10 Life Changing Moments

Who doesn’t love a good ah-ha! moment?  As I sit here thinking about my own life changing moments, I realize that these are moments that I’ve told stories about… and for many, they are life changing only in retrospect.  This list is also very telling for me, this was a great exercise…

1)  I realized that I mattered. (UPDATE: Ironically – I’m re-realizing this right now, re-pivoting)

In retrospect, this is about low-self-esteem-theater, about my first boyfriend and what he taught me about me. Can you believe that I met my first boyfriend on a blind date…in 8th grade?  Who does that?  I do, that’s who.  I dated this guy for 5 years… We had fun.  We were polar opposites, and I think that was part of the intrigue.  He lived in the middle of nowhere, had motorcycles and guns, farmed pigs, hated school, and didn’t like to socialize, at all.  I lived in the middle of town (small town), had big hair, lots of friends, and loved school.  When I went away to college, I realized that there were other guys out there… guys I had more in common with.  I also realized the reasons that I stayed in that relationship.  I didn’t want to fail, I didn’t want to hurt him, and I loved being loved.  Not the best basis for a relationship.  It never occurred to me that this relationship could end, that by being a pleaser, I was denying my own feelings.  I did finally understand that this relationship wasn’t what I wanted.

2)  I realized that I should love my work.

This is about my first ‘career change’ – before I even had a career.  In college, I was bound and determined to be in management… I figured I could be a good leader, and managers made some money, right?  So I enrolled in the business management program and proceeded to take accounting and ethics and finite math classes.  I went to class everyday with college freshmen wearing suits, while I was wearing irregulars from the Champion outlet up the street.  This wasn’t my crowd.  One day I had an epiphany that scared the hell out of me.  Suppose I graduated with a degree in Business Management? What was it that I would be passionate enough about to manage?  What if I was stuck in a managerial role in the most boring job in the world?  Ugh.  Back to the drawing board.  There was no way I could head down this path.

3)  I realized that I like a challenge.

Thank you Janine.  My college roommate was failing/hating Geology 101 miserably while I was going through my freshman freakout about business management.  I almost left school because I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do there.  I started to flip through Janine’s geology text, and while she was struggling to get it, I found it pretty interesting.  As I was lamenting my future, Janine took one look at me and said, “I see you as a rock, stars, bug-bio, kind of person.  You need to go talk to the Geology Dept.”  So, I went to chat with the department chair who tried to scare me away by saying, “If you want to make a living doing Geology, you’ll need a graduate degree.  This department is quite competitive, this isn’t rocks for jocks.”  Game on.  That was a challenge I had to accept.

4)  I realized I was never far from home.

As a geologist, you are home wherever you are.  I felt this the first time when I was in Hawaii during a geology field trip in college.  As I sat there on the Halina Pali imagining the Hawaiian Islands catastrophically falling apart into the Pacific Ocean, I realized how lucky I was to be able to view and interpret the Earth’s scenery.  That no matter where I was in the world, I’d have a geologic story to tell, and that story would connect me to the Earth, my home.  Deep, I know… and somehow comforting.

5) I realized that ‘time’ had a lot of control over me.

In grad school, I spent a summer working for Exxon down in Houston.  I was buried deep in an office tower amidst computers, indoor climate control, windowless walls, and literally – alone.  When I wasn’t staring at a computer screen in the dark by myself, I was attending meetings.  At the end of 3 months, I needed to escape technology, stale air, and ‘virtual everything’ for the complete opposite.  So upon my re-entry into society, I was whisked away to northern Wisconsin for 4 days of camping in the middle of nowhere. Not only that, but I wasn’t allowed to wear my  watch.  We were going to wake up when we woke up, eat when we were hungry, and go to bed when we were tired.  This was an intervention for sure.  It took me a few days to stop consulting my wrist before making any decisions.  This to me, was life changing – and put me back in touch with my needs – yet again.

6) I realized that I could turn off the news.

Whoa, really?  You have control over the news?    After September 11, 2001… I became addicted to the news.  I feel like this is a common story.  Everyone was scared, in a state of disbelief, and wanting answers.  I couldn’t stop watching TV or tuning into MSNBC online to get updates of what was happening in the world.  I became stressed out and anxious.  I also couldn’t get anything accomplished, my self-induced anxiety was getting in the way of my life.  The day I realized that I didn’t have to be so informed… that day was freeing.  I slowly regained my life after that.

7) I realized that family matters.

This may seem like an obvious realization… but it took some major life events to drive this one home.  My extended family isn’t all that close, physically and emotionally. My immediate family is pretty small, and we don’t live anywhere near each other either. My Grammy died shortly after September 11th, and her funeral was scheduled in NJ & I was in grad school in WI. To attend her funeral, I would have to fly into Newark, NJ… which was one of the last places on Earth that I wanted to be.  I had decided that I couldn’t go.  I didn’t have money and I wasn’t in the right state of mind to make the trip.  The day before her funeral, I had a serious ah-ha moment.  This was my Grammy, my Dad’s mom, she had died… people were gathering to celebrate her life… my Dad needed me to be there… I needed me to be there. From that moment on, there would be no second guessing my presence at funerals. I made it there just in time.

8) I realized that I am not a patient.

This was an important distinction for me to make – and it turns out, it opened me up to some unconventional thinking. When I was pregnant with my daughter, I knew that I would not be giving birth in a hospital. Here’s how this moment went down. When we were gearing up to start a family, I met with a gynecologist to have what I considered to be a ‘pre-conception’ check up.  As I sat there wrapped in gown on the table, I told the doc that this was my expectation.  She said to me, “Well, what do you need to know?  It’s not all that hard really.”  <<< stunned silence>>>  Well, that moment, I received all that I needed to know from this woman. Pregnancy is not an illness, therefore, doctors were not the best equipped to help me. From there, I found my midwife, who met with me, with my clothes on… for 3 hours to discuss my concerns and needs.  Child #1 was born at her birth center, and child #2 was born at home.

9) I realized that I had more control over my health than I was taught to believe.

This moment came to me in the last few years.  After deciding to lose weight to ‘get healthy’, I found just the opposite to be true.  My weight loss (I lost weight using Weight Watchers, which essentially restricted my food intake) created a cascade of health concerns for me, from extra heartbeats, to hair loss, to amenorrhea, to anxiety… And once again, my doctor could not help me see what was going on.  I went in to see her with complaints of a fluttering in my chest and hair loss – and she did some blood tests, confirmed that I was healthy, and punted me to a psychiatrist.  Awesome.  At that point, I realized that I was the expert in me, not her.  And that my health was going to be in my hands.  My familiarity with science and research made my quest for health a bit easier, as I knew how to critically evaluate health and nutrition studies.  One day, I was fortunate enough to run across Dr. Terry Wahls Ted Talk, and the rest was history.  Her experience made me realize that food was my medicine, that I needed to evaluate what I was putting in to my body, evaluate what was being used by the very cells that make up my body.  As a geologist with some evolutionary training, it also made sense to me that human beings have a natural diet – just as any other species in the wild.  This was powerful information, and incredibly life changing.

10)  I realized that I had something to give.

This sort of comes full circle for me.  After gaining my health back, I found myself so passionate about health & wellness, so passionate about sharing what I had learned.  Could it be that I’ve finally figured out what I want to be when I grow up… again?  So, now I know that 1) I mattered, 2) I have to do what I love, 3) that I love a challenge, 4) that I can feel comfortable & safe wherever I am, 5) I’m more than a time-piece, 6) that I didn’t have to pay attention to or believe outright what other people around me are saying, 7) I know that family matters, that people matter, 8) that we shouldn’t all be patients, and 9) that we have more control over our health than we were taught to believe… I realized that I had something to give.  This moment came when my husband noticed that my interest in health & wellness was clearly overshadowing my interested in desktop geology.  He’s the one who opened up the possibility to me that I might consider going back to school (I went to school for 10 years to be a geologist… I guess, I hate to fail you see).  Now, as a certified Health Coach, I intend to live out my years with purpose & intention.

There will be many more life changing moments in my time.  I sort of feel like this reflection itself was life-changing – I had no idea where it would go until I got there.  Now that I’ve recognized these moments in my life, I can re-learn from them.

What have you learned from the pivotal moments in your life?