Growing Through Transitions: Building Resilience Through Life’s Biggest Shifts
Every transition holds the seed of transformation. Learn how to embrace the uncertainty and use it as a catalyst for profound personal development.
My last big transition was ____________.
Being in transition feels ____________.
What I know helps me in transition is _____________ and _____________.
I want to transition out of ____________.
I want to transition into _____________.
I want to transition into / out of, but I’m _____________.
My relationship with change feels like _____________.
I handle uncertainty by ____________.
Whether in our own lives or the lives of our organizations, transitions are inevitable. They can be expected, in fact, we might even be preparing ourselves for them, or they can catch us completely off-guard. Regardless of how transitions arrive, and however uncomfortable they might be, they can offer us a profound opportunity for inner growth and development and a roadmap for navigating this unavoidable part of the human experience.
So how do you know you’re in transition?
Perhaps you’ve just gotten a promotion, are considering leaving your job, or are retiring. Maybe something has just happened to you like being laid off or fired. At home, your youngest is headed off to college, or you’ve just moved an aging parent from your childhood home into assisted living. If any of these situations apply, you can be pretty sure you’re either in or headed towards transition.
Change vs. Transition
Change is what we see happen externally. It is situational, evidenced by things like starting a new job, a policy change, a move from one city to another, etc. “Effective tomorrow, we will stop doing x and start doing y” — that’s change. Transition is what happens internally for people. It is emotional and psychological. While a change may happen overnight, transition is the longer process of coming to terms with what has changed. It works on our identities, our sense of self, and how we relate to what lies ahead.
The work of William Bridges explores transitions and provides a framework for understanding this experience.
There are three phases of transition: endings, the neutral zone, and new beginnings.
There is typically a well-defined stop-and-start to practice, a policy, or a way of doing things within a change model. One thing ends and something else begins. These two are also a part of transition, but there is another phase too, the neutral zone. It is the place between worlds when we’ve let go of the old, but aren’t quite settled into the new. This is the time when those internal shifts are underway.
You may feel ungrounded or out-of-sorts, and at other times exhilarated and excited, as new parts of your identity are forming. A desire for clarity and stability or getting to a new normal might have you tempted to race forward or to expect others in transition to hit the ground running.
It’s not uncommon for grief to show up, and the wish to cling to how things were. But this interim time is best appreciated and experienced for the opportunity it is. By slowing down, allowing your heart to catch up to what the mind knows, and approaching this time with curiosity, the roots of a new identity will begin to take hold.
Understanding the rhythms of transition helps cultivate resilience that will help usher you through future transitions.
It’s worth noting that there is an important order of operations to these phases–something must come to an end before the new beginning can truly take place. Failure to do so may keep us, or the systems in which we work, entangled with what we must let go of, undermining our ability to embrace the reality and possibility of the new beginning.
This post is Part 1 in a three-part series centered around navigating transitions in our personal and professional lives. In Part 2, we’ll take a closer look at the three stages of transition, and how leaders can support their teams through times of transition (expected or not).