Whenever we start out on a new project, role, or relationship the previous stage of our life also comes to an end.
These endings are not always easy. And sometimes we can find ourselves longing for the part of our life that is over.
If we want to step more fully and quickly into our new lives and the possibilities that come with them, this means it is incredibly important not only to manage the practical changes we encounter (the new ways of doing things) but also the psychological or emotional transitions that accompany the changes.
These transitions come in three stages:
- Separation
Here we let go of the old life and identity.
This is the packing-up stage before we move home, the pregnancy before having a baby, the last few days after we’ve quit our job, when we know we will be leaving but we haven’t yet gone. Here we know that something new is coming but it hasn’t yet begun.
Here we are in the process of letting go of our old life and identity.
. - Liminal or Threshold Stage
Here we cross the threshold and step into our new life. Our old identity has gone but the new one hasn’t yet formed: we’re in a kind of no man’s land.
This is the day we move into our new house, the day the baby is born, our first day at the new school or in the new role. Our old life is definitely over but our new life is unclear.
This is a period of uncertainty.
. - Consolidation Stage
Here we find our feet.
This is the time when we’ve moved into our new house and we turn it into a home: “Where shall we put the cups and plates? Where shall we hang this picture?” This is the first few days or weeks of learning to be a parent or getting to know our new colleagues or classmates.
This is a time where we establish our new role and identity and weave the different parts together.
These three stages of psychological and emotional transition accompany every major change we live through.
And as the change guru William Bridges puts it,
“It isn’t the changes that do you in, it’s the transitions.”
So the better we learn to manage our transitions, the easier it becomes to manage the practical changes in our lives. And the better we learn to manage our own transitions, the better we can help the people around us to manage theirs.
All of this is another step to becoming antifragile.
How well are you and the people around you managing the changes that are happening in your lives? Would it be useful to get better at managing the transitions that accompany these changes, so that you can more easily let go of your life as it once was and step more enthusiastically into your life as it is going to be?
Adapted from Inner Leadership: a framework and a set of tools for building inspiration in times of change.
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Photo by David D via StockPholio.net