, and as a weight-loss coach, I first became aware of the phenomenon of sudden and dramatic life change regarding people’s desire to change their bodies. But this is not a weight-loss book.

Okay, it’s a little bit of a weight-loss book.

If you want it to be, it is. Because such accomplishments have cascade effects. Improving one’s body is challenging, and those who attain the drive to do so rarely stop there. I’ve witnessed them go on to enhance their careers, improve relationships, conquer addiction, or undertake a complete life overhaul. Once the grizzly is free, there is no telling what adventures it will take you on.

That’s enough about bears for now. Let’s talk flying reindeer.

The Gift of Sudden Inspiration

“Growing old is mandatory. Growing up is optional.”

My father says this often, as an explanation for his lovable goofiness. One day, I heard some motivational douche on the radio say those exact words, but as an imperative. His tone negative, the speaker proclaimed you must work to grow up , so you can be a big success or some shit. I don’t know. He was trying to suck the fun out of life. Anyway, he totally came across like “I will death murder the shit out of your inner child!” and then I was like “Yeah, go screw yourself; my dad is cool and you’re not,” and I changed the station.

That inner child. Remember when you were a kid and believed stuff?

The Tooth Fairy and Easter Bunny are stupid, but Santa Claus? He kicks ass. There is a reason we let go of the Tooth Bunny earlier than the red-suited flying-reindeer wrangler: Santa is too cool to not exist.

I want to tap into your inner child, so you can believe some stuff. I want to tell you something so Christmas-Day awesome, you might have difficulty believing this present under the tree is real.

Except it’s real as puppy breath. I’m going to science this baby up with a heap of evidence to show you. I’ll share both far-out stories and studies about unlocking overarching awesomeness that takes life to a new, this-is-who-you-were-meant-to-be level.

You want big change? You want to be a badass at life? I’ll tell you something about what it means to be Evil Gluteus Maximus. Or … no. I won’t. Self-improvement is something that happens on your terms. You decide what is and is not the “Person You Were Meant to Be Registered Trademark.”

Who is this person? Start imagining now. Take a moment and reflect on life experiences; couple them with your inner child. Dream big. Realistically big, because not everyone gets to be an astronaut. But imagine what you could do if you were suddenly inspired to strive for it. If you had the passion and drive to go on an ambitious quest, what would that new life look like? Not just the body, but the whole life: career, relationships, finances, happiness, self-worth, personal identity … Take a moment; take three moments. Invest some mental energy. Think!

You’ve heard it’s about the journey and not the destination, right? Whatever. Despite what I just wrote, I’m not going to talk journeys too much in this book. Instead, we are zeroing in on the moment your passion to take that journey is unleashed.

Does this word “unleash” make you think of a process that happens slowly, step-by-step, through careful deliberation? Hell, no. It’s a big-ass rott-weiler straining to get off the chain and go fang-first into Nickelback.

It’s when suddenly life—or the universe, or whatever—sends you a powerful message for which you cannot help but proclaim, “Holy shit!” at the revelation. (Profanity optional.)

I don’t care if you believe in Santa or Satan, a golem or Gollum, an Indian elephant or Indiana Jones. Activate your imagination, and do some scientific discernment while you’re at it, because we’re about to take a voyage into explaining why you’ve been taking the approach to life change all wrong.

It may seem wishful thinking, what I’m about to tell you, but it’s not.

We’re about to unleash some shit.

Eye of the Tiger

I awoke at ass o’clock, guzzled some weapons-grade dark roast, and headed out for a six-mile run in temperatures hovering around hideous below zero.

As the sun rose, I did not lament the lack of sunglasses. They fog in under a minute at −20 degrees. Rather, my eyes were protected by a thick coating of frost collected on my lashes. Upon returning home, I snapped a selfie of my snowy visage and posted it to Facebook. The comments collectively proclaimed, “Dude, you are an entire cave full of batshit.”

My pre-epiphany self would agree.

In a previous life, I abhorred physical activity, guzzled English brown ales, and stuffed McDonald’s into my maw as though the apocalypse were imminent. Additionally, I was in debt, flunking out of college, and feeling like an unmotivated and out-of-shape bag of poo. But one day, the ground shifted beneath my feet. There was a transformative moment: a sudden strike of awakening in which my existence was split in twain; it became the instant that divided my life into “before” and “after.”

Everything changed that day. Not that day—that minute. Those few seconds.

I have often said someone won’t change their life in an instant unless they believe God threatened to shove a lightning bolt up their ass if they didn’t alter their path. Divinely inspired or not, what I didn’t realize at the time was how common the phenomenon of electricity in a posterior orifice can be for motivating rapid transformation. While coaching countless readers on the merits of the slow-and-steady path to change, I’d forgotten that wasn’t how I’d done it. When I asked for similar stories of people who, in a single instant, found an overflowing fountain of desire to change their lives, I was amazed at the response. As I will show, research reveals that sudden and overwhelming motivation to change is more common than not in those most successful at it. This book contains many such stories.

Stories like that of Lesley Chapman, who picked up a sword, and her life changed.

Eleven years later, Lesley felt no pain. There was no dripping sweat, no aching muscles, no heart ready to burst out of her chest, and no lungs rasping like an asthmatic Darth Vader after a road trip with Cheech and Chong. No fear, either. There was only this moment: the fencing match of her life, fueled by adrenaline and a competitive spirit her old self wouldn’t recognize.

The depressed, booze-chugging, overweight cigarette aficionado was no longer there; a lean and energized forty-four-year-old athlete questing for gold replaced the woman she had been. The new Lesley was a force to be reckoned with.

But her opponent was so fast; she struck like an arrow.

It was the last day of May 2015 in the city of Markham, Ontario, a multicultural community, part of the Greater Toronto area. The newly constructed Vango Toronto Fencing Center, located twelve miles north of the iconic CN Tower, was hosting the Canadian-American Veterans Cup, featuring the best fencers over the age of forty from across North America.

Lesley traveled from her home in the small town of Madison, New York, to take off to the Great White North for the first time, to prove her mettle after more than a decade of dedication to her bladework.

“I’d had a really good day,” Lesley said. “I went to the tournament without a lot of expectations.” As Lesley won match after match, her confidence in her sword-wielding abilities grew, and so did her enjoyment of competition. She beat someone she didn’t expect she would to get to the gold-medal round and was elated at the opportunity for a championship bout.