Our interns have entered into their last month serving with us and today I had the privilege to chat to them about how they can begin to transition into what might be happening next in their lives. I thought I would post a little bit of my thinking here as well. I have to say that lots of my thinking has been formed from a few sources but “Managing Transition” by William Bridges has been particularly helpful.

We are a weird mixture when it comes to new things. The author of the book “Hitmakers” calls us neophobic (scared of the new) but also neophilic (strong desire for the new) which makes for a complicated mix e.g. we all want to see a new TV show but we all want it to be a bit like the old shows we love. If it’s too similar we aren’t satisfied, but if it’s too new we don’t like the shift.  

We love the idea of something new but don’t really like having to leave something old. 

This is what makes us pretty poor at transitions.

Let’s look at a couple of different definitions 

Change – is when something about our situation alters. We move country, we put on or lose weight, our friends go to uni, a course ends, parents split up etc. Change is unavoidable in our lives. We can’t stop ourselves getting older, we can’t stop the people around us from making decisions about what they do with their life. It’s an impossible reality to control.

Transition – is our spiritual or emotional reaction to that change. How did we adjust to moving country, putting on or losing weight, seeing our friends going to uni or that course ending. 

Where change is unavoidable, transition unfortunately can be completely avoided. We can change country but never transition in our mind and soul, friends move on but inside we never do. Transition is within our grasp with the help of God. To simplify it further – Change is what happens around us, Transition is what happens in us. 

This is why some people can have really difficult changes happening around them but they remain completely at peace. They transitioned well in the midst of the change. It’s also why others can change lots of stuff to get away from a difficult moment but yet never find that peace. They changed but never transitioned.

Transition involves three different phases that are not linear in nature. That means that even as things are changing and we are transitioning we are living in different amounts of all three realities. Those three phases are;

• The Ending
• The Neutral Zone
• The Beginning

Bridges claims that transition begins with an ending and ends with a beginning when it is done well. The reason we don’t do it well is because we either don’t end well, we spend too long or too short a time in the neutral zone or we never begin healthily.

I wonder what are some areas we need to visit today when it comes to where we have transitioned badly? Are there things we need to end that we never did? Are we still in the neutral zone or did we jump over it? Have we truly started a new beginning or are we still living in the goodbye?