Lost In Transition - How To Cope With Hard Times (By Stephen Warrilow)

Lost In Transition - A Story From Morocco

It was late one warm summer's evening in Marrakesh. We had wandered around the souks and then enjoyed a pleasant dinner in a restaurant just off the main market square in the Medina and it was time to head back to the Riad where we were staying.

The Medina was built around 1122 and is the old town in Marrakesh. It is a twisting labyrinth comprising 19-kilometers of tiny streets with pink walls, and poor lighting and it can feel like a scary place to walk through at night, especially if you don't know where you are going!

The walk into the centre undertaken in daylight had been quite pleasant, but walking back in the dark wasn't an option so we took a taxi.

The heart of darkness

Unfortunately the taxi driver misunderstood the rather obscure address of our Riad and assumed wrongly that we wanted to go some late night venue on the other side of the Medina! Language difficulties made it impossible to rectify so we set off on foot.

We asked a succession of strangers for directions and yet we seemed to be going deeper into what was rapidly beginning to feel like Conrad's "Heart Of Darkness". With hindsight I am sure the locals who tried to help us were genuine and had good intentions, but after about an hour or two of this we were totally disoriented and frankly scared.

Lost in transition

To be in an alien North African city, late in the evening, in the dark, completely lost in transition from the main market square back to the obscure location of our Riad, with no tools for navigation, and finding it impossible to communicate with the locals, was frightening.

To cut a long story short we eventually found someone who seemed to understand where we were trying to get to and it was with enormous relief when we recognised the alley (I wouldn't dignify it by calling it a street) where our Riad was located.

Needless to say, the following day we moved to another Riad in the centre adjacent to the main market square.

The Difference Between Change and Transition

That experience of being lost in transition in the Medina illustrates the locational disorientation we can experience when we experience an unexpected change in circumstances, and especially a change that is imposed upon and that leads to hard times.

At the time of writing, with the world slowly emerging from Covid-19 lockdown, with our economies strangled, business failures and unemployment rising and our national governments flailing around like drowning men clutching at straws I think it is fair to say that many of us are currently experiencing hard times as a direct result of imposed change!

The purpose of this article is to set out a framework for understanding what is happening to you and to go beyond the circumstantial changes and to address the inner psychological and emotional impacts and how you can deal with those as well.

The first and key point to make is that there is a distinction between the events, situations and circumstances that are imposed on you and your inner response to these things.

In the world of change management this is known as "transition".

William Bridges was one of the first thought leader's in the field of organisational transformation and change management to recognise the fundamental difference between change and transition, namely:

• Change is an external event or situation that happens to you, and often that is imposed upon you.
• Transition is the internal process that you have to go through as you make your readjustment and realignment to the new realities.

The Psychological and Emotional Transition Is A Three Stage Process

Without an effective transition, a change is just a rearrangement of circumstances and you will not effectively make the transition but will become stuck or lost in transition.

Bridges Transition Model involves a three-phase process:

1. Ending, Losing, Letting Go - Every transition begins with an ending. We have to let go of the old thing before we can pick up with the new one - not just outwardly, but inwardly, where we keep our connections to people and places that act as definitions of who we are.
2. The Neutral Zone - This is a fallow time. One of the difficulties of being in transition in the modern world is that we have lost our appreciation for this gap between the ending and letting go and the new beginning, we find it unsettling. But as in nature the fallow time is a necessary part of the process. It is a time of death and rebirth.
3. The New Beginning - This is where we develop a new identity, experience a new energy, and discover a new sense of purpose that enables us to make the change begin to work.

Transition is a psychological process of inner reorientation and self-redefinition that you have to go through in order to incorporate the effect of external changes into your life.

One of the major causes of the difficulty that you will experience with transition is that it necessarily involves letting go of something.

The process of letting go is often unsettling and unnerving.

Therefore a fundamental element of the transition is acceptance of that letting go. Without that acceptance, you will become stuck in denial, anger or resistance.

I leave you with 2 empowering thoughts:

# "This too will pass"

# "When You can't control what's happening, challenge yourself to control the way you respond to what's happening. That's where your power lies. "

https://ezinearticles.com/?Lost-In-Transition---How-To-Cope-With-Hard-Times&id=10391852

What Would You Attempt to Do If You Knew You Couldn't Fail? (By Rosina S Khan)

Do you know what you are good at - your skill set, expertise and competencies? If yes, and if you are at a transition point in your life, it shouldn't be hard to figure out for you what you would like to do if you knew you couldn't fail. Read on for highlights.

As for me, I am not on my regular job as a university faculty member anymore. But I know for sure if I continue my career in that area, I wouldn't fail. I have much experience and expertise so that nothing could go wrong. Yet I have some difficulties which are delaying me to fall back into the rhythm of life.

For the time being, I am writing fiction stories, self-help eBooks, articles, blogs and guides. I am growing my email list so that I can reach my products to a larger audience by participating in giveaway events. I know for sure, writing and being an author is another area I would excel which I wouldn't have known if I hadn't given up my regular job.

You should, like me, have several options in your life if you are desperately in need of a career change. Everything starts with a thought, a plan and a series of actions towards it. While you take daily small actions, your life rejuvenates and you get back the mojo of life.

While you have several options for career changes, you have to pick one and attempt to succeed. You know for sure you couldn't fail in these options. It is just a matter of making a choice.

How do you make a wise choice? Rely on your gut instinct, really feel what speaks to you and additionally weigh out the pros and cons of your option. If the pros are greater, you are good to go. Nothing can stand in your way and no one can stop you. You are going to lead a meaningful life once again and stand up for something important, which makes you an important person.

After you have made your choice wisely, hold someone close accountable for your daily actions. They will point out your mistakes and remind you to stay on the path you have chosen. It's like having a mentor giving you good advice all the time. You can also contact professional coaches and get the required help. Everything should fall together and you should be back on your way up the ladder of success.

http://ezinearticles.com/?What-Would-You-Attempt-to-Do-If-You-Knew-You-Couldnt-Fail?&id=9633450

How to Harness the Power of Your Transition

We can say that "change" is truly one of the few certainties of our life.

We change us and everything around us, at times in a hurry, other times more slowly, sometimes more obviously, other times in a more subtle way, but inexorably.

Change is a small death, we have to leave something behind, something that for us was a reference, to look toward a future that seems uncertain and sometimes threatening, especially if it is a change that makes us feel fear or we define as 'negative'.

However, change is a natural and healthy process, change is inextricably linked to growth: without change there is no, physical, emotional or spiritual growth. Change is at the very foundation of our evolution, it is the factor of evolution. A life without change is in fact already a death.

Sometimes changes bring rivers of tears, feelings of helplessness and despair, but paradoxically, it is precisely in the transition that we build our power and our happiness. Not a power and a happiness 'external' and therefore fragile, but 'internal', deep and stable.

It is important to recognise that there is nothing dangerous or evil in change, except our interpretation of it, the negative judgment that we attach to it. What makes a painful transition is not so much what happens - the facts as such- but our way of interpreting them.

When something changes, we are in a hurry to label the new situation as 'good' or 'bad', 'right' or 'unjust', 'luck' or 'tough luck', while if we were truly honest with ourselves we should admit that we do not really know anything about the consequences of that change!

How many times has something that we have judged at first sight as catastrophic is later then detected as a blessing?

But, let's get back to that part of us which brakes, kicks and punches in the face of transition. This part is the control. In each of us resides a "controller" that will not rest. It is full of expectations, and the first expectation is precisely that the situations remain fixed and immutable.

Our marriage and our relationship must remain fixed and unchanged... if it changes it means that there is something wrong (preferably in the other); our working situation must remain fixed and immutable... if it changes we live it as a disaster. Not to mention the economic situation...

Security (understood as non-change) has always been only an illusion. The only constant on which we can make a real expectation and that we have the possibility to completely dominate is "trust". Have confidence in life and in every change that it proposes us. Even those that appear more tragic to us: tragic is our vision, not the change in itself.

Learning to follow the flow of life is essential to finding our inner harmony. When we reject a change (and we reject every time that we suffer for something) we are swimming against the current, and since we need lots of energy to swim against the current, we feel exhausted.

The way to avoid this is to not judge, remain open to every possibility and say a full and unconditional YES to any situation life proposes us, learning to leave behind with love what has been and what is no longer.

This is not diminishing the cycle of loss, which is a fundamental personal journey, and suggesting that the process of surrendering and accepting will conclude in one week. Those losses will always be part of our life... we just need to acknowledge them, accept the transition and find the strengths to launch forth into your new situation!

So now grab a pen and a sheet of paper... a useful, simple and practical suggestion to facilitate a change that scares us and to harness the power of your transition is that of focusing on the emotional and practical implications that are behind your resistance: on the paper draw a vertical line to divide it into two vertical columns, in the left column list all the advantages of remaining in the current situation always and in the right column the benefits which would result from changing the situation. Or, in the left column, write how miserable you perceive your current life and in the right column, write what you can do to slowly bring some light on it.

This is the first step to help change your attitude and mindset toward any kind of Life Transition.

Transition is that difficult process of letting go of your old situation, suffering in your present confusion before launching forth into your new situation.

http://ezinearticles.com/?How-to-Harness-the-Power-of-Your-Transition&id=9351369

4 Ways to Start Simplifying Your Life

Our lives literally move too fast. Time to take back control.

For sheer creativity, I love the research of social psychologist Robert Levine of Fresno, California. To gauge the pace of life in societies around the world, he timed how quickly people walked a single city block during morning rush hour, assessed the accuracy of public clocks, and timed a single transaction at local post offices. Levine found that societies vary greatly in the speed at which they live and that residents of faster places were at greater risk for heart disease.
This raises the interesting question of whether you should slow down, and the larger question of whether slowing down is part of simplifying.
There have been innumerable recent calls to simplify. Some critics of modern life are concerned with materialism. Others point to increasing social problems while still more mention a seeming wave of collective anxiety. The most common rallying cry of those espousing the simple life is to get rid of many material possessions and simultaneously refrain from acquiring more. Anyone with a cluttered garage can sympathize with this.

Even so, should we become more Amish-like in our lifestyles?
Interestingly, the Amish are faring pretty well, psychologically speaking. I spent months collecting data from two Amish communities in Illinois and found that they had high average life satisfaction. When it came to emotions, 100% of the respondents were above the neutral point. Even when I double-checked this with their peers, the number stayed at a high 89%. When I triple checked using memory measures, I still found that 85% of the Amish were above neutral across research methods.
Despite the research you may not be ready to trade your Toyota for a horse-and-buggy. And yet research by Tim Kasser and his colleagues suggests that valuing material goods undermines happiness—and that living a thrifty life can boost it. Others have underscored this argument by pointing to well-documented psychological phenomena such as the human propensity to adapt to new circumstances. This can lead to escalating desires where consumerism is concerned.
Even if you accept the multiple streams of data suggesting that a simpler life is good for your psychological health, you may be uncertain where to begin. Do you have to move to a geodesic dome in the woods? Do you have to compost your food? Do you get to still watch Game of Thrones on TV?
Here are a few brief suggestions to get you started. To start, think about "the simple life" as having multiple parts:

1. Stuff. All the material items you have, ranging from food storage containers to electronics to socks. Try to determine if items represent “enough” or “more than enough.” I just did this with my socks and discovered that I had 26 pairs, including wool socks, dress socks, athletic socks, and others. Although I value having specialized socks, I certainly did not need 26 pairs. You can repeat this process with virtually everything you own.
   
2. Time. We all have the same amount of time—24 hours in a day. Professionals, however, are more likely to value their time highly and complain about not having enough. It can be helpful, though, to remember that you have the same amount as everyone else—not a second more or less. What you choose to do with it is, at least in part, up to you.
   
3. Transitions. This is one of the overlooked ways to simplify your life. The fewer transitions you make throughout the day, the more at peace you'll potentially feel. If your day includes exercise, work, a trip to the dentist, picking the kids up from school, and eating dinner with your family it might feel quite bloated with activity. I side-step this problem by clustering activities. I try to couple errands with exercise on one day and work uninterrupted the next. Even within work, fewer projects and transitions within a single day can enhance your well-being.
   
4. Social. I once coached a client who wanted to have a great romantic relationship, to be a terrific father, to have a flourishing social life, to be friendly with colleagues, to participate in community events, and fulfil the duties he had to his extended family. Terrific if that’s a lifelong goal, but try to cram that all into a single week and something’s gotta give. Consider stretching rewarding social experiences out over time as another way of simplifying. 

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/significant-results/201408/4-ways-start-simplifying-your-life