Many of my clients have recently been through a transition, are going through one at the moment, or sense one on the horizon, and almost all of my MBA students at Stanford fall into one of these categories. One of the most useful resources on this topic is William Bridges' Transitions: Making Sense of Life's Changes. [1] Bridges' starting point is the fundamental distinction between transition and change:
Our society confuses them constantly, leading us to imagine that transition is just another word for change. But it isn't. Change is your move to a new city or your shift to a new job. It is the birth of your new baby or the death of your father. It is the switch from the old health plan at work to the new one, or the replacement of your manager by a new one, or it is the acquisition that your company just made.
In other words, change is situational. Transition, on the other hand, is psychological. 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. Without a transition, a change is just a rearrangement of the furniture. Unless transition happens, the change won't work, because it doesn't "take." Whatever word we use, our society talks a lot about change, but it seldom deals with transition. Unfortunately for us, it is the transition that blind-sides us and is often the source of our troubles... [page xii]
One of the causes of the difficulty that we experience with transitions is that they necessarily involve letting go of something, a process we often find unnerving:
Changes are driven to reach a goal, but transitions start with letting go of what no longer fits or is adequate to the life stage you are in. You need to figure out what exactly that no-longer-appropriate thing is... Whatever it is, it is internal. Although it might be true that you emerge from a time of transition with the clear sense that it is time for you to end a relationship or leave a job, that simply represents the change that your transition has prepared you to make. The transition itself begins with letting go of something that you have believed or assumed, some way you've always been or seen yourself, some outlook on the world or attitude toward others. [pages 128-129]
A consequence of the need to let go of something in the course of a transition is that "endings come first," which is one of Bridges' core themes:
All transitions are composed of (1) an ending, (2) a neutral zone, and (3) a new beginning. [page 4]
Every transition begins with an ending. We have to let go of the old thing before we can pick up with the new one--not just outwardly, but inwardly, where we keep our connections to people and places that act as definitions of who we are. [page 11]
First there is an ending, then a beginning, and important empty or fallow time in between. That is the order of things in nature. [page 17]
"Fallow time" refers to the period between crops when arable land is left unplanted, and Bridges frequently refers to agriculture highlight the contrast between our post-industrial society and other cultures that are more attuned to the organic rhythms of life. Bridges observes that today we not only fail to acknowledge endings, but also find ourselves distressed by the fallow period that precedes the new beginning. He invites us to take a different approach and to recognize that a fallow period serves an essential purpose in our lives, just as it does in all organic systems:
One of the difficulties of being in transition in the modern world is that we have lost our appreciation for this gap in the continuity of existence. For us, "emptiness" represents only the absence of something. So when what's missing is something as important as relatedness and purpose and reality, we try to find ways of replacing those missing elements as quickly as possible. [page 133]
You should not feel defensive about this apparently unproductive time-out during your transition points, for the neutral zone is meant to be a moratorium from the conventional activity of your everyday existence. [page 135]
There are three main reasons for the emptiness between the old life and the new. First, the process of transformation is essentially a death and rebirth process rather than one of mechanical modification... The second reason for the gap between the old life and the new is that the process of disintegration and reintegration is the source of renewal... The last reason for the emptiness between the stages of the life journey is the perspective it provides on the stages themselves... The neutral zone provides access to an angle of vision on life that one can get nowhere else. And it is a succession of such views over a lifetime that produces wisdom. [pages 140-142]
Bridges' emphasis on the fallow period and its importance, despite (or because of) the stress it causes brings to mind Kurt Lewin's model of change, which suggests that we must "unfreeze" before any change can take place and that we "refreeze" afterwards. [2] "Unfreezing" can be a daunting process, as Edgar Schein has noted while elaborating on Lewin's work:
[H]uman change, whether at the individual or group level...[involves] painful unlearning...and difficult relearning as one cognitively [attempts] to restructure one's thoughts, perceptions, feelings, and attitudes. [3, emphasis mine]
These ideas are relevant not only to work with my clients and students, but also to two transitions I've experienced personally in recent years: I launched my coaching practice in 2006, and the following year I turned 40 and suffered the loss of several people in my life. In both cases I realized belatedly that I hadn't fully acknowledged what was ending--a 15-year career in organizational management on the one hand, and the illusion that mortality was an abstract concept on the other--and it was important to take some time to reflect on what I had accomplished (and failed to accomplish) both professionally and personally, to signify and recognize an end to one phase of my career and to one chapter in my life.
Acknowledging those endings also helped me to understand and work through the fallow periods that corresponded to the transitions I was experiencing and prepared me to step into the new beginnings that followed. It hasn't been a seamless process, by any means. There are moments when I miss management, and I wonder how I'll fulfill my desire to lead while serving as a coach and teacher. And there are times when I resist admitting that I'm in the second half of my life, with fewer years ahead of me than behind me. But navigating these transitions would have been much more difficult without the benefit of what I've learned from Bridges, Lewin and Schein, among others, and for that I'm grateful.
Footnotes
[1] Transitions: Making Sense of Life's Changes (Revised 25th Anniversary Edition) (William Bridges, 2004)
[3] Kurt Lewin's Change Theory in the Field and in the Classroom: Notes Toward a Model of Managed Learning (Edgar Schein, 1995)
Revised March 2019.
Photo by McKay Savage.
