Lifequakes

Lifequakes shake the foundations of our existence.

One day, Lisa – a marketing executive – joined a conference call a few minutes early, and heard her colleagues gossiping about her ruthless ambition and sour disposition. The next day, she walked into her boss’s office and quit the corporate job that had been making her miserable for years. She changed careers and became a life coach and then a hypnotherapist, helping other people recover from the trauma she’d experienced for so long.

That conference call was a turning point that spurred Lisa into action. It created a lifequake: a transition that fundamentally transforms how we perceive ourselves and our lives.

Lifequakes can be voluntary events where we choose to transform our lives by making a decisive change and jumping into the unknown. But more commonly, they’re events we have no control over, and don’t choose. For example, a natural disaster or terrorist attack could upend your life overnight. Or you could experience a personal blow like getting laid off. Lifequakes aren’t always negative, though. Some positive changes like buying a house or graduating from college can also be very overwhelming.

On average, people experience three to five lifequakes over the course of their lives. But what makes some disruptors completely transform our lives, while others don’t leave much of a trace? Well, lifequakes aren’t as much about what happens as they are about the meaning that we give to those events. While one person might consider cancer a life-changing experience, others may emerge from treatment with the same lives and world views they had before.

A lifequake can be created when a disruptor comes along at a bad time, like when we’re particularly tired or vulnerable. A disruptor may also be the proverbial straw that breaks the camel’s back. Lisa didn’t quit her job because her colleagues gossiped about her, but the incident did spur her into action.

Lifequakes can also happen when there are a pile-up of disruptors occurring at the same time. Very often, trouble arrives in twos and threes. Take for instance a man interviewed for the project who was laid off from his job only to discover his wife was having an affair. The rupture of losing everything at once caused a lifequake.

Lifequakes are by their nature disorientating, and even scary. But they also present opportunities to reevaluate our lives and what makes them meaningful.