Have you ever experienced a lifequake?
What’s a lifequake, you might ask? Well, you know when one hits your life.
I felt the biggest lifequake the day my husband said, “no, I can’t do that.” Our marriage therapist had asked whether he would end his affair with another woman so that he and I could rebuild our marriage. When he said, no … it was a moment I will never forget – and a moment that changed my life in ways I couldn’t have predicted. Sometime later, I saw how that pivotal moment opened the door to a new life I never knew I wanted.
I love the term lifequake because it accurately describes those moments, key experiences, and life-altering events when we feel our lives change in unexpected and often unsettling ways. Bruce Feiler coined the term lifequake in his book Life Is In the Transitions. He describes it as a forceful burst of change that leads to periods of upheaval, transition, and renewal and can include experiences such as major illness, loss of a loved one, a career setback, divorce, or other life-changing event that challenges one’s existing assumptions and forces a reevaluation of priorities values and goals.
Lifequakes can be both disruptive and transformative, ultimately leading you to personal growth, resilience and to discover parts of yourself you may never have known existed – or that needed to be expressed.
I talk about my biggest lifequake, when my husband opted out of our marriage, in my new book, “The Spark-Start Path – How to Use Life’s Biggest Challenges to Reignite Your Heart’s Deepest Desires.” That was one of several lifequakes that I have lived through and shared in this book. In the moments when each of my lifequakes happened, none of them felt good. Along the way, though, I came to understand how these experiences had been a soulful wake-up calls, inviting me to get to know myself better as these experiences caused me to explore deeper and unexpressed parts of myself.
During a lifequake, people often experience a wide range of intense emotions and feelings, which can vary depending on the nature of the lifequake, and the individual’s coping mechanisms. Common feelings people may experience when in the middle of a lifequake include: shock, fear, anxiety, sadness/grief, anger/resentment, confusion, vulnerability, loss of control, loneliness/isolation, and hopelessness. These all are natural and expected emotions following life-altering events or unwanted changes. Lifequakes bring on a lot of emotions to work through, sometimes these feelings show up one at a time, and other times these emotions pile on top of each other. It takes time and space to explore what these feelings are telling us. Yet sometimes people can get stuck in regret, resentment or ruminating on the past, focused only on ‘why me? why did this have to happen? Things were great until …’ When people get stuck in these places, they have a harder time moving on to what’s next.
What I find, as Maya Angelo would say…
“If it’s bad, it might get worse, but I know that it’s going to be better. And you have to know that. There’s a country song out now, which I wish I’d written, that says, ‘Every storm runs out of rain. ‘ I’d make a sign of that if I were you.”
As a personal development coach who works with many going through important life transitions, I know this to be true. Even after a lifequake, I know things are going to get better. There’s an intensity when it happens, and there comes a point after a lifequake, when you feel your own rain stop. That’s when you start to feel ready to rebuild again.
And, that’s generally where I come in as a coach and guide on the journey to navigate the path forward, figuring out what’s next and what are the new things to focus on and create. We work through deep emotions, find new perspectives, and explore opportunities that may be possible now in ways those options were not before. All of this inner work helps bring new balance into one’s life. As one begins feeling that things are getting a little better, it’s remarkable what happens as each one begins to envision what’s next.
As one moves from regret and resentment into doing some deep introspection which brings new insights, perspectives and possibilities, it’s amazing to watch how life unfolds and begins creating new things as one moves forward. More often that not, I see people find parts of themselves that have been denied or lost for a long time. Their creativity increases. New interests arise. They try things they always wanted to do, but never did for some reason. New feelings of joy show up unexpectedly. It’s like watching crocus flowers come up in the snow, they begin blooming in new ways, like spring flowers coming up after a long hard winter.
In my book, I share Evelyn’s story, after she unexpectedly lost her husband. Since that time, Evelyn has come to create not only a sanctuary feeling in her new home – her own sacred space. She also has learned to bring that feeling of sanctuary inside of herself. She now draws upon this feeling of peace inside when she finds herself in stressful situations happening outside of her that she does not want to be pulled into (both at work and wth famly/friends). She said that “finding this feeling of sanctuary both within me and around me has been the key to finding myself again.”