On a chapter from Timothy Ferriss‘s book titled “The 4-Hour Body“, he talks about something significant called the Harajuku moment, described as:
.. an epiphany that turns a nice-to-have into a must-have.
The expression actually came from a realization Chad Fowler (programmer, writer, co-organizer of RubyConf and RailsConf) had in Harajuku with friends some time in the past, while window shopping and lamenting how unfashionable he was. He noticed the tone of helplessness in his own words as he talked about his obesity, and felt angry at himself for being an idiot who went with the flow, making excuses, for many years.
After that defining moment, he turned things around and lost nearly a 100 pounds.
Two years in a row of annual physical exams (2015-2016), I was told that I have hypertension. The previous years I also felt that I tire quickly, becoming more so as the days went by. I’m just over 30, skinny, and believed that I should still be in my prime but was not. I wondered why things turned out the way they did, and eventually recognized that existing habits did not help me become the healthy person I thought I was.
I’m now performing weight-lifts and body-weight exercises 4 times a week, and is in my best shape in the past 10 years or so. What’s interesting is that making the change was actually fun and somewhat easy, very unlike the grueling and exasperating experience I initially thought it would be. I plan to keep things up, gaining as much strength as I can and keeping body fat percentage minimal.
What the Harajuku moment tells us is that, often, on most days, we have insufficient reason to take action. We only have nice-to-haves. We tell ourselves it would be nice to get fit, go on a date with that someone we really like, have a well refactored code, travel internationally, or learn a new skill. But the nice-to-haves do not give us enough pain to move forward. That’s why we sometimes feel we’re stuck in a rut.
Our nice-to-haves must first turn to must-haves before we can take advice and act.
One Software Tester 