When I was asked to speak at an event about how spirituality can support life transitions, it offered me a moment to reflect on the difficulties of transition and what had helped me most during my personal and intense period of change. I never set out to develop quite so much expertise in managing transitions. I don’t think I even knew it was a ‘thing’ in 2017. Yet, transition in many ways I have. In the last seven years, I have changed career, moved abroad, moved back. Just as I was settling into life in Dublin again and beginning to focus on growing my fledging business, Covid hit. In addition, when you change, your relationships change. While some relationships have strengthened in this period, some have also been lost. Through both choice and circumstance, I have been challenged to navigate transition in nearly every area of my life. (Writer’s note – no need to try this super-sized version😊).
Whether you choose them, or they choose you, transitions are difficult. They come with uncertainty, loss, and identity change. I remember during a particularly intense time personally in the middle of one of the lockdowns, thinking how grateful I was for my spiritual practice. It gave me something to grasp onto when everything else felt liminal and unsettling.
What all transitions share is what I refer to as ‘the void’ or what William Bridges refers to in his transition model as stage 2; the neutral zone. This is the place in which an ending has already occurred. You have stopped being one version of yourself, but you are yet to become something else. Having spent quite a bit of time in the ‘neutral zone’, I can assure you there is nothing neutral about it. It is full of uncertainty, shaky identity, and, at times, a grasping for any resemblance of solid ground. Equally, it is an incredibly fertile period, abundant with possibility and creativity, a time of great personal expansion. To make the most of the possibilities any transition can offer, you must learn to contend with the void. That’s the deal - you can’t have one without the other. I remarked to a friend of mine a few months back that transformation is, at times, chaotic. Managing the chaos is part of the transition. It will both feel chaotic like the process is not linear (which it isn’t) and, on occasion, you may feel in chaos like you don’t know who you are anymore (which you won’t).
It is in these moments that you must have an anchor; practices which help ground you when everything feels ungrounded. To go the distance a transition will ask of you, you need to develop your ability to cope with uncertainty. Without developing this inner skill, you will constantly be tempted to revert to a safer position or get stuck. You need to build a toolkit to help you move forward or at least, in those moments, stand still.
Engaging a coach will, of course, help support you, but any good coach will also be encouraging you to develop these skills in yourself rather than rely on them. The transition is ultimately about you. While others can support you, you are the only one experiencing it. Considering that, I thought it would be useful to share the following practices that helped get me through some of more difficult moments.
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