Create a pathway to power to navigate transitions
Life is often bigger than your plans. When your schedule is disrupted by unforeseen events, you can always choose how you respond. So I would like to invite you to see these changes as special opportunities to grow and broaden your outlook on life.
How do you relate to your power when you experience a change?
Remember, when you transition, you are transforming yourself. It’s natural to feel unbalanced at first, so go slowly. Affirm to yourself that important learning can temporarily upset your balance. Encourage yourself to proceed gently, with your eyes wide open.
Learning about his unique approach to transitions helps you create a path of power that is grounded and balanced.
So let’s start by shedding light on what transitions and changes mean to you.
Illuminate your inner landscape to find your balance.
His transitional style intimately reflects his history and his hopes. He can bring creativity and initiative to upcoming transitions, especially if they are changes of his own choosing. However, his default responses may also include rigid coping patterns that he developed early in life, when he may have been overwhelmed and misinformed.
It’s easy to fall back on old behaviors under stress. Unfortunately, thoughtful actions rarely do justice to complex demands. So give yourself a special gift: explore those reflexes and stuck spots with curiosity and compassion.
Here are two common “default dances” you can return to when faced with big changes:
- One is a white-knuckle grip, as you try to manage so much of what is beyond your control that you burn out.
- The other is to lose control and get carried away by the rush of events, as if you were in a spinning kayak without a paddle.
But don’t worry, there is another way. The more you help yourself, the more you evolve. The following guidelines will help you ease the pressure and establish a realistic middle ground in which you exercise positive control.
Accept that transitions are challenging and disorienting.
Schedule extra time to adjust; plan new activities that take longer than expected. Acknowledge when you feel overwhelmed. Put off decisions until you regain your balance, and make sure you have plenty of time to relax and reflect.
See your new situation with new eyes.
Use journals and lists to clear your mind and refresh your perspective. Identify what is truly in your control and what you simply have to accommodate to the best of your ability. Know that you may need to review your assessment periodically. Change is a new landscape. It takes time to learn its contours.
Cultivate sensitive serenity.
If your expectations of yourself are unrealistic, review them carefully, creating a strong picture of a successful transition. Instead of focusing on a specific destination, visualize your progress process. It’s wise to frame success entirely in terms of the quality of your choices, not an end point. This keeps the success criteria firmly in your control and silences the voices of self-sabotage and self-criticism.
By cultivating a supportive internal dialogue, you bring the best of what is familiar to you as you navigate your transitions. Enrich your self-talk with uplifting mantras, examples of past successes, and realistic questions. This way, you grow as you go!
