Real Beginnings

When we are ready to make a new beginning, we will shortly find an opportunity. The same event could be a real new beginning in one situation and an interesting but unproductive by-way in another. The difference is whether the event is “keyed” or “coded” to that transition point, the way that electronic key cards are set to open a particular hotel room door. When the card code matches, the door opens and the whole thing happens as if it were scripted. When it doesn’t match, the event is just an event and you are still in the neutral zone. The neutral zone simply hasn’t finished with you yet.

What isn’t finished is the inner realignment and renewal of energy, both of which depend on your being immersed in the chaos of the neutral zone. It is as though the thing that you call “my life” had to return occasionally to a state of pure energy before it could take anew shape and gain new momentum.

William Bridges, Transitions

Hiding Endings from Ourselves

We avoid endings whenever possible, and we steer clear whenever we can of the neutral-zone emptiness. Endings feel like failure to us, and at a deeper level. So we use the busyness and structure and status of work and family life to hide ending it from view. Believing in doing so that if we just keep adding and adding to what we have, we’ll end up with something new and will avoid the need to make any endings.

But it is not just endings that we fear. The aloneness and emptiness that are often felt in the neutral zone are just about as fearful for many modern people as endings are. Whenever we can’t see that anything is happening—and you usually can’t in the neutral zone—we doubt that anything can “really” be going on.

We fail to see that real new beginnings, the kind that revitalize and inaugurate a new order of things, come out of that chaotic neutral zone.

William Bridges, The Way of Transition

Your Ending Style

You need to understand your own characteristic ways of coping with endings. One way to do this is to think back over the endings in your own life. Go back to your early childhood and recall the first experiences involving endings that you can remember.. deaths in the family, your parents’ departure on a trip, the death of a pet, or a friend’s moving away. Continue forward on this our of your life history and note all the endings you can recall along the way. Some involved places, social groups, hobbies, or sports; others involved responsibilities, training, or jobs. Some endings make be hard to describe. They have few outward signs, but they may leave long-lasting scars: the ending of innocence or trust, for example, or the ending of responsibility or of a religious faith.

What you bring with you to a transitional situation is the style you have developed for dealing with endings. The product of early experience and late influence, this style is your own way of dealing with external circumstances and with the inner distress they stir up. Your style is likely to reflect your childhood family situation, for transitions tend to send family members to different tasks: One person feels all the grief and anxiety for the entire group, another comforts the mourner, another takes over the routine responsibilities, and yet another goes into a sort of parody of “being in control of the situation.”

What can you say about your own style of bringing situations to a close? It is abrupt and designed to deny the impact of the change, or is it so slow and gradual that it is hard to see that anything important is happening? Do you tend to be active or passive in these terminal situations? That is, is it your initiative that brings things to term or do events just happen to you?

Think about how you tend to act at the end of an evening at a friend’s house or a night on the town. Do you try to drag things out by starting new conversations and activities as others seem to be ready to leave, or do you say suddenly that it was a nice evening and dash out? Or what about some recent larger ending: leaving a job or moving from a neighborhood? Did you say goodbye to everyone, or did you leave a day ahead of schedule just so that you could avoid the goodbyes?

Everyone finds endings difficult, so your own style is not a sign that you have some “problem” that others don’t have. The person who leaves early and the one who stays late are both avoiding endings and the discomfort of facing a break in the continuity of things. Whether you are a dasher or a lingerer is largely the result of how you learned to avoid the “party’s-over” experience as a child.

William Bridges, The Way of Transition

How you thought your life would turn out

You are constantly letting go of who you thought you were and how you thought life would be. You find yourself constantly in the neural zone, unable to recover your old life but equally unable to embrace your new one comfortably. To the extent that you can let go of who you used to be and honor the experience of being in-between lives, you discover a rich and wonderful way of living. There is no beginning that doesn’t require an ending, and no ending that doesn’t make possible a new beginning.

William Bridges, The Way of Transition

It's over

What you knew, what you understood, and what you trusted about everything is OVER. Because everything’s changed. It’s over. That’s the first truth.

The second truth.. is that it’s just beginning—if you choose to be remarkable. Why not choose to show up in your life and then your profession with a kind of engagement and energy and commitment and passion that says, “I can do it again! And I can’t wait.” Why wouldn’t you choose that?

If you say, “I don’t know,” then look at your beliefs. Because chances are someone told you long ago that you couldn’t do it. You weren’t tall enough. You weren’t smart enough. You weren’t rich enough. You weren’t the right color.

Don’t pay a bit of attention to that. You are in the process every day of becoming. Take your hand off the doorknob and say, “Now.”

Roger Fransecky, The Apogee Group

False Starts

It is important to distinguish between a real new beginning in someone’s life and a simple defensive reaction to an ending. Each may exert strain on a relationship, but the new beginning must be honored. The defensive reaction is simply a new way of perpetuating the old situation and needs to be considered as such.

Unfortunately, there is no psychological test you can take at such times. It is often difficult to be sure whether some path leads forward or back, and it may be necessary to follow it for a little way to be sure. But there are two signs that are worth looking for before you start. The first is the reaction of people who know you well: not whether they approve or disapprove, but whether they see what you propose to do as something new or simply a replay of an old pattern. The second indication comes from the transition process itself: Have you really moved through endings into the neutral zone and found there the beginning you now want to follow is this “beginning” a way of avoiding an ending or aborting the neutral zone experience?

William Bridges, Transitions