I learned about a really important source of information from my career counselor and friend Katy Piotrowski, author of The Career Coward’s Guide to Changing Careers.
William Bridges has written a couple of books about embracing life’s difficult moments and making sense of life’s changes. He first wrote Transitions back in 1980. It is now considered one of the fifty most important self-help books of all time, and a national bestseller. More recently he wrote: The Way of Transition (2001) after the death of his wife of 35 years.
In these books Mr. Bridges teaches you what he has learned about going through major changes in life and how to transition successfully. Why listen to him? Because the man has been through a lot in his lifetime, and has learned much within that process.
First he decided to change careers when he became disillusioned with his life as an English professor in the mid-1970′s. At that time, he spent quite a bit of time exploring the underlying and universal patterns of transition. How did primitive cultures mark major transitions in life like moving from adolescence to adulthood? What were the rituals and what were their meanings?
He discovered the three perilous stages of any transition and explained how each stage can be understood and embraced, thus offering a simple yet profound roadmap for successfully navigating change and moving into a more hopeful future.
Endings: Every transition begins with an ending. Too often we misunderstand endings and confuse them with finality and failure. Endings, like a major illness, the death of a loved one, divorce or job loss can seem so final, and leave us feeling disillusioned and hopeless.
The Neutral Zone: After some major ending in our lives, we may find ourselves feeling lost, unproductive and disconnected from people and things in our past. But we also may feel no connection with the present or the future. The neutral zone is a natural and necessary time of reorientation. We need some personal down time to process the losses we have experienced.
New Beginnings: It is only by allowing ourselves to remain in the Neutral Zone as long as necessary, that we can then move on to positive new beginnings. These are the new job or career, a new relationship, and a re-emergence of hope for the future.
When I first learned about these stages, I was dazed and confused in the neutral zone. I had lost my job a year or so before, and I felt paralyzed with the thought of changing careers. Katy explained to me that my feelings were completely normal and to be expected, especially considering how much personal change I had been through in the past few years.
She said I needed to give myself a break and just allow myself to feel confused and uncertain about my future. Then, when I was truly ready, my new beginnings would emerge. And she was right!
The entire situation reminds me of one of my favorite sayings, one I keep in front of me at all times:
Push and it is too early, hold back and it is too late.
At the right time there will be no stopping.
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