Understanding the Four Stages of Transition

Here's what makes transitions so brutal: we think they should be linear and straightforward, but they're actually messy and circular.

Whether you're selling a business, facing retirement, dealing with health challenges, or navigating any major life change, you're going through a transition.

And transitions follow a predictable pattern with four distinct stages:

Anticipation

Ending

Passage

New Beginning

Why We Get Stuck?

Most of us get stuck because we don't understand which stage we're in or what that stage requires.

We try to jump from Anticipation straight to New Beginning, skipping the hard work of Ending and Passage.

Or we get lost in Passage thinking we should already be in New Beginning.

We beat ourselves up for struggling when actually, struggling is exactly what that stage requires.

Understanding the four stages of transition" means being able to name where you are in the process.

Each stage has different challenges, different emotions, different tasks.

When you can identify your stage, you gain power over how you respond instead of just being tossed around by forces you don't understand.

We're exploring what each stage actually looks like in real life – not the sanitized textbook version, but the messy reality.

How Anticipation feels when you have more questions than answers.

What it takes to truly End something.

Why Passage is the hardest stage and how to survive it.

And what New Beginning actually means.

Because transitions are unavoidable. But understanding them? That makes all the difference between drowning and navigating with intention.