Navigating Transitions

A transition ends when there is some new beginning

In this issue

• Turning Insights into Practices: Navigating Transitions

• Favorite quote this week

• What surprises me about my life right now

• What I'm reading, watching, listening to
  A Poem: “When I Taught Her How to Tie Her Shoes” by Penny Harter

• Zen Bones Podcast

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Turning Insights Into Practices: Navigating Transitions

Transitions can be challenging. I’ve learned this many times in my life. I remember how sad and grieving I was when I left my role as CEO of Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute. In many ways, SIYLI was my baby. I had poured my heart and energy into the company and my role.  

A surprisingly useful way to view transitions is that they reverse our expectations: They begin with endings. Endings need a special kind of time and attention, but are not “the end.” For instance, my role as CEO ended, and this was followed by a period of not knowing what I would do next. Then, a transition ends when there is some new beginning.

This was an insight highlighted by William Bridges in his bestselling book Transitions: Making Sense of Life's Changes. It is a simple, useful, and profound insight that can help us better understand and navigate life's transitions, especially painful changes like losing a job, ending an important relationship, or the death of a family member or friend.

Seeing this pattern can help us give proper weight to endings and losses, and at the same time not overemphasize or get stuck in them. Endings involve grief and mourning; loss can shake us and change us. We should respect those feelings and attend to them. At same time, we must embrace not knowing, or the second stage of transition. This can be uncomfortable. We want to know immediately “what’s next.” Discovering that also takes time. It takes learning and opening, and then it happens: a new beginning.

After leaving SIYLI, I spent a good deal of time staying with this ending in my life, unsure what would be next. And it took time to move into new beginnings, but there have been many, such growing a thriving coaching practice and writing new books.

To practice: Consider any transition. It could be recent or past. What constituted the “ending” that started the transition. What did you need to spend more time with and what did you need let go of? What became unclear because of this ending or loss; what didn’t you know? And what defined the new beginning?

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Favorite Quote This Week

If you think you are too small to be effective you've never been in bed with a mosquito.

This is an old favorite. Originally, I published it on a Brush Dance greeting card published back in 1991. (Brush Dance was a paper-products company I founded and ran for fifteen years.) It sends the message, particularly important these days, that we have more influence and power than we usually believe.

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What surprises me about my life right now

I'm surprised that I just published my fifth book, Finding Clarity. I still don't think of myself as a writer. People sometimes ask me, how do you do it? The short answer, I don't know. My more considered answer is curiosity, deadlines, and support.

I follow my curiosity about new ideas and ways of thinking. 

I find that deadlines are my friend! Once I have a book idea, I create a writing schedule, and that helps me follow through. 

Finally, I gather support, in part through making promises to others about my various deadlines and by working closely with friends, my editor, and my publisher.

Still, even after all that work, I'm always surprised when I’m holding a copy of the book in my hands.

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What I'm reading, watching, listening to

Reading: Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Change Your Life by Dacher Keltner: This is a great blend of science, spirituality, and storytelling.

Watching: McCartney 3, 2, 1: If you are a Beatles fan, this documentary miniseries is a real delight. It's like a course in creativity and the creative process.

A Poem
When I Taught Her How to Tie Her Shoes
by Penny Harter

A revelation, the student
in high school who didn’t know
how to tie her shoes.

I took her into the book-room, knowing
what I needed to teach was perhaps more
important than Shakespeare or grammar,

guided her hands through the looping,
the pulling of the ends. After several
tries, she got it, walked out the door

empowered. How many lessons are like
that—skills never mastered in childhood,
simple tasks ignored, let go for years?

This morning, my head bald from chemotherapy,
my feet farther away than they used to be
as I bend to my own shoes, that student

returns to teach me the meaning of life:
to simply tie the laces and walk out
of myself into this sunny winter day.

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Zen Bones Podcast

My conversation with Jon Kabat-Zinn on The Power of Awareness is now live on the Zen Bones Podcast (the link includes ways to listen on your favorite podcasting platform). Jon is the father of modern mindfulness practice. As a professor of medicine, he founded the Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts which both popularized and added an important experiential and scientific element to the practice of mindfulness.

In this episode, Jon and I explore ways to go beyond our thinking minds and our view of self, so that we may access the depth of who we actually are, and the power of love. He also shares some practices for turning suffering into wisdom. Jon is an amazing person and presence, and this conversation is practical, aspirational, and transformative.

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