On December 21, 2017 a seismic change rocked my family. Cousin Adam Gress, who was only 26, died unexpectedly and suddenly from an undiagnosed heart condition – hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. His death has been hard on all of us. But, his death was just the beginning of a long process that family and friends are still going through.
William Bridges, a noted leader in the field of managing change, would label Adam’s sudden passing and life without him in it as CHANGE. His passing was an event that happened to the family; it was situational. When Adam died, we all hit the proverbial brick wall. This brick wall seemed insurmountable to us. It blocked the road of our life journey. It totally disrupted life plans. Everyone wondered, “What now?” Everyone thought, “How do we get over this?”
Well, we get over the brick wall, the change, by going through TRANSITION. You see, ever since Adam’s passing, family and friends have been in TRANSITION which is what we experience as we internalize and come to terms without him in our lives. It is important to note that both change (the physical aspect) and transition (the psychological aspect) involve ending something. Most of us think/feel that change is hard (and no doubt it is), but oftentimes it is the transition that is even harder. I know for me it is and I think it is so because the transition is the inner process through which we come to terms with the change. It is when we let go of how things used to be and reorient and adjust ourselves to how things are now.
This inner process is the road we take to moving on and getting over the “wall” but it takes time especially since it has three distinct stages:
- Endings
- Roaming the wilderness (or what William Bridges calls the “neutral zone”)
- Our vision (or what Bridges calls our “new beginning)
As William Bridges says, “I am not suggesting that this is a path that you wanted to take or that you will necessarily find it enjoyable. I am saying that it is a path with meaning for you, that following it will bring you out somewhere. What I am saying is that since change is a wall and transition the gate in that wall it’s there for you to go through it. Transition represents a path to the next phase of your life.” Since many of us may be in some stage of transition right now, I want to take some time to explore the three stages in the hopes that through the exploration, we all might find some ideas to help us better handle the transitions in our lives.
ENDINGS. The “endings” stage begins with a “triggering event” where we experience a loss of the old life. (In my family’s situation, Adam’s passing was our trigger event.) As a result of the loss, we may feel:
- Disengaged – where we are removed from life as we know it and are now separated from the familiar.
- Disidentified – where we lose our sense of identity (how do we now define ourselves) or our perception of reality.
- Disenchanted – where we become disillusioned and let down by things that once brought us happiness.
- Disoriented – where we feel lost, confused, empty, and without direction.
When we are in this “endings” stage, we need to ask and answer ‘what needs to be let go?’ As Bridges says, “To cross over the line into the transition, you need to ask yourself what inner relinquishments you’ll need to make because of the change. What needs will you have to find other ways to get met? Because of your change, what parts of yourself are now out of date?”
WILDERNESS or NEUTRAL ZONE. The wilderness is a place where the old and the new overlap. It is a place outside of our comfort zone. It is a place full of possibilities and we may become excited or overwhelmed by the possibilities we see. We may experience confusion. We may experience fear. When we roam the wilderness, we question ourselves, we question what happened, and we question next steps. We often ask:
- Who am I?
- What purpose do I now serve?
- What comes next?
- What is real?
- What is my new reality?
Indeed, it may take a long time for us to discover who we really are and what we are to do in our new reality. Time in the wilderness helps us explore options in the new reality. It is out of the excitement, the sense of being overwhelmed, the confusion, and the fear that new ideas, that new discoveries, re-orientations and creativity take center stage and help propel us toward something we might be able to accept, something that makes sense out of the change, something that will put us on the path to our becoming “real” within our new reality.
There is no doubt that the wilderness is a scary place; it is often uncomfortable in the wilderness. When in the wilderness, we have given up something with which we were once very comfortable, but we have not yet become comfortable with the “new place.” If we get scared enough, we may be tempted to fall back on the former, the old; we may try to slip back into our comfort zone. This is all normal and natural. In fact, time in the wilderness is not linear. It is more like start, stop, loop back, move forward, step back, surge forward. Time in the wilderness is more spiral – or cork screw-shaped than linear or one dimensional. But, time in the wilderness is well spent and when the journey is finished, we will be ready to move on and make a successful new beginning.
VISION or NEW BEGINNING. The old or former merges with the ideas from the wilderness or the neutral zone and becomes transformed into a new identity, understanding, value, or attitude. After negotiating the neutral zone/wilderness, we do need direction so that we can be successful in our new beginning. Vision provides this direction. Vision is the image of what we want the future to look like. The vision provides purpose and meaning and in doing so, gives hope, enthusiasm, importance, and inspiration to what we want to accomplish or what we want to be.
William Bridges sums things up nicely when he says, “Without a transition, change is just a rearrangement of the furniture.” We must allow ourselves to travel the path of transition and experience the process. We must integrate the change into the fabric of our being and really examine how it affects our core. Only in doing this will we be able to move forward. Only then will we be doing more than just rearranging the furniture.
Author Becky Johnen 