Many of us have heard people who make life changing choices say that they reached a turning point. Some may even point out several turning points or hitting rock bottom, a forced turning point. Perhaps it is in our human nature to want to know what was needed to create the change, perhaps because it may be something one might be seeking in your own life. With this in mind I’ll start with my thoughts on turning points.
I once watched an Oprah show in which she pointed out that the universe (God if you like) will put out progressively more aggressive hints at the need for change in your life, which if you are not setup to hear or do not listen to will result in the universe chucking a brick at you so you cannot ignore the message. The imagery amused me at the time, but I have often wonder about these bricks as various life altering events popped up in my life, like when I lost my partner of 13 years in a car accident.
I now realise that Oprah may also have made another point I did not get at the time, turning points are not single events but a series of events which bring you into alignment to understand the change you need in your life.
Hence, I cannot honestly say that I had a specific turning point, just a series of events that started to converge in a manner that aligned my thinking in a way that brought about a profound insight into myself. This insight I could use to explore my true self.
In exploring my true self I often say I have not started a new chapter in my life but rather a new book with blank pages I can writing anything on I want. The reason for this is that I believe I am not just continuing a new element of an old story, but rather writing a new story without storylines to the past or preconceptions of how the narrative should effect the future. I will explore my experience with stories in another blog. However, for now I want to underpin the important link I found between my turning point and my stories.
As I said, my turning point was a series of events which if I were to be honest is most of my life in the making. My most physical symptom of this degrading situation with myself was my weight gain. By the time I had had enough in September 2009, I weighed 143,8 kilograms. For the second time in four year I went to a doctor because I had problems swallowing, perhaps it was the universe saying stop eating already, but I was skilfully dodging all bricks. I was ready for a medical solution, but that is not what I was going to get.
In the preceding six months I had gained just on 20 kilograms after having lost 24 kilograms the year before. The weight gain was so rapid and my physical symptoms so annoying that I saw the first of three doctors. It was not my thyroid, heart disease or diabetes, although my cholesterol was sky high. I decided this was my fate and ploughed on progressively bringing back old habits were food ruled my live and the consumption of mass quantities were the norm again.
In September 2009 my oesophagus started its old problem of going into a spasm while I was eating, but this time it was so bad that I could not get it unstuck. I had had enough, I knew it was my weight and I was ready for anything including gastric banding to loose weight. In fact I had checked, my Body Mass Index was 40 so I qualified for this radical procedure.
I saw my third doctor with the intention to ask for a medical solution. He started by challenging two of my stories before I could propose my solution. Firstly he challenged a previous diagnosis of Irritable Bowl Syndrome by basically saying it did not exist. That fired me up to defend my “condition” an important narrative to my life story. However ultimately it was too late he had planted doubt in my strongly held belief in my me-defining stories.
Secondly he set about proving to me that my body was in a massive self-destruct mode, a collection of reinforcing conditions called metabolic syndrome.
A sonar proved my liver was enlarged and fatty. My liver enzymes showed further problems. I had gout-like symptoms with sore joints leaving me feeling and sounding like an old man. My permanently blocked nose and asthma had become so much a part of my life that I did not even think of them as major issues anymore. Yet these symptoms were all likely reflecting the underlying general inflammation of my body caused by my massive size.
But it did not stop there, he showed my fasting insulin levels were five times higher than normal, a well known cause for all the tiredness and mental fuzziness I experienced. That aside I was well on the road to follow the rest of my immediate family to becoming a serious diabetic.
The reality was, in black and white, in hard science, my body was self destructing and only I had the command codes to stop it. This realisation hit at the core my main “fat” story, I’m large but ok I’m not a diabetic or other chronic diseases suffer yet.
There was no pill that could write a happy conclusion to this story, only diet and exercise. Both things I understood well, but at the same time I also knew were difficult for me as lifestyle commitments.
Ultimately I had little choice but to listen to what I was told. But as is my character I augmented all advice with further research and opinions; what was the best diet for metabolic syndrome, what was the pathophysiology of the syndrome, did it even exist. My dietician and doctor were well quizzed as I sought the best answers to my questions.
On 25 September 2009, I had reached the point where I could start this new journey albeit with a very shaky faith in the diet and exercise needed. But I wanted change, I committed to take each day as it came. I now realise that I had started to go with the flow of life (something different than being easy going). This I did reluctantly at first but with an increasing sense of acceptance of letting go. Soon events in my life started to arrange themselves in ways that challenged my old life stories further, things and people entered my life that gave me motivation and helped me find new ways of knowing myself.
So while you may have thought my turning point would be me reaching a low point in being obese or me finding the silver bullet diet and exercise programme, it was actually not that at all. In reality my turning point was bringing 36 years of life events to a point where I could look at them as things which do not define who I am now, here, today.
I could for the first time truly appreciate Tolle’s teaching about being able to see the thinking separate from the reality. I now understood the powerful force my pain-body and ego had had on me, which once I had become aware of them, made them loose their powerful grip on my life. Being obese had helped bring me to my turning point, but was not my turning point because for me fat was not the true issue at all just the outward symptom.
