When I was nineteen I took a trip across the U.S. by myself. I drove a little VW bug I’d named Bessie. It was my first car, bought after working all summer in a natural foods restaurant in Baltimore. The excitement of the trip was not knowing ahead of time which route I would take. I only knew I wanted to get to Texas to meet a friend the following week.

One afternoon I was driving through the rolling terrain of the Ozark foothills when the road emptied onto a lake. This was a surprise.

Across the lake I could see the pinpoint of highway continue. But how was I to get across?

I waited on the shore for about fifteen minutes. When cars behind me started lining up, I realized there was probably a ferry that operated on the lake and carried cars to the far side.

The ferry did arrive. I watched the other drivers move onto the railless platform. Part of me was afraid to drive my little car onto that ferry. What if a wind came up, and the lake turned choppy? I imagined one dip of the boat and the whole load of cars sliding off the edge.

But I needed to cross, and there was no other road. So I found a spot toward the middle, in back of a Cadillac from Missouri. As the ferry’s engines began to grind, the boat slid back into the wide expanse of water.

I stayed in the car, still gripping the steering wheel, even though it was hot and the scant breeze through the open window barely touched the car’s steamy interior. Noticing how the ferry moved so evenly across the lake reassured me.

Finally I opened the car door and stepped out to stretch, breathe deeply of the pine-scented air, and chat with other drivers who were also emerging from their cars.

As the ferry moved past one of the lake’s small islands, a panorama opened up before us. It was close to sunset, and the hills were turning purple. The sky was a deepening blue, almost indigo, with pine trees silhouetted against it.

I felt I was being touched by pure beauty, almost more than I could bear. I knew that moment was a turning point in my life.

The metaphors were obvious: coming to a significant crossroads at sunset—the ending of one cycle and the beginning of another. A road ending. Crossing unfamiliar territory to take up another. Fears surfacing as I cling to the familiar for a while until I am reassured that my passage was safe. Then I step out to breathe deeply.

Thinking back, I’m pretty sure there were road signs announcing the ferry dock ahead, but I never noticed. If I had paid attention to the signs, I would would have been better prepared for the change.

There are many such crossroads in life. We make decisions every day, big and little. Some decisions lead us down one road and away from another. And we confront changes every day, big and little. They, too, will lead us down different paths. These significant and sometimes irreversible moments in our lives are what I call turning points.

* * *

With the economy at a low point several years ago, there was no way I wanted to leave my comfortable job. But I had been experiencing a vague restlessness, anxiety, and health problems at work.

It was the first job I had held for longer than a few years. I loved my work, editing and compiling books for several authors, but suddenly I was feeling unhappy about Monday mornings and couldn’t wait for weekends. I am the type of person who likes a lot of variety, and my tasks had provided the stimulation and interest I craved. Until now.

I also began to develop numbness and pain in my right arm which severely limited my time on the computer. My productivity was falling fast.

A change was needed. In the past, my first guess would have been: Time to move on. But what if I couldn’t find as good a job? The economy was tough, and many friends had been looking for work for months. My freelance writing business, while healthy, was not bringing in enough to replace my salary. My husband and I had just bought a bigger house with a bigger mortgage. Besides, my work was valued and leaving could put the office in a very tight spot. All this spoke against leaving, but what else could life be trying to tell me?

My job is the only possible candidate for change, I thought. My marriage, writing career, and other areas of my life are all in great shape.

One night after a very frustrating day at work, with such discomfort in my right arm that computer time was limited to fifteen-minute stretches, I asked my husband if he thought I should leave my job. It seemed the only logical choice. He looked at me for a long moment then said, “It does seem you’re ready to change something. But what if life is telling you to change yourself rather than your job?”

What did he mean, change myself? The idea both confused and scared me. But his startling question pushed me into a personal spiritual journey that changed my basic beliefs about change—as it literally changed my life.

I had arranged to spend my lunch hour shopping with two friends from the office. The drive took about twenty minutes, so we talked about work on the way. One woman chatted about how she was so glad to have me as a role model.

“What for?” I asked.

“Learning how to slow down,” she said. I had told her nothing of the recent thoughts about slowing my pace that had emerged the night before.

She added that she used to feel like a machine at work, always busy producing. Now she saw how she was able to serve in her job in other ways, by just being there for people and taking the time to relax and pace herself better.

“You know, I’ve always valued that quality in you,” she said, turning around in her seat to look at me. She saw me as calm, cool, and collected, managing my work well even in the midst of deadlines and occasional office panics. I rarely showed my own panic. But I felt far removed from the serenity she was talking about.

Even so, the timing of her comment was incredible. Life was definitely trying to tell me something.

An even more direct sign came the next morning. I had made an appointment with an acupuncturist about my arm, since the other avenues of medical doctors and chiropractors had not helped the pain and numbness. The first thing the acupuncturist asked when he looked at me was: “Have you been pushing too hard?”

OK, I thought, enough is enough. I get the message.

Life was trying so hard to tell me what I needed to change. With very blatant signals, life was telling me: You don’t need to quit your job, you need to change your approach to life.

But if I slow down, I wondered, will I still be a valued person? Will people respect my abilities? How do I begin?

* * *

Like crossing a strange lake on a ferry, I am often confronted with something I need to traverse in order to grow. An opportunity to become
more of who I truly am.

Turning points often give me this kind of spiritual opportunity. They are a way to cross to the next road that awaits me, to take the next step in my personal spiritual growth. And each turning point is always preceded by signs that alert me to the coming change and gently prepare me.

Life is a series of these cycles of change, from childhood into old age. It's a natural journey we all undertake. But certain people are able to flow with this process, these cycles of growth and change, and make decisions and choose what to do. They realize that change is a part of life that must be embraced.

Rather than being victimized by change, they see the options in life and are intrigued by the opportunities of turning points.

So what brings this healthy acceptance of change and the natural integration of it into your life?

I recently led a workshop on turning points at a local university. To give everyone a quick experience with change and their reaction to it, I asked each participant to pick a different seat in the room and move to it.

It’s a fairly unusual teaching tool, and I was prepared for a lot of grumbling. I had waited until about ten minutes into the session, when everyone was comfortable, books and papers spread out around them. I waited until they had settled in, chatting with the people at their table.

The change was annoying for most—unexplained and unreasonable. I watched silently as most people moved. Some didn’t.

After they resettled, I asked the group to tell me what the change was like. What were their reactions?

“I was upset; I’d just picked the best seat in the room. No way I wanted to move.”

“Why is she doing this?”

“I liked where I was. It’s inconvenient.”

“Maybe this’ll be interesting, exciting, an adventure.”

The answers ran the gamut, from feeling a victim, to slightly uneasy, to positively exhilarated. And that’s how change is for most of us: upsetting, inconvenient, sometimes exciting.

I asked each participant to rate his or her response to change on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being “Change really bothers me” and 10 being “I handle change gracefully.” Most participants gave themselves a score of 2 or 3. And they wanted to do better. They saw their current attitude toward change—and where they would like it to be.

In order to bring the benefits of turning points into our lives, we have to be able to see ourselves as cocreators of change rather than victims of it.

A couple came up to me after the workshop and told me that the moving seats exercise was very powerful for them. At first, the husband confided, he had planned to sit with his wife for the workshop because she was shy and he didn’t know how she’d do in a group of strangers. By having to change seats she was put in the position of meeting others, and she opened up much more during the three hours than she would have otherwise. He, on the other hand, was free to pay attention to his own needs during the workshop rather than caring for hers. For both of them, it had been a huge success. And it all began with the discomfort of imposed change.