Transitions

Transitions: Making Sense of Life's Changes by William Bridges is about managing and understanding the transitions we all face in life. Whether you are switching jobs, moving, retiring, divorcing, or becoming an empty nester, Bridges' lucid guide will help you navigate the troubled waters of change.

Bridges wants to debunk the myth that once you reach adulthood at, say 25, you just can just live life on cruise control to age 65 and retirement. Instead, the author demonstrates that we continue to develop as adults and that life consists of incremental instances of beginnings and endings. How you steer through those transitions matters a great deal. Bridges writes,

The difficult process of letting go of an old situation, suffering the confusing nowhere of "in-betweenness," and launching forth again in a new direction is the subject of this book. The aim is to provide the tools for identifying a personal development chronology.

The author makes the case that there are three distinct phases of transition we encounter:

1) An ending, followed by

2) a "neutral zone," a period of confusion and distress, leading to

3) a new beginning.

Before making the shift to the field of transitional management Bridges was a professor of English. This allows him to cleverly use literary characters and symbolism to highlight some of the subtleties of transitioning. Bridges offers an interpretation of the stories of Odysseus in The Odyssey and Oedipus in Oedipus Rex and demonstrates how at certain times in life we discover we have crossed some mysterious line and that everything that once worked so well for us now works against us. It turns out that one of the most important aspects of transitioning is to "unlearn" many things that got us where we are to begin with. Odysseus' story, for instance, demonstrates that through his suffering and attrition, he learns a kind of courage that is different from the cunning and aggressiveness that served him so well on the battlefield. Bridges continues:

There comes a time when the self-image and personal style we have selected in life hinders growth and we must go through the long, slow process of growing beyond them. Much of this growth looks like loss, just as much of the earlier growth looks like gain. But that is no more true than the sense that spring is a season of gain and fall a season of loss. In fact, each is essential to the full cycle, and the cycle is the only context in which the specific changes along the way have any meaning.

This book was a timely read for me, and I believe it would be beneficial for anyone facing transitions in their life. Reading it gave me handles to grasp the mysterious and exhausting time I am currently in the midst of.