Navigating Life's Transitional Changes

About the Video:

In this video, the speaker explores what it really takes to navigate life’s biggest transitions — from illness and loss to retirement or major change. He introduces the Four Stages of Transition: Anticipation, Ending, Passage, and New Beginning, explaining how each stage brings unique challenges and essential emotional work. Through his own experience with cancer, he shows that transitions are rarely linear and often messy, but understanding where you are in the process gives you power, clarity, and compassion for yourself. Ultimately, he reminds viewers that while we can’t control which transitions we face, we can move through them with awareness, grace, and intention.


Transcription:

 Life has a way of throwing curve balls when you least expect them.  Cancer diagnosis, parent dies, marriages, retirement, whatever the change. Suddenly you're in transition at uncomfortable space between what was and what will be.  Here's what I've learned.  Most of us have no idea how to navigate transitions.

We think we should power through quickly. We beat ourselves up when we're struggling. We feel lost and wonder what's going wrong with us..  Nothing's wrong with you. You're just in transition and transitions have stages. Understanding these stages gives you incredible clarity. When you can name where you are, you gain power over how you respond. 

Instead of being tossed around by forces you don't understand,  this is one model  as we'll. Learn over the coming months, there is more than one model for transiting a transition. So now let's take a look at the  four ®stages of transition in this model. Number one, anticipation is where you know something significant is coming, but you have more questions than answers.

 I'm here right now with my cancer diagnosis. Treatment is coming, my life will change significantly,  but I don't know exactly what treatment will entail,  how I respond,  and what side effects I'll face. I am in one place for one of my cancers and not the other.  This is where transitions get really complicated. 

You have more than one transition going on at the same time.  Anticipation can be very uncomfortable.  Your brain craves certainly,  and you have none. You're suspended before your old life and new reality. The work of this stage, learning to be comfortable with uncertainty. Not pretending you're comfortable, but actually developing capacity to sit without knowing  the trap,  trying to skip it. 

You want answers now, but you can't skip anticipation. That work is essential. The second stage ending is when the old reality actually ends and the new one begins.  You feel relief. In apprehension simultaneously,  relief that waiting is over,  but also grieve about what you're leaving behind. The work here is actually letting go, not just intellectually acknowledging something's ending, but emotionally releasing your grip on what was the trap. 

Trying to keep one foot in old reality while stepping into new.  You can't move forward if you're still clinging to what was let it end. That's the work. Number three is passage. And passage is a messy middle where most people get lost. You're between an old life ending and a new life beginning. Nothing feels stable.

Some days are okay, some terrible, and you can't predict what you'll get.  It's disorienting, exhausting, and sometimes terrifying. The work is surviving it without knowing how it ends. Learning to be present with discomfort day after day,  taking things one day at a time, because that's all you can do.  The trap thinking you should already be in new beginning or giving up  because it's so uncomfortable. 

Neither fighting it nor giving up works. The work is keeping showing up. Keep trusting your passing through even when it feels like you're stuck forever. And then finally we get to new beginning. This is when you pass through and you're establishing a new normal.  But here's the thing, it rarely looks like you expected.

Your new normal includes whatever you went through to get there. It's not return to life before. It's new life that incorporates a reality of what happened.  The work is building your new life instead of trying to recreate your old one. And here's what nobody mentions. These stages aren't linear.

 Sometimes you think you're a new beginning and get pulled back to passage. Sometimes you cycle through multiple transitions simultaneously. That's normal, messy, complicated, exhausting, but normal. So where are you in your transitions right now?  Name your stage. Honestly. Embrace the unique challenges of where you are.

 Build the right support. Be gentle with yourself. Acknowledging where you are creates space to move forward with intention and grace.  You can't control which transitions you face, but you can name where you are, you can do the work each stage requires.  Let's figure this out together and while you're at it, let me know that you've made it through transitions and how you've made it through transitions in your life.

Thanks a lot. I hope to see you back here soon.