Tag Archives: Martha Beck

Why transitions (always) suck—and what you can do about it

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an unwitting victim...bwahahhahahaa

Scan­ning over my recent post about tran­si­tions, it struck me that I glossed over one key fact: Tran­si­tions always suck.

That lost, con­fused, hope­less feel­ing that seems like it will never end?  No, it’s not just you. It’s the nature of the beast.

How do I know this?  Well for one thing, I’ve been through a lot of tran­si­tions, and it was ever thus. For another, I’ve read a ton about tran­si­tions, and every­one seems to agree.

Those who study and write about tran­si­tions even have their own names for this uniquely unset­tling phase:  Change guru William Bridges describes it as “the Neu­tral Zone.” Life coach Martha Beck calls it “Death and Rebirth.” Nov­el­ist and jour­nal­ist Sara David­son refers to it as “the Narrows.”

But while the names may be dif­fer­ent, the core feel­ings are the same: Dis­ori­en­ta­tion, anx­i­ety, fear. Panic and desperation.

Fun, isn’t it?

So, you may be think­ing, it’s all well and good to know that I’m on track, but that only goes so far. How do I keep mov­ing for­ward when I don’t want to get out of bed?

In his ground­break­ing book Tran­si­tions: Mak­ing Sense of Life’s Changes, William Bridges offers the fol­low­ing 10 sug­ges­tions for nav­i­gat­ing these chal­leng­ing times.

1. Take your time

As I noted in my pre­vi­ous post, tran­si­tions often take a long time—far longer than we’d expected and far longer than we’d hoped. Think years not days or weeks.

2. Arrange tem­po­rary structures

Do what you need to do to bridge this period of dis­lo­ca­tion. It may be tak­ing a tem­po­rary job, adjust­ing your com­mit­ments at home or at work, con­nect­ing with a spir­i­tual com­mu­nity, or join­ing a sup­port group. Ask your­self what prac­ti­cal adjust­ments you can make that are likely to ease your passage.

3. Don’t act for the sake of action

As Bud­dhist teach­ers some­times quip: “Don’t just do some­thing, sit there.”  Rec­og­nize that sit­ting with uncer­tainty is often the best option—and in itself, a real accomplishment.

4. Rec­og­nize why you are uncomfortable

You are uncom­fort­able not because you’re doing some­thing wrong but because you are in tran­si­tion. Remind your­self of this again and again (and again).

5. Take care of your­self in lit­tle ways

In par­tic­u­lar, Bridges sug­gests small plea­sures that bring a sense of con­ti­nu­ity. Think watch­ing a favorite TV show or eat­ing a favorite meal.

6. Explore the other side of change.

This is an inter­est­ing one.  As Bridges sees it, both pos­i­tive changes (such as hav­ing a baby) and neg­a­tive changes (such as los­ing your job) both have upsides and downsides.

If you’re fac­ing a change that you didn’t choose, Bridges sug­gests spend­ing some time reflect­ing on its pos­si­ble ben­e­fits. On the other hand, if your change was a wel­come one and yet you’re feel­ing inex­plic­a­bly uneasy, he sug­gests giv­ing some thought to what the change may have cost you as well as to its gifts.

 7. Get some­one to talk to

Hav­ing at least one reli­able and empathic lis­tener is crit­i­cally impor­tant when your life is in flux. If no one in your net­work can serve that role right now, con­sider find­ing a pro­fes­sional coun­selor or join­ing a sup­port group.

8. Find out what is wait­ing in the wings of your life

Bridges notes that tran­si­tions open up space in our lives for us to grow in new ways. Ask your­self: What is wait­ing to hap­pen in my life now? (Try set­ting aside a bit of time to put this down on paper. You may be sur­prised at what comes up.)

 9. Use this tran­si­tion as the impe­tus to a new kind of learning

What do you need to learn right now, and how can you start to learn it?

10. Rec­og­nize that tran­si­tion has a char­ac­ter­is­tic shape.

As I wrote ear­lier this week, every tran­si­tion fol­lows a sim­i­lar struc­ture. This period where every­thing sucks is nor­mal and nec­es­sary. The good news? This phase will come to an end.  (It just may take a while.)

♦

Do you have a strat­egy that’s helped you to nav­i­gate a major life tran­si­tion? If so, please share it in the com­ment section.

3 things you should know about transitions

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Come Together

Two years and eight months ago, I found myself abruptly launched into a pro­longed tran­si­tion that con­tin­ues to this day. The job I’d held for the past five years sud­denly dis­ap­peared when my boss was tapped to join the fledg­ling Obama admin­is­tra­tion as solic­i­tor gen­eral. (You may have heard of her: She’s now U.S. Supreme Court Jus­tice Elena Kagan.)

As is so often the case with major change, there was much ambiva­lence. While I was anx­ious about the plunge into unem­ploy­ment, I was also ready to move on.  On the one hand, the news came as a wel­come push. On the other, I was freak­ing out.

But what­ever my reac­tion on a given day, there was one thing I never imag­ined from the van­tage point of April 2009: That this tran­si­tion would go on and on in pre­cisely the way it has.

In ret­ro­spect, I shouldn’t have been so sur­prised. After all, my lay­off came at the peak of the Great Reces­sion. Still, I had great ref­er­ences, great skills, and a great edu­ca­tion. I some­how assumed they’d ease my way. In large part, I was wrong.

Which is dif­fer­ent from say­ing I have regrets. The more I learn about tran­si­tions, the more I real­ize that what I’ve expe­ri­enced is com­pletely nor­mal. Just because some­thing is painful and hard doesn’t mean it can’t yield fruit.

Years ago, I took a course with psy­chol­o­gist Robert Kegan at Harvard’s Grad­u­ate School of Edu­ca­tion, and one thing he said stuck with me. (Well, actu­ally, many things he said stuck with me, but this one is rel­e­vant here.)  He said, and I para­phrase from mem­ory: “Growth comes from stretch-not-break challenges.”

In other words, hard times—if they are too hard—can crush us. When they’re just right, they may be uncom­fort­able, but they also move us forward.

One of the things most help­ful to me in nav­i­gat­ing this tran­si­tion has been get­ting a bet­ter han­dle on what to expect. Over the past two-plus years, I’ve spent a lot of hours delv­ing into the sub­ject, and for the record, here are three of my most use­ful takeaways.

1. Tran­si­tions take a long time.

Three years, five years, seven years—these are the time frames that popped up again and again in my read­ing.  In New Pas­sages, best­selling author Gail Sheehy ball­parks two years as the min­i­mum time needed to sta­bi­lize fol­low­ing a lay­off or other “life accident.”

2. Tran­si­tions have a pre­dictable structure.

Tran­si­tions guru William Bridges—author of the ground­break­ing Tran­si­tions: Mak­ing Sense of Life’s Changes—has iden­ti­fied a three-part struc­ture reflected in every major life tran­si­tion:  An end­ing, fol­lowed by a period of con­fu­sion and dis­tress, fol­lowed, in turn, by a new beginning.

In Find­ing Your Own North Star—a book that I count among my per­sonal favorites—life coach Martha Beck describes a four-part “change cycle”: A shock­ing “cat­alytic event” is fol­lowed by “death and rebirth,” “dream­ing and schem­ing,” “the hero’s saga” (a trial-and-error imple­men­ta­tion stage), and finally “the promised land,” or equi­lib­rium regained.

3. Tran­si­tions aren’t linear.  

It’s tempt­ing to think that tran­si­tions can be neat and orderly, that we can fig­ure out a game plan and sim­ply exe­cute it. In fact, tran­si­tions are almost always messy, punc­tu­ated with false starts and regroupings.

In Work­ing Iden­tity, an exten­sive study of suc­cess­ful mid-career career chang­ers, busi­ness pro­fes­sor Her­minia Ibarra con­cluded that the “plan and exe­cute model” is not real­is­tic. Rather, suc­cess­ful tran­si­tions tend to adopt a “test and learn” approach, fol­low­ing a “first-act-and-then-think” sequence.

♦

Well into the third year of my tran­si­tion, I’m finally start­ing to feel that I’m turn­ing a cor­ner. I can’t say for sure that the feel­ing will last but I’m enjoy­ing it in the meantime.

Look­ing back, it’s fas­ci­nat­ing to see how lit­tle I could have pre­dicted where my var­i­ous steps were lead­ing.  For bet­ter or worse, our tran­si­tions seem to shape us at least as much as we shape them.