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9/14/06

On Transition

Although during the day summer is often still with us, the nights and the trees are beginning to tell a different story. I am never quite ready for the shift to fall: I love summer’s endless light, ease of movement, and heat driving the long winter out of my bones. Eventually I do transfer my affection to autumn’s colors, crisp air, and stormy skies as the north wind begins to bear down upon us, but part of me goes kicking and screaming.

Change is usually thrust upon us: we are creatures of habit, and it’s easier to stick with something that’s familiar even if it’s not ideal, rather than take a risk on an unknown. Transitions can be painful, uncomfortable, even when we know they’re necessary. Any time we stretch out of the box we’re used to living in, there are times of doubt and fear.

William Bridges, author and consultant on how to deal more productively with change, notes that change isn’t optional, it’s essential. (Philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer wrote, “Change alone is eternal, perpetual, immortal.”) In the course of change, which is an external circumstance, there is transition, an internal reorientation. Bridges has identified three stages of transition, each typified by recognizable feelings.

The first stage is Ending, or Saying Goodbye, with feelings of loss, sadness, or disappointment. The second is Shifting Into Neutral, a middle stage with feelings of disorientation, confusion, anxiety, uncertainty, feeling stuck or overwhelmed; this stage tends to feel endless, and one may experience depression. The third stage is Moving Forward, or New Beginning, consisting of re-emerging clarity, renewed hope, optimism about possibilities, ability to crystallize actions and to move forward, a great sense of relief, and increased energy.

Bridges says, “Some people fail to get through transition because they do not let go of the old ways and make an ending; others fail because they become frightened and confused by the neutral zone and don’t stay in it long enough for it to do its work on them.” As poet Marilyn Ferguson comments, “It’s not so much that we’re afraid of change or so in love with the old ways, but it’s that place in between that we fear… It’s like being between trapezes. It’s Linus when his blanket is in the dryer. There’s nothing to hold on to.”

The neutral zone can last six months, which certainly has an endless quality when you’re in the midst of it. However, Bridges emphasizes, “successful transition requires spending some time in the neutral zone. This time is not wasted, for that is where the creativity and energy of transition are found and the real transformation takes place.”

In that zone, we need to cut ourselves slack, give ourselves room to mourn the loss, and be gentle with ourselves. During this time, our saving graces, those activities that ground and center us, that allow us to feel nurtured and safe when the rest of life is spinning us around, can emerge with clarity and strength, and help give definition to what we are stepping into.

As author Alan Cohen asserts, “It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure, to embrace the new. But there is no real security is what is no longer meaningful. There is more security in the adventurous and exciting, for in movement there is life, and in change there is power.”

Honor your past, to feed the future. If you can move through the neutral zone with compassion, you will find a new skin, a different skin, one that fits who you have become.

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