What does done look like when half of your life is spent in transition?
The desire for change is not a sign of failure but growth. I am working with several clients resetting their businesses and lives as they emerge from the uncertainty of the past three years. These business and nonprofit leaders are entering new roles and rebuilding their leadership teams. One word keeps repeating in these conversations: "Transition."
On the home front, my sisters in arms, working mothers, are launching kids back to school with a satisfied sigh. The sun seems to be peeking through the clouds for working moms. We are transitioning out the sh&# show of parenting small children through COVID. Many are looking forward to the feasibility of restarting careers or launching businesses. I find myself helping clients and friends surf the change curve.
The linear life is dead.
I have been devouring Bruce Feiler's book, Life is in the Transitions. Feiler "gets to the heart of how turning points shape us - and how we can shape them." - Adam Grant
The book is rich with thoughtful, rigorous research - highly engaging for a nerd like me! Feiler gathers, analyzes, and mines 225 life stories as the backbone of his research. Two prominent elements circled through my mind this summer - like an earworm 80’s song.
"The linear life is dead" took hold with me in a big way. I have often played with the idea that much of our discord comes from the difference between expectations and experience. When what we think we should feel, do, have, or be differs from our reality - we tend to register the experience as a failure, FOMO, or envy.
Feiler's phrase "the linear life is dead" allows me to expect the transition. I have been through seventeen distinct disruptions in my life - just in the past ten years.
Half of your life is spent in transition
Lives today are not the predictable, progressive path that our parents or grandparents experienced. Gone is the college, career, pension, and retirement trajectory. And don't get me started about family, health, identity, or parenting! Because of this constant state of change, Feiler reveals that we experience and process a life disruption every 12-18 months. We spend half of our lives managing through disruption or transition.
Half of our lives are spent going through a transition! Mind blown emoji.
The space between notes
I've been in business as Springboard Strategy for over seven years. What started as a hiatus from a corporate career became a career. I wildly underestimated this transition's impact on my life and family. Being a founder provides me with agency and self-determination. Gone are the days of struggling to get home for dinner by 7:30 - now, I greet my son when he gets home from high school every day at 4.
"Music is the space between the notes."
Like the space between musical notes or white space in a photograph, your transition is your real life. Try not to wish it over, resolved, or complete. It's a journey that, with practice, you can build skills to master again and again.
Closing
In addition to my strategy work, I continue to pursue a passion of mine, the Life Design Workshop Series. Over four years, we’ve helped 100 women apply design tools to their most precious creation, their lives. They have built their way forward - as founders, freelancers, and CEOs. I adore convening this intimate group of women to guide each other through career and life transitions.
We are offering our first post-COVID workshop Fridays beginning October 7th. We host this experience at the lovely Lola, a powerful community for women in business and drop-dead gorgeous workspace in Atlanta.
Let us know if you are interested in joining us!
Happy transition!