Transcript Embracing Transition

Embracing Transition
“Transformation is the true destination
of transition. How transition does this
is a mystery” William Bridges
Change and Transition
• “The beginning of wisdom is to call things by
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their right names.” Chinese proverb
Transition is the psychological and spiritual
process people go through in coming to terms
with change.
Change is external and concrete, e.g. changing
a job, moving house.
Change happens pretty fast, however, inwardly
the psychological transition happens much more
slowly.
Distinguishing Transformation and
Change
“This is the great, grave distinction
between change and transformation.
Change refers to adaptation, reaction,
without necessarily involving any newness
of being, a new creative energy flowing
from the center which acts with creative
power upon surrounding events.” (Flora
Slosson Wuellner)
Losses and Endings
It isn’t changes themselves that people
resist. It is the losses and endings that
they experience and the transition that
they are resisting. You have to deal
directly with the losses and endings.
What is actually endings and who is
loosing what?
What are you going to miss?
Transition
Most developmental psychologists are of
the opinion that transition involves a three
phase process:
- ending
- neutral zone
- beginning again
Beginnings Depend on Endings
“Before you can begin something new, you
have to end what used to be. Before you
can become a different kind of person,
you must let go of the old identity. Before
you can learn a new way of doing things,
you have to unlearn the old way. So
beginnings depend on ending.”
(William Bridges 1997, 19)
“What we call the beginning is often the
end.
And to make an end is to make a
beginning.
The end is where we start from.”
(T.S. Elliot. “Little Gidding” 1942)
“Viewing ministry solely as a service one renders
sets the stage for frustration and disappointment
in retirement, turning what should be a time of
personal growth and development into
disillusionment and depression.”
(Francis Blouin. What Is My Mission in
Retirement? Review for Religious Jan.-Feb.
1999, 83)
Transitions in Scripture
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Three important moments of transition occur in
the Gospels:
The moment Jesus decides to leave home and
travel to the Jordan to investigate his cousin’s
John’s actions.
The “feast of Holy Saturday.”
The interim between the Ascension and
Pentecost. (Thomas Sweetser & Mary Benet
McKinney 1998, 7).
“If you want to live, you need to give
yourself over to the way of transition – to
let go when life presents you with a time
of ending, to abandon yourself to the
neutral zone when it is where you find
yourself, to seize the opportunity to make
a new beginning when the moment
presents itself” (Bridges 2001, 42).
Six Functions Served by Transition
• Reorientation: transitions reorient us so
that we can mobilize our energies to deal
with the new situation.
• Personal Growth: reorientation brings us
to a new a more authentic relationship
with the world around us.
• Authentication: refers to the inner face of
growth, a way of being that is truer to
who we really are
• Creativity: this refers to the creative
opportunities that come to us in the chaos
of the neutral zone.
• Spirituality: it is in the neutral zone
(“desert”) that we most readily encounter
the Sacred.
• Renewal: transitions renew in recapturing
the energy that permits us to be reborn
anew.
Four dimensions of Loss
• Disengagement: separation from whatever it is
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you have lost.
Disidentification: the way the loss destroys the
old identity you had.
Disenchantment: the way the loss tears you out
of the old reality you accepted unthinkingly.
Disorientation: the way you feel bewildered as a
result of the loss (Bridges 2001, 62-63).
Three Phases of Transition
ending
neutral
zone
beginning
Transitions on an organizational
level
“The single biggest reason organizational
changes fail is that no one thought about
endings or planned to manage their
impact on people . . . They forget that
while the first task of change management
is to understand the destination and how
to get there, the first task of transition
management is to convince people to
leave home. ” (Bridges 1997, 32).
The Diagram
• In transition there is an ending, then a
neutral phase and only then a new
beginning.
• You are in more than one phase of
transition at the same time.
• The movement through transition is
marked by a change in the dominance of
one phase.
Neutral Zone.
“It’s not so much that we’re afraid of change or
so in love the old ways, but it’s that place in
between that we fear. . It’s like being in
between trapezes. It’s Linus when his blanket is
in the dryer. There’s nothing to hold on to.”
Marilyn Ferguson.
“One doesn’t discover new lands without
consenting to loose sight of the shore for a very
long time.” Andre Gide
Neutral Zone
“The neutral zone is like the wilderness
through which Moses led his people. That
took 40 years, not because they were lost
but because the generation that had
known Egypt had to die off before they
entered the Promised Land.”
(Bridges 1995, 37)
Normalize the Neutral Zone
• People need to recognize that it is natural to feel
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somewhat frightened and confused in this noman’s land.
“The neutral zone isn’t just meaningless waiting
and confusion – it is a time when a necessary
reorientation and redefinition is taking place,
and people need to understand that. It is the
winter during which the spring’s new growth is
taking shape under the earth.”
(William Bridges 1997, 37)
“Most of us have more freedom than we
ever use, and the older we get the more
inefficiently we squander it. You go
around like a dog at the end of a chain for
so long that when you get off the chain
you hardly know how to run.”
Fr Peter Crysdale.
New Beginning
“The world fears a new experience more
than it fears anything. Because a new
experience displaces so many old
experiences. . . The world doesn’t fear a
new idea. It can pigeon-hole any idea. But
it can’t pigeon-hole a real new
experience.” (D. H. Lawrence)
Ambivalence Towards Beginnings
Beginnings are strange things. People want them to
happen but fear them at the same time. Beginnings feel
frightening for a number of reasons:
- Beginnings establish once and for all that the ending
was real.
- New beginnings may trigger old memories of failure in
the past.
- For some people new beginnings destroy what was a
pleasant experience in the neutral zone.
(Bridges 1997, 51)
Zones of Stability
Toffler (1970) suggests that we can cope with
large amounts of change provided one area of
our life is relatively stable. Stability zones are
frequently associated with:
• People – family, long-standing friends
• Ideas – a religious belief
• Places – e.g. home
• Things – favourite objects
• Organizations – to which one belongs
Your Stability Zones
• What are your stability zones and how well do
they serve you?
• Do you invest enough in your stability zones?
• Are there changes you want to make in your
stability zones, and how you use and maintain
them?
(Leonie Sugarman. Life-Span Development
2nd Ed. 2001)
Questions to Ponder
• What is it that your life is calling upon you to
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deal with at his moment?
What “chapter” of your life is now over? What is
it time for you to let go of?
How are you experiencing the in-between time?
How are you coping with it?
How are you drawing on the Christian tradition
to help you interpret your experience?
Now I Become Myself: May Sarton
“Now I become myself. It’s taken
Time, many years and places;
I have been dissolved and shaken,
Worn other people’s faces . . . “
As you read these lines what arises for you
about your own life journey, about where you’ve
been and where you are now?
(Parker Palmer: The Courage to Teach: Guide for
Reflection and Renewal. 2007, 72).