Change is the only constant. Heraclitus
What? I don’t see any hands going up…
It never fails. When I’m working with a client who is going through a transition of some kind – whether it’s divorce, the death of a loved one, getting married, giving birth, retirement, the empty nest, menopause, moving, going back to school or changing careers — they don’t understand why they feel so discombobulated. So uncomfortable. So nowhere.
When you’re going through a transition you are in nowhere land. You’re no longer where you were, which was a place that you knew. Even if you didn’t like it much, it was familiar territory. You knew the lay of the land and how things worked. And you’re not yet wherever you’re going. That’s new and unexplored territory so it can be scary.
We usually want to get out of nowhere land as fast as we can because it’s so uncomfortable. So undefined and therefore unnerving. We want to be somewhere. Anywhere but in the unknown.
The time of a transition is similar to a field that a farmer has left fallow for a season. It doesn’t bear last season’s crop nor is it yet nurturing next season’s harvest. The fallow period allows the soil to replenish and rejuvenate so that it can again be fertile and bear future crops.
So it is for us. Transitions are an opportunity for us to replenish and rejuvenate. They can be a time of dreaming, of assessing where we have been, of going deep within and deciding where we want to go. To determine what we have learned and what’s next for us. A time to stop rushing and to let our souls and spirits breathe before launching into the next phase of our lives.
The biggest mistake we can make is to try to rush through a time of transition so that we don’t have to feel that sense of nowhereness and confusion. Actually, I just realized that “no-whereness” can also be “now-hereness” which is the best thing you can do during times of change.
Be present. Ask yourself what you have learned. Have compassion for yourself. Be aware of your fears and uncomfortable feelings. And remember to breathe. Deep breathing floods your body with endorphins, the feel-good chemicals produced in the brain.
Stay tuned. I’m developing a program for sailing through transitions. I’ll tell you all about it in my next newsletter.
As always, let me know how I can help you create the life of your dreams.