Transition means a
voyage from one place to another. As in any voyage, there is a departure, a
disorienting time of travel and, finally, a destination. The journey itself is a
psychological space where identity is in flux and you may feel you have lost the
ground beneath your feet. This in-between period is not a literal space between
one job and the next but a psychological zone in which you are truly “between
selves”, with one foot still firmly planted in the old world and the other
making tentative steps toward an as-yet undefined new world.
Whether someone is
working two jobs at once, finishing a lame-duck period, in outplacement or
taking an extended time to reflect on what comes next, it is common to feel
uncomfortable. It is a period rife with anticipation, confusion, fear and all
sorts of other mixed feelings.
To be in transit is
to be in the process of leaving one thing, without having fully left it, and at
the same time entering something else, without being fully a part of it. It is a
gestation period of provisional, tentative identity when many different selves
are possible and none are obvious. It can be an ambivalent time when we
oscillate between holding on and letting go. Over a period of months and years
we explore new roles and possibilities.
Rather than being a
sign of lack of readiness, this moving back and forth is in fact the key to
successful transitioning. It is how we stave off premature closure until we have
fully explored alternatives. But, finding an alternative that truly fits, like
finding your purpose in life, is not something that can be clarified overnight.
It takes time.
Whatever the first step, the process gradually changes the
nature of what you know and what you seek to learn. Learning happens in cycles.
Early cycles focus on the most immediate (or surface problems. Later cycles
provoke the bigger questions. How do I put it all together? What other facets of
my life do I need to adjust?
Even when you start a career transition with these deeper
questions in mind, it can take time to discover what you truly want to change.
Trying to tackle the big changes at the beginning can be counterproductive. Our
customer mind-set about who we are and what others expect undermines all of us
in myriad subtle ways. Just as starting the change process by trying to identify
your true self can cause paralysis rather than progress, starting by trying to
change basic assumptions inevitably leads to an exercise in abstraction and, all
too often, avoidance of real change. We are simply not equipped to make those
deeper changes until we come to understand what they really mean, not as
concepts but as realities that define our daily lives.
Transformation, then, happens less by grand design or
careful strategy than by the small wins that result from ongoing practices that
enhance our capacity to change. It is an
experiment. Getting from an often clumsy or superficial
first effort to the deeper changes you seek is a matter of working and reworking
identity as an ongoing practice. Practice makes perfect, eventually. Over time
you will come to reaffirm certain fundamental truths about yourself and to
anchor those with new premises that will guide you in the next phase of your
professional skills.
