I wish this book had been required reading under the section: What To Expect in Life. I know that section doesn’t exist and I don’t actually think a book can completely prepare you for what to expect in your life specifically, but I do agree that so much of life is a process of change and transition and this book does a fabulous job of offering a structure for navigating transitions – a structure I could have benefitted from long ago.
There are two main points in this book: #1 Change and transition are not the same thing. Change is external and situational while transition is the internal process associated or prompted by those changes.
Change could be a new job, a change in your organization’s leadership, the end or beginning of a relationship, your child starting kindergarten, a move, a death. Transition on the other hand is not talking about these events specifically:
“It is not those events, but rather the inner reorientation and self-redefinition that you have to go through in order to incorporate any of those changes into your life.”
This is transition: the internal, psychological process associated with living into those changes and the new situation/s they bring about. Sound familiar?
Main point #2 and perhaps the biggest takeaway from this book is this structure:
There are 3 phases of transition and they happen in this order: Endings, Neutral Zone & Beginnings.
Transition, even in the best of circumstances is usually not easy and this book offers wisdom and structure for “the difficult process of letting go of an old situation, of suffering the confusing nowhere of in-betweenness, and of launching forth again in a new situation.”
This framework will likely resonant pretty quickly both logically and from experience. Perhaps you have a habit of focusing on new beginnings and tend to bombard your way from one thing to the next? Consciously or unconsciously doing what it takes to move as quickly as possible thru the endings in your life and spending even less time in that ambiguous neutral zone?
In reality there is no way around the neutral zone and while neutral zones may be uncomfortable, the stuff of life can be found in them – they offer us learning, growth, truer identity and more. It’s the space where you know what you’re not doing or being anymore and you know you’re on your way to something new. You may know what it is that you’re on your way to, but it’s also quite common to be in the middle zone and not yet know what exactly your new beginning will be.
Transitions and neutral zones in particular are ambiguous and awkward.
Even knowing transition might have something to offer us most of us are quite unprepared for navigating the internal process of transition and the reorienting and redefining of who we are that comes with it. At times in my life, I’ve been blind-sided by the disorientation and internal catching up that has needed to take place during the times of life that have brought significant change, chosen or unchosen. This book helps with that and if nothing else frames it as a normal, important and an ongoing process of our human experience – which is what I wish someone would have framed for me so long ago.
“Throughout nature, growth involves periodic accelerations and transformations: Things go slowly for a time and nothing seems to happen—until suddenly the eggshell cracks, the branch blossoms, the tadpole’s tail shrinks away, the leaf falls, the bird molts, the hibernation begins. With us it is the same. Although the signs are less clear than in the world of feather and leaf, the functions of transition times are the same. They are key times in the natural process of development and self-renewal. Without an understanding of such natural times of transition, we are left impossibly hoping that change will bypass us and let us go on with our lives as before.”