Why Your Lowest Point May Be Your Greatest Opportunity
The following is adapted from The Five Pillars of the Freedom Lifestyle.
Divorce. Job loss. A loved one’s death. These are the kinds of events that can knock us down to our lowest point. They are earth-shaking, disruptive experiences. They fundamentally alter us as human beings, and as such, they hold great potential.
So many of us plod through our lives in quiet desperation — stuck in a comfort zone of misery. Nobody wants to reach their lowest point, but it can be your greatest opportunity if you let it. Because when you reach bedrock, you are forced to evaluate your life and are faced with a choice: continue along the same path or break out of your comfort zone of misery.
In this article, I’ll share how others and myself were spurred to change our lives after facing life-shattering events. Whether or not you are currently facing such an event yourself, I hope you will be inspired to use your lowest points to drive you toward a better, more fulfilled life.
Infrastructure-Rattling Events
In an interview on my podcast, entrepreneur and podcaster Tim Alison introduced me to the term “infrastructure-rattling event.” The term, which Alison picked up from consultant/coach Kevin Bulmer, describes those situations that sometimes are required to force change in our lives.
As Bulmer described it on Alison’s Screw the Naysayers podcast, when you face an infrastructure-rattling event — in Bulmer’s case, a divorce, ill health, and his business failing — “you either change, or, what I might suggest the majority of people do…[you] just keep jumping back into the same bear trap.”
Having experienced such a “rattling” event, Bulmer did make a change and is now an international public speaker, mindset coach, and host of the Journeys of the No Schedule Man podcast.
Sometimes it takes such a foundational earthquake to wake us up and force us to change the trajectory of our lives.
The Opportunity within Infrastructure-Rattling Events
Eric Malzone, who is now a digital nomad, mentor, podcast host, and founder of the Fitness Accelerator, recently told me of the infrastructure-rattling events in his life that spurred him and his wife to make a change and live the freedom lifestyle.
“Everyone in their life is going to have that thing, right?” Malzone asked me. “That thing that happens where it changes who you are, where it was so challenging you didn’t think you were going to come out of it. And if you don’t know what that thing is yet, it hasn’t happened, because you don’t get through this life unscathed.
“For us, it was, you know, in 2016 we got pregnant, but as things progressed, things weren’t looking good. Ultimately, we lost the pregnancy late, at twenty weeks. And that was extremely traumatizing, especially for my wife. It was rough. And then after that, about two months later, her father passed away of a heart attack at sixty-one. Then we had another friend who passed away at the age of forty. And then, at the end of it, our dog died.”
After all of that loss in a single year, “My chemistry just shifted,” said Malzone. “The things I enjoyed weren’t the same anymore. Things that used to not stress me out, stressed me out.”
When I introduced the term “infrastructure-rattling event” to Eric, he said that’s exactly how he felt. He said he and his wife were awakened by this tragic year. He sold his successful and profitable CrossFit gym in Santa Barbara, launched his podcasts and an online accelerator for fitness professionals, the Fitness Accelerator, and he and his wife hit the road, becoming digital nomads. When I spoke with Eric, they were currently living in Whitefish, Montana, for a six-month spell. At the end of six months, they’d reevaluate and either stay or move on to another region.
As was the case with Eric, infrastructure-rattling events have the potential to completely transform your life. I know this firsthand, having faced my own such events.
My Lowest Point: The Catalyst for Change
The anxiety and feelings of overwhelm and frustration I felt midway through my journey of building my PR and ad agency should have been infrastructure-rattling events for me, but they weren’t. Well, not quite.
To be sure, I made some positive changes, using Gallup’s CliftonStrengths program to help me work within my strengths at work and become more productive. This helped me gain some freedom in my work life.
There still, however, were problems. My anxiety attacks were fewer and farther between, but they were still there. I continued to have that feeling that I wasn’t doing what I was put on this earth to do. The feelings of guilt continued, and I used gratitude as an excuse to remain trapped in my comfort zone of misery.
That’s when my infrastructure-rattling event happened. My father passed away in 2012 after a two-year fight against prostate and bladder cancer.
My dad had been my hero. My counselor. The rock that held our family together. Even when I lived a thousand miles away, I still felt his presence guiding me through my work and nonwork life. When he passed away, I began a downward mental spiral.
My dad had an incredible career. He worked on the space program, and after he passed, we dug up a thank-you letter from Honeywell corporation thanking him for his work on the Mars Mariner 6 and 7 spacecraft that took photos of the equator and southern hemisphere of Mars. He helped design electronics on fighter jets and led the team that designed all the electronic switches on the Boeing 777 aircraft.
In my eyes, he was a real-life superhero, a real-life Tony Stark — the secret identity of Marvel superhero Iron Man.
Sitting at his wake, however, something became very clear. I watched as men in their seventies recalled stories about my dad with tears streaming down their faces. Everyone had some story about my dad and the impact he had on them, their organizations, or their communities.
Yet, nary a person talked about anything from my dad’s career.
The stories were all about him as a father and husband, his volunteer work dictating audiobooks for the blind or working with a local housing charity, his role in the University of Notre Dame Alumni Association, or his work at our church.
It was like a glass of cold water thrown in my face. What was I doing? My dad had clearly set the example for me, and I was ignoring it — so focused only on work and career that the other parts of my life were suffering.
It dawned on me that I had created some freedom with my business, but I fundamentally lacked fulfillment in my life. So I decided to make a change. I had no idea what that change meant, but I knew it had to happen.
Around that time, friends and colleagues had asked me to begin coaching them. After all, I had built a profitable business, they wanted some help, and I obliged. It quickly became apparent to me that not only was I a good coach, but I was far more fulfilled from coaching than I was from my work for my agency clients.
I still had a long way to go before I reached my current freedom lifestyle, but because of the infrastructure-rattling event of my father’s death, the ball had been set in motion.
It’s Up to You to Make a Change
Not everyone who faces an infrastructure-rattling event uses it as a life awakening, as happened with Bulmer, Eric, and me.
“There are all sorts of people who are miserable, but they’ve become very good actors at convincing both themselves and others that it’s not true,” said Tim Alison. “If that doesn’t work anymore, they go into victim mode, where it’s not their fault, and there’s also nothing they can do about it.”
As Bulmer put it, when these people face their lowest point, instead of making a change, they jump “back into the same bear trap.”
If you are facing an infrastructure-rattling event, if you are at your lowest point — it is up to you to use that event for good in your life.
Even if that event is in your past, you can still choose to use it today, because, as Eric Malzone said, “Whatever that [infrastructure-rattling] event is, it never goes away.”
Eric added that you can find power in these situations — maybe you help other people going through similar situations, or perhaps you adapt your mindset so that what you thought was rough before doesn’t even compare to what you’ve already been through.
If you’ve not yet experienced an infrastructure-rattling event or your lowest point, you can still choose to make a change. There’s no rule saying that you have to hit rock bottom before you break out of your comfort zone of misery. You can begin building the life you want at any point.
The choice is yours: make a change or jump back into the bear trap. What’s it going to be?
For more advice on infrastructure-rattling events and how to build a more fulfilling life, you can find The Five Pillars of the Freedom Lifestyle on Amazon.
Curt Mercadante is an international trainer, speaker, and author who helps individuals and teams become more purposeful, productive, and profitable. He also hosts the Freedom Mindset Radio and Team of Superheroes podcasts. Raised in the Chicago area, he and his wife, Julie, now live in Charleston, South Carolina, with their four children, when they aren’t traveling the world. Curt is a diehard fan of the White Sox, a superhero nerd, and can frequently be found at his local boxing gym.
