What are your life turning points?

[speakeasy]

Everybody has had something in their life, a change of direction, either expected or unexpected that completely altered the course of their life. That thing could've been the birth of child, watching after a sick loved one, moving to a new place, some new inspiraction that struck you like lightening. Sometimes I just read the biographies of interesting people in history and it seems like their lives were full of interesting and unexpected twists and turns that made them who they are.


Do you guys have any interesting turning points in your lives that completed changed who you are or what direction you were going?

 

[LowPlainsDrifter]

Getting fired from my last corporate job.
It forced me to finally go into business for myself, which I had dreamed about for a long time.
I'm generally happier (although quite tired at times from long hours),
and better off financially.


Another turning point was when a former gf of mine invited me along on a weeklong trip to California. Prior to that, I was afraid to be away from my business for more than a day or two. I simply steeled myself, made coverage arrangements, and enjoyed the trip immensely. It also led me to booking my trip to the Knob Creek Shoot which I detailed in a previous post or two.

 

[trd323]

This economy and losing pretty much everything.

Just like most people in the financial markets I lost my job and the lifestyle that came from that.

I thought that having money, driving fancy cars, going on trips, hiring ladies, etc was the only way to be totally happy, but I realized that its all superficial.

I lost contact with family and friends. And as soon as I was in a financial jam, all the people that I pushed away opened up their wallets and their hearts to helping me get back on my feet. So, now I am going back to school and securing a career that I enjoy eventhough its not close to the amount of money I was making.

 

[kalash74]

Marine Corps bootcamp. It really changed my perspective on life. It made me appreciate the simple things more.

 

[backbreaker]

Pook hit the nail on the head. Behind every great man there is a woman, but it usually the woman he didn't get.

i ought to send my old onetitis, the one that drove me here, a comission check every month. and funny thing is I wouldn't date her today.

She made me find a part of myself at the time I didn't even know i had. I worked harder to become a better person overall, and I kinda played myself over her level.


i have no doubt... if she would have DATED me., I would be not where I am now. not even remotely close.

 

[Columbia]

My main turning point came when I went to university. I had such a pathetic, miserable life back home, but the thing was I was completely used to it, so I didn't think of as being pathetic or miserable. It was just "normal".

Towards the end of my time in school I began falling out a lot with my parents, and so when I went to university I picked one a few hundred miles from home so I wouldn't have to go see them every weekend.

That first day in university I walked around for hours, and I knew I was literally a new person. I felt overwhelmed and anxious, but it didn't matter because I felt liberated. This is not a mere turn of phrase: I felt like a weight had been lifted from my shoulders. I knuckled down to study for the first time in my life (I had only barely snuck into my 3rd choice college course, in fact. Out of the 1,000 or so that made it in, I was in the bottom 10 or 20), and I'm now on PhD track.

There have been other life-altering moments too. Coming here, for one. Breaking up with my first long-term girlfriend, taking up competitive cycling, giving up competitive cycling, meeting my current best friend.

 

[6-heads lewis]

the time i slept under a bridge and beat up a homeless guy for his cans. got $1.35 for them, bought $1.35 worth of crack. That changed me forever.

 

[Gus]

I got addicted to meth and became a cocaine dealer. Then I quit cold turkey and dropped all my friends. Completely changed my life.

If you want to change your life, I wouldn't recommend taking that route though...

 

[ready123]

My first is going to college. I hated high school, was depressed as hell, tried to kill myself twice. My freshman year of college I totally reinvented myself by opening up to the world. Found a positive frame for the first time, was consistently happy for the first time

Second was going from living out of my car making less than $20k/yr in 2003 to landing a high paying engineering job. To do that, I had to roll with the punches, grind and take alot of risks. I look at my friends who have been doing the same thing since college and they've barely changed. They're stuck in inertia. Meanwhile, I know I've grown as a person and the past few years of my life have embedded in my brain what I'm capable of

Surviving the rockbottom episodes in your life gives you humility and strength. It also gives you the liberating realization that if life decides to sht on you in the future, you'll be fine

 

[Gaucho]

Sweet as post CK.

Ready, true, you need to take risks and grind your way through the tough phases, to make anything of yourself in this life.

 

[Dias]

I believe my childhood experiences really contributed to make me the way I am now. My experiences with Nature are really some of the best memories I have, I was like completely filled with wonder at the beauty of it, if paradise existed it would be kind of like that.

Then comes music. I discovered The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, The Doors, The Rolling Stones when I was like 12 and it changed my life. From then on I knew I wanted to be a musician and started playing guitar and singing.
I read a biography of Jim Morrison and read "On the Road" and these two books alone are the ones that have had the biggest influence on me, I was never the same again.

And at the end of secondary school I met my best friend and we composed our songs in the summer holidays, it was like the best times ever, bikeriding across wonderful summer landscapes, and playing music and simple moments of beauty. We then formed a band and we performed our first concert, again something words can't describe

I then met the girl who was the focus of my thoughts for three years, she was my first love it was short and extremely intense I wrote her the most beautiful poem, but I never really got her and it shattered my life. At the time I was so splendidly exalted by everything and not having her brought me on a sad period of my life, I split up with my band and wasn't able to do something artistically good in these whole two years. The exalted child I was turned into the fearful, melancholic and overthinking-everything man. She came back two or three times and again and again I fell in the oneitis trap. Breaking every link I had with her was probably one of the hardest thing I had to come through.

Then I discovered this website and little by little came to understand that I already knew everything and that I was just ****ing up my thoughts with a girl, that she had turned me into the most pathetic thing and from then on I started to recover from this slowly, until now, that is also a crucial point in my life.

I've just started college and I feel my life is going to be really really great. I'm composing songs again, and I recently rediscovered the works of Rimbaud and it incited me to write poetry again but in my mother tongue which is French, I'm basically interested in every possible art form and have became a real life passionate again.

And guess what, now girls come to me naturally and I feel I am a man with all the qualities a man naturally has. I now have the courage to approach any girl I find attractive and almost always getting her interested in me after a few minutes spent with her. I have girls that often tell me I'm the perfect guy, and that many women would fight for someone like that.

I'm kind of proud of the little way I've accomplished until now, I'm only seventeen and having realised all these things is priceless, but I guess the best is to come

 

[Hooligan Harry]

For me, most experiences all came from travel. Small things that change a person over time.

Seeing the way people interact with each other. In South America, people are always dancing. Little children just dancing for no reason. So poor, yet in so many ways so happy. The people have a sense of passion and joy that cant be explained. Made me realise that friends and family are something you can never put a real value to. They are priceless

Spending time and working in Africa. Made me realise that sometimes its better to accept our differences and try work around them then it is to pretend that they dont exist. There is a difference between people, just like there is a difference between genders. Just because western thinking may deem something barbaric or wrong does not ultimately make it so. Its better to embrace differences then refuse their existence. Also not to blame history and look for the good in it.

Was in the UK for two years. Girl I wanted to marry dumped me and went back home. Phoned me up a month later telling me she as pregnant and the kid was mine. I canned everything I had going in the UK, went back home. She found out I slept with two other women that month we were separated and had an abortion. Truth of that I dont know, but it shattered me. She could have lied about the pregnancy to get me back. I was devastated. That gave me a real sense of hardness. Emotionally, I dont think I could ever get lower then that. I also dont trust so easily anymore. People close to me said it was always a weakness. Guess I should thank her for that

Survived a militia attack on a restaurant Guys came in blazing with AK47's. Made me realise that things can get snuffed out in an instant. Crapped my pants and one of the few times I felt a real sense of helpless fear.

A small thing. Got into a fight with a proverbial monster. Im not a massive guy and just knew that I was not going to be able avoid the fight. I have always been able to handle myself and I dont fear anyone really but I knew looking at this guy I was going to get hammered. I creamed him. Absolutely obliterated him. From that day onward, I knew that I should never underestimate myself, I should never underestimate others like he did me.

Funny how it can take violence or extreme emotional turmoil to sometimes provide the epiphany one needs to better understand themselves huh?

 

[Heart Break Kid]

Entering university and getting my own place. Going from broke to rich and the first time me and my best friend could eat something expensive. Completing the DJ Bootcamp. Oh, and my first slow dance in junior high. =)

 

[speakeasy]

I started this thread and I never contributed mine. So here goes...

At an earlier point in my life, I was dating what was then the girl of my dreams. Or so I thought at the time. At this time I was still a virgin, never even kissed a girl before. It took me years of trying to finally make something happen with her, and it was a fight to get there to the point where she began dating me. I was a complete wussbag in every sense of the word. Had no clue how to handle women and was painfully shy. I was the textbook definition of an AFC in every sense of the word. This was the type of girl who was outgoing, had lots of cute friends, always partying and on the go extraverted type. After awhile, she started to lose her attraction towards me. Of course I got the whole "it's not you, it's me" thing. In retrospect after all my DJ education, I clearly see why she lost attraction, I was a wuss that kissed her ass, couldn't take charge of things and she had all the power and I had none. It was doomed to fail. I never even got to bang her, I could have but at the time was too shy to move things along. When she blew me off, I was devastated. I had fallen pretty hard for her and I fell into a long depression. At the same time I also was fired from my job and that only made things worse. It was really one of worse times of my life. I remember doing some research on the net, lots of it, studying personality theory, shyness, romance advise and all this stuff. I stumbled across a site that mentioned a book that came out in the 80s called "Shyness & Love" by a psychologist named Brian Gilmartin. I read a brief summary and was floored. It described a condition called "Loveshyness" that described my predicament in terms so exact that I could not have put it into better words myself. The book was long out of print and searching for it on any online bookstores used or new proved fruitless. I could only find one copy in existence. It was in the downtown library of my city. I drove downtown on a rainy winter day and checked out the book and it was over 700 pages long. I am normally a slow reader and it takes me ages to finish even a small book, but I read the whole thing in just a couple days. I literally couldn't put it down and spent every waking moment for those couple days reading it and hardly slept. All the problems I faced with women from the time I was kid and the anguish it caused me, this was the only person in world that FULLY understood it, where it started, what the life consequences were. It was almost a carthasis in a way. It was one of the most important moments of discovery in my entire life. I wasn't the only one. There were people out there like me, there are causes for this, and there are people that understand. And there is hope.

Reading that book was a turning point in my life. I then picked up an ebook "Without Embarassment" by a guru named Mike Pilinski which was a great segue from the Shyness & Love book. S&L told you what the problem was, but didn't say much as to how to remedy it. Pilinski's book told you how to get out. I then started reading David DeAngelo soon after. Within a short time after I got laid for the time. It was from a girl who had liked me in the past but I'd never had interest in. She was always there for the taking, so I decided to practice my newly learned game on her and had my first conquest. Just getting that stigma off your head was a greater relief than the sex itself.

It's been some years since that day and I've had sex plenty of time since, even though with not nearly as many women as I'd like and I still have a long way to go to get where I want to be. But I only wish I'd started this process much earlier in life than I had. But better late than never. I know a guy who is still in the same situation and he's headed toward 33 and still a virgin. His life has been a downward spiral in every way and recently admitted considering suicide. I only can hope things turn around form him, and soon. That oneitis of mine that broke it off with me, I learned so many important things in the months after and I turned pain into an opportunity for learning and growth.

 

[gösta berling]

I was just like this guy.
http://www.sosuave.net/forum/showthread.php?t=154493

Life was cruel. The world was an ugly place and I wanted no part in it. Year after year went by and nothing changed for the better. I asked myself: What is the purpose of life? But I couldn't think of anything. As years went by, slowly it began to dawn on me what the real problem was - FEAR! Suddenly I realized that I had just wasted 10 years of my life doing nothing worthwhile.

 

[GQ_Confidence_1]

I would say getting out of highschool, getting out of the public school system.

It was very stifling and oppressive. I think about all the years wasted there, it makes me sick.

Something like...5 days a week, 9 months out of the year....for 12 or 13 years (k-12). Aghhhh!! And what do you learn at the end...nothing! A horrendous waste of time and energy.

I crave new information and discovery (one of the reasons why I got into the game/sosuave). I read books and biographies I have no use for, just because I need some kind of stimulation. I know there's alot out there that I don't know, haven't been exposed.

Getting out of school was akin to stepping out of a dark cave and seeing the sunlight for the first time. Got into stocks/trading, tony robbins, self improvement, seduction. Better people skills and public speaking with Toastmasters.

I havent had many huge turning points. My family life is the same now as when I was a kid. Stable and "normal", thats never been a problem. Money has never been a problem. I've been broke, but never starving broke, can't eat. Very stable in terms of travel, and hobbies. I'm lucky, have been to 30-35 states, have seen most of the big cities in the US (although international travel is another goal).

 

[ChrizZ]

Turning point for me was when I absolutely hit rock bottom.

Had 0 friends. Absolutely no social life whatsoever. Was bullied by everyone, everyday. All I did was play computer games and whack off. Was depressed everyday and basically thought of myself as a complete loser. Did that for the vast majority of my life then I moved away from home.

I became a completely different person. Went from having 0 friends or women to the guy that would walk through school and girls would ask me to sign their boobs. (no joke)

I've been at both ends of the social ladder and one thing I realized is that it's all in your head. If you think you are a loser, you are. If you think you are a winner, you are a winner. Everything is just a mere image of how you feel internally.

You can get anything in this world if you just have the balls to take it and tell everyone to fvck off that is in your way. The only thing that is stopping you is your own mind. You are what you think you are.

That's the way this world works. It took me roughly 17 years to figure that out.

 

[mces0421]

A very challenging question for everyone. I think on my part, If you have a family of your own. Its a continuos adjustment and always test your patience. It will change you in terms of perception in life.

 

[ChrizZ]

^Badass. Why'd the girl ask you to sign her boobs?

I became some sort of celebrity in my school because I was really good at golf so she just came up to me and said she wanted an autograph because I'll be famous some day.

 

[Dust 2 Dust]

When I hit AFC rock bottom at age 20. I was a 20 year old virgin and had zero game. I began looking for something to quell my AFCness and I did a search online for "dating advice" and found David D., Doc Love, and eventually this site.

Age 21- I did my first legit cold approach.

Age 26- Completed my Master's Degree and moved to a large city 50 miles away from my old hometown. Prior to this I live in a small town of only 2,000 people my entire life.