Moving Through Transitions

In my life/work coaching practice, I work extensively with people in transition - life transitions, career transitions, and business transitions. The change points in our lives - whether personal or professional - are the times that offer the biggest possibilities for transformational growth. During these times, we are called upon to dig deep within ourselves to resolve old issues and prepare ourselves for new challenges and opportunities. This is where the "juice" is!

It is as if the LEGOs of our lives, which had been put together in a structure of a certain type, have now been taken apart and lie scattered on the floor, waiting for us to put them together again. We have choices. We can rebuild our lives exactly as they were before. [This rarely happens.] Or, we can reconstruct or reinvent our lives in new ways.

In that in-between space, when we sit on the floor staring at the scattered pieces, no longer formed in the old way and not yet formed in the new way, we encounter a mixed bag of emotions and experiences - chaos, uncertainty, the unknown, fear, loss, sadness, ennui, possibility, opportunity, creativity, imagination, excitement.

What happens when a "Transitions Coach" encounters her own life/work transitions? I can tell you some things about that. About two and a half months ago, I came upon a day which became a "perfect storm" of transitions - a "hat trick" of change. In other words, in one day in May - May 12th to be exact - big changes happened in three key areas of my life: I went through a personal bankruptcy hearing. I learned that I would have to move from my much-enjoyed apartment in Rockport due to a condo conversion, and I was given a month to do it. And a friendship with someone who was very dear to me came to an end. [Each of these events was independent of each other.] Many of the LEGO pieces of my life came apart and lay scattered before me, though fragments remained - my family, my health, and my business were still more or less intact.

What happened during that time? Well, grief, for one thing. All the stages of grief that Dr. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross described in her epic book, On Death and Dying, came at me thick and fast - shock, denial, bargaining, fear, anger, depression, sadness, and, finally, acceptance. Is all of this behind me now? No, some sadness still remains. Maybe still a touch of anger now and then. But mostly, there is acceptance.

One professional and personal gift for me in this group of transitions is the gift of empathy. I have recently "been there" and now I have increased my capacity for empathy and compassion for my clients, friends, and family. I know at an experiential level what they are going through. I know the two sides of the transition coin; they are called Fear and Excitement. Or, they could be called Loss and Possibility.

I am still in the midst of a passage between two shores. I have left the familiar shores of home and friendship and have barely touched the shore of home on the other side, let alone new relationships and new opportunities. I have much yet to discover. I have reached the "New World" and it is full of possibility and opportunity. What awaits me here I do not know, but I am open to discovering it.

Another gift of this "perfect storm" was the much-needed forced opportunity to clear my life of both physical and emotional clutter. There is a lot of benefit to be derived from discarding "stuff" that no longer serves us. [I have written about this before in my series on the Letting-Go Experiments.]. And in these past two months or so, I have let go of lots and lots of excess stuff in my life - clothes, magazines, books, household items, tax records from the 90's, and office papers - lots and lots of papers. This "stuff" was choking my life - and my business (which has been improving since the move).

And on the emotional front, these losses also helped me to revisit and heal older losses and older grief triggered by these new events. I had the opportunity to clean both my physical house and my emotional house. And I got to thinking that perhaps most or many of us need to move - or make other significant changes in at least one area of our lives - every few years, in order to clear out the clutter – the "stuff" that no longer serves us.

Another metaphor I frequently use for this transition time and space is the metamorphosis of a caterpillar into a butterfly. It is in the in-between place - in the chrysalis, in the pupating phase - where transformational change takes place. In this phase, the major work is happening inside the cocoon, where no one looking on from the outside can see it. But one day the transformation is complete - the butterfly emerges from its cocoon, gets its feet under it, flaps its wings, and flies. And things are never again what they were. There is no turning back. It happens to caterpillars and it can happen to humans too.

So, what do we do, then, in this "New World" - the world of butterflies?

We keep our eyes open. We remain curious and receptive. We take it a day at a time. We live in the now. We say "thank you" for landing on our feet. We approach each day with appreciation, gratitude, and wonder. We are hopeful. We expand our horizons. We anticipate wonderful surprises.

And we play with the LEGOs of our life. We use our creativity, our imagination, our thoughtful minds to rebuild our lives, to reinvent ourselves once again.

We ask ourselves this question, first posed by Mary Oliver in her poem, "The Summer Day": Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

I plan to be open to Life's surprises, to want what I have, whatever that is, and to be happy.

What will Your answer be?